Everything by Robert De Leo

Album: Lessons Learned (2022)

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Songfacts®:

Robert De Leo is a founding member of Stone Temple Pilots and a primary songwriter in the band. They remained active even after losing two lead singer (Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington), but when the pandemic hit, it shut down the band so De Leo put his efforts into making his first solo album.

"Everything" is a song he started working on back in 1993 after STP released their groundbreaking album Core. It took him nearly 30 years, but he finally finished it.

In a Songfacts track by track, he told the story: "I had that part, 'Can't you see, I just want you to be my everything.' That was the lyric I had from a long time ago, and I think it was the first song I ever wrote that I just wanted to have such a gentle side. It was so fitting because that's what I really wanted to get across on this record: a gentle side."
De Leo sang on just one track on the Lessons Learned album ("Is This Goodbye"). On the others he used various guest vocalists, all with very different styles. "Everything" features Kara Britz, who has been a backing singing for Lindsay Lohan, Joe Cocker, and on the show The Voice.
Listening to Stone Temple Pilots, you probably wouldn't guess that one of Robert De Leo's favorite songs is "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack, but that's one he sometimes uses as a songwriting template, which he did on "Everything."

"It just captures a moment for me, and it's so naked," he told Songfacts. "That's what I really wanted to get across."

"And there's something about a female doing that, that just makes it that more special for me," he added. When Burt Bacharach was writing songs and he gave those songs to Dionne Warwick or Dusty Springfield or Karen Carpenter, I think I know how he felt."
De Leo wrote the lyric with the bass player Corey Britz, brother of Kara Britz, the vocalist on this track.
The guy singing background vocals along with Robert De Leo is his good friend Gary Wright of "Dream Weaver" fame. Musicians on the track are:

De Leo: guitar
Shawn Tubbs: guitar
David Piltch: upright bass

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