Omen

Album: Caracal (2015)
Charted: 13 64
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Songfacts®:

  • The second single from Caracal features vocals by Sam Smith. The two acts previously joined forces on the Disclosure hit, "Latch." Both songs were also penned by the same four people, the Disclosure duo, Sam Smith and the London-based songwriter and producer Jimmy Napes.
  • The Disclosure pair and Sam Smith spent three complete days hanging out and writing a number of tunes. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said: "It's very traditional way of writing songs. We could do it at home. I'll sit in the corner making a rough beat and getting all the sounds I think we're going to use ready. Someone will think about a theme of a subject we want to talk about. It all comes together that way-and if it doesn't come together quickly, it usually never will."
  • The music clip takes place at a secret party in a futuristic metropolis, which gets raided by the authorities. It is the second of four parts in an extended video series all directed by Ryan Hope (the first was for the Gregory Porter collaboration "Holding On").
  • Howard Lawrence recalled the penning of the song to Spin magazine: "I remember we wrote the majority of the chords first, before everything else. Before doing melodies, lyrics, or the beat, it was just the chords on the piano. And I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like we were writing a gospel song."

    Guy Lawrence added: "But as soon as you put it on a synth and put a really swung beat behind it, it became us. It was wicked, man. Working with Sam is always great."
  • When collaborating together Howard Lawrence and Sam Smith write in an unusual way. Lawrence disclosed: "Sam will sing a melody, but he'll sing all one note, and he'll just do it across the whole chorus and it'll basically give the rhythm of the melody, and then I just move all the notes around to what he's done in my head and then sing it back, and he's like, 'Okay, cool, done.' That's how we did it with 'Latch' as well."
  • Guy Lawrence recalled the collaboration to NME: "The main thing was that we didn't want it to be 'Latch' 2.0," he said. "We're not just making music together again because Sam has got big, we're doing it because we're a great team."

    "Sam was on some crazy diet at the time so he just brought a s---eload of avocados," Guy Lawrence added. "We were sitting there eating cheesecake."

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