I Need Something Different

Album: Moonlander (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Stone Gossard started writing this track many years before he finally recorded it for Moonlander. He told the story of the song to Artist Direct: "I like to play drums in my free time for fun," he explained. "I had a little looping machine so I made a bass line to play drums on top of. I spent twenty seconds on the bass line. I wanted it to be simple so I could add the drums over it. As I was playing, I kept humming that melody. It sounded like a song. It's fun to write songs over a static piece of music like that. It's more like a disco approach to writing music. The bass doesn't really need to change that much and neither do the drums. The vocal melody changing can signify what the chorus is. I was excited about it."

    Gossard drafted in his pal Matt Chamberlain to help out. The pair first met when Chamberlain toured with Pearl Jam for a few weeks in 1990 and he can also be seen playing drums on their "Alive" video. "He came into the studio, and I threw that loop at him," Gossard recalled. "He just destroyed it! The key to that song is how exciting the drum track is. It's over-the-top. I knew I had something really cool there."

    At this stage Gossard mislaid the track of the song. It remained lost for about seven years until he came across it again, whilst going through his old demos. "I was like, 'Oh my God, how did I let that one go? It's so special,'" he recalled. "I finished the lyrics off and added a little guitar to it. (American alternative/folk rock musician) Pete Droge did some background vocals, and we finished it really quickly. That was all done in the last six months. It was started in 2003 and re-tweaked in 2013. It's very simplistic in its approach. I like it in that regard."

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