Rachel Beck may be a chart-topping musician now, but before that, she was a full-time high school teacher… and very obviously still a musician, eager to find music in the most unlikely of places. Her latest single, “At First Glance,” got pulled from the rhythm of the school photocopier.
“This song was inspired by a photocopier,” explains Beck. “One day, back when I was a full-time high school teacher, the copier fell into this rad rhythm (it was a double-sided copy with a hole punch and a staple). Anyway, it was so catchy, I took a sample of it with my phone. My sister, Amy, and I wrote the song to the beat of the sample and our old live version of it stayed very true to the ‘photocopier vibe.'”
There is a saying that goes (in some form or another): to a hammer everything looks like a nail. It would seem the same can be true of musicians; give them a photocopier and they’ll find a beat.
While we don’t know what year the photocopier was produced, it does result in a very Smokey Robinson & The Miracles feel, circa 1962. Similar in sentiment, Beck come off with the bluesier feel and a more modern dancer (read: photocopier) beat.
“I should clarify that the lyrics are not about making copies!” laughs Beck. “It’s a song about being instantly drawn to someone.”
Produced by East Coast Music-award winning producer Daniel Ledwell at Echo Lake in Nova Scotia, the song got a fresh update on the song from its Beck Sisters origins.
“My ‘photocopier song’ doesn’t sound like a photocopier anymore, but it’s still one of my favourites to sing live and I hope people dig the new version,” says Beck.
“I wanted to breathe some new life into the song after performing it live the exact same way for seven years. Enter Daniel Ledwell. We stripped the song back to just melody and lyrics and reimagined the vibe. To be honest, it was extremely challenging to get it right. We went dark, we went disco, we went all over the place. It took four different mixes over as many months and an assist from Jenn Grant to finally feel like it was finished, but I’m really happy with where we landed.”
Stronger Than You Know is set to be released on June 12, 2020.