California Nights

Album: California Nights (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The title track of Best Coast's third album came to singer Bethany Cosentino after a phone call spent convincing a friend to move back to LA. "I said, 'Listen to "Going To California" by Led Zeppelin,'" she told NME. "After we hung up, I listened to the Zeppelin discography for the first time and was like, 'Dude, where have I been?'"
  • This has a different sound to anything that Best Coast has done before, something that initially concerned Cosentino. "I remember sending it to the guys and worrying they might not like it and would think it was too weird," she told Stereogum. "It didn't really sound like any of our other songs."

    "Once it was released, people started saying that maybe we'd made a shoegaze record," Cosentino continued. "But none of the other songs on the record really sound like it. We just wanted to do something a little different that drew from some of our influences that we don't usually get to explore."
  • The song and album is named for California's "magic hour," that time right before the sun sets for the day. "Where I live if you look in one direction it's palm trees and there's mountains and it's just like super beautiful and the colors are incredible," Cosentino told Radio.com. "That was something that I drew a lot of inspiration from."

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