- Fork Ninja wrote:
- *Knows nothing of the highness of notes*
I dunno...prolly my least favorite song on THoE. Can't say why...just isn't as epic for me. 
It's not epic in the WT sense of the word, but it's pretty damn awesome.
I have no idea what it's about though. I remember an interview with Sharon saying it was about the personal hardships of a particular band member, but nothing more.
Here's a part of an interview where the interviewer seems to love The Cross:
CK: I’m getting the privilege of a lifetime, I’ve seen you in New York two rows away and the other night five rows away, I’ve seen the big show vicariously through the dvds, but to see you perform right in front of me, it’s unbelievable. Let’s get to the album, I love all the songs on the new album – there are too many to mention and you don’t have the time to go through them all so, I wanted to focus on “The Cross”, your vocal performance on that track particularly when you say “My Dear”….
SDA: Yeah.
CK: It is so venomous, cutting, slightly sarcastic and so subtle at the same time, only a listener who really loves music can hear all of that in just those two words.
SDA: I think it’s pretty impressive that you say that because that is how I tried to approach it. Yes, it says a lot of things (laughs) …
CK: It’s the way you deliver “My Dear” – it does all of that, it says so much in two simple words. And I just love it every time I hear it, and I could never hear it enough. Do you have a particular vocal performance on this new album that you are most proud of?
SDA: Well, there are two songs I am proud of. That song in particular became very special to me. I love the song, it’s one of my favorites. It almost did not make the album because of the fact that I wrote it together with Martijn in a different tempo but it was too quick, you couldn’t really play guitar to it. So, I wanted it to be really heavy, slow, dramatic, and really an angry kind of song, but it didn’t work out. It took me a year to get the right rhythm and right atmosphere and it finally made it to the album in the last few weeks of the recording. So, I finally got to say “Yay!”.
CK: It took you a year? It’s a masterpiece.
SDA: Yeah, it took a year to get it to the final way it became. It had a totally different rhythm. It was much faster, it had the same atmosphere but it was much faster before.
But, you couldn’t play guitar to it the way it was before, so I had to make it much slower and find the right rhythm. So, I heard a song on the radio and I recorded a piece of it and handed it to the producer and said, “ok, this is the rhythm I want to have more or less.” He totally understood what I meant and then everything began to fall into place and then we finished it.
CK: Was it one of the last things you recorded so it was almost like a miracle at the end of the recording sessions?
SDA: Yeah, actually a little bit because we almost gave up literally on it so... And the other song I’m really proud of is “The Heart of Everything” because I sing with a heavier kind of way, a little bit more aggressive, and I thought I could never do it. If you play a certain song in a certain tonality like this very low and very heavy then I can’t sing it like I sang on “Mother Earth” apply a very high vocal because it doesn’t come across then. It needs balls and I had to search for mine a little bit.
CK: Yeah, I think some of my friends who also love your music when they first heard it they said to me is that Sharon?
SDA: (Laughs ……)
RW: It’s her.
CK: I love it. Two more things on “The Cross” and I’ll get off that one, the instrumentation on that track, it’s very weird, there is a distorted cello on there and Stephen played the drum track on a crappy drum set?
RW: Yeah, yeah, exactly that’s the story and it became for us the experimental song on the album.
CK: It’s very experimental and that’s what I love about your band every time you take a new chance, I’m right there with you.
RW: I think we need that as a band. Every time we try new things for ourselves. That is also where we get our inspiration. So that track was really an eye opener to try out a lot of new things.
CK: Another thing I completely adore on that track and I swear I’ll drop it on this – I call it the laugh track.
SDA: Laughs …. The laugh track? (She starts to imitate the vocal)
CK: It was always there, you were just experimenting?
SDA: I was just experimenting, I also did it in on another song, but we had it taken out as it was just too strange. But, it just seemed to fit that song with the slight sarcasm kind of thing and the lyrics ….
CK: Yeah, yeah, you’re mocking the person.
SDA: Yeah, it just fit with that song and also the (she sings a vocal melody that follows the keyboard line on the opening of the track)
CK: Yeah, that’s the part that follows the piano part. The first time I played someone that part as I wanted to turn them onto it, he was like I can’t believe her voice on that part – it is so high - Yeah, it’s real.
SDA: Yes, at first it was a vocal line by itself, then he started playing over it in the studio and trying different things out and then someone came up with the idea to pitch my vocals, so it’s a little bit pitched, that is what you hear, so it’s a combination ….
RW: That’s a combination of her normal voice with a pitched vocal.
SDA: Yeah, we recorded another vocal an octave higher and pitched it. So, it’s comes across a little natural but also has a creepy kind of feel to it.
Sun Apr 13, 2008 10:40 pm
very interesting xD