Sing To You

Album: Make It Happen EP (2016)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Singer-songwriters have an edge when it comes to romance: they can sing a song to their loved one. That what John Splithoff does here; his significant other wants to keep their relationship low-key, but he has other ideas:

    Just try to understand me
    Won't you come a little closer
    And let me whisper to you
    And I'll say
    You don't have to worry 'bout a single thing
    Just let me sing to you


    Who can resist this charm?
  • John Splithoff wrote "Sing To You" soon after moving to New York City from Chicago. He told the story on the Songfacts Podcast: "I was crashing on my buddy's couch before I found my own apartment, and I would just walk around humming that bassline non-stop, and it just took me forever to write the lyrics to it. He was like, 'All right man, that's catchy but will you please do me a favor and write some lyrics and stop humming that song, because you're living in my apartment and I can't stop hearing that in my head too.' Which I think is a good sign.

    That was a song where things just worked out with the writing and the production. It's a good vibe of a song.

    The response and love that that song got was really inspiring and motivated me to keep doing this to the best of my ability. I don't want to say it is like lightning in a bottle, but that song definitely gave me a bigger audience than I had before, and it's very different from this last album, but there are definitely bits of this record that remind me of what I had when I was working on that song."
  • This song was a breakthrough for Splithoff, who started recording just a few years earlier. It took off on YouTube and on various streaming services, especially Spotify, where it quickly amassed over 40 million streams.

    Splithoff, though, didn't release a full-length album until 2021, when he issued All In.
  • Splithoff wrote and produced "Sing To You" with the Los Angeles production duo Noise Club (Chris Petrosino and Rob McCurdy).

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Butch Vig

Butch VigSongwriter Interviews

The Garbage drummer/songwriter produced the Nirvana album Nevermind, and Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Siamese Dream.

Def Leppard Quiz

Def Leppard QuizMusic Quiz

Can you name Def Leppard's only #1 hit in America? Get rocked with this adrenalized quiz.

David Sancious

David SanciousSongwriter Interviews

Keyboard great David Sancious talks about his work with Sting, Seal, Springsteen, Clapton and Aretha, and explains what quantum physics has to do with making music.

Tommy James

Tommy JamesSongwriter Interviews

"Mony Mony," "Crimson and Clover," "Draggin' The Line"... the hits kept coming for Tommy James, and in a plot line fit for a movie, his record company was controlled by the mafia.

Steely Dan

Steely DanFact or Fiction

Did they really trade their guitarist to The Doobie Brothers? Are they named after something naughty? And what's up with the band name?

Cheerleaders In Music Videos

Cheerleaders In Music VideosSong Writing

It started with a bouncy MTV classic. Nirvana and MCR made them scary, then Gwen, Avril and Madonna put on the pom poms.