A Lack Of You

Heavily inspired by the classic "Somewhere Out There" theme from Fievel: An American Tail

from the album Geography and Other Problems

Your Nights, My Days

Written about the street of the same name in Paris, France. 

from the album Geography and Other Problems

Blvd. Beaumarchais

Juan Lopez - bass, trumpet
Erik Sunding - drums
Normandie Wilson - piano, vibraphone, vocals

from the album Geography and Other Problems

Before I Go

The first song from a series of piano compositions/improvisations inspired by a May trip to the Pacific Northwest. 

Rhododendrons started as an improvisation and then quickly morphed into a more codified song. Enjoy.

Recorded and mixed at Rarefied Recording, San Diego, California

Rhodedendrons

New song from upcoming new album, "Until the Whole of My Heart is Yours" ! 

Recorded at Rarefied Recording in San Diego, California

Be Careful With Your Man

Just A Little Time

Oh my! It's time to Think Pink! 

Based on a true story... 

She walks towards me in a colorless concrete bar, dressed in pink. Head­to­-toe pink. Pink hat, pink scarf, pink coat, pink purse. I believe at the moment I'm wearing pink lipstick as well, and we begin talking about... the color pink. 

She's, of course, effortlessly French, utterly Parisian, and her lips quiver, her mouth manipulates sound and tissue in the way that only native French speakers can, kissing the words out of her pink ­lipstick-covered lips. 

I've never spoken to this woman in my life, and within minutes, she's telling me about her lover, a married man. She speaks of him in an indifferent fashion, but her pout gives her feelings away. “I know he'll never leave his wife...” her words trail off into my drunkenness. I look at this beautiful woman, dressed in pink, and can't understand how anyone wouldn't take her into their arms and love her relentlessly. 

At this point in the night, I'm extremely drunk, so I stumble across the street and open up the apartment window that offers a street­ level view of the bar. I plop myself down on the floor with my midi keyboard and write this song as my thoughts drift to all the people in my life who never loved me, and all the time I wasted on them...

lyrics

Some might say I'm past my prime, 
I feel I'm in my finest time 
But before I turn to shale, 
I'll leave you with a cautionary tale 

I used to love someone who only made me blue 
And I know for a girl who's dressed in pink, that simply will not do 

He left me sad, took all that I had 
and never was he true 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you? 

You're young, and so it seems like fun to have a secret paramour 
You're also strong, and it's been said that youth is what mistakes are for 

But youth won't save you from a drunken bout of crying 
on your kitchen floor 

Your mascara will run, your lipstick too 
and your pink outlook will turn to blue 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you? 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you? 

So please learn from my mistakes, my dear, I implore you 
'cause I've been there, and I've been back, 
even though I know it's not my place to tell you what to do 

I don't want your pink to fade to a lonely shade of blue 

Or maybe I'll help drown your sorrows with a kiss or two 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you? 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you? 

Do you even know all of the heartache that you'll go through, 
When you waste your time on someone who doesn't love you?
credits
released 08 June 2015 
David Fleminger - bass 
Richard Larson - drums 
Normandie Wilson - piano, vocals, vibraphone 

Recorded at Rarefied Recording in North Park, San Diego 
and 60 Cycle Hummingbird, San Diego 

Mixed & mastered by David Fleminger 
Produced by David Fleminger & Normandie Wilson

Dressed in Pink

First track from my new full length album "Normandie Wilson Is Tired of Being Nice."

Recorded at Rarefied Recording, San Diego, CA
and 60Cycle Hummingbird, San Diego, CA

David Fleminger: bass
Richard "T-Bone" Larson: drums
Normandie Wilson: piano, vocals

music & lyrics by Normandie Wilson
produced by Normandie WIlson & David Fleminger

Pre-order the new album here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-album-pre-orders-album-re-pressing/x/141737#/story


Thank You

Recorded & mixed by Roy Silverstein in North Park, San Diego.
Vocals, piano & tambourine by Normandie Wilson

Featuring:
David Feldman - bass
Matthew Lara - trumpet
David Menchaca - drums

Saturday Night Girl

The B side of the "Saturday Night Girl" 7" record. 

Featuring Lauren Plumlee on flute. 

Paper & Pencil

These humble songs are the product of the dissolution of a 3+ year relationship with my former bandmate. We created and released a CD together, we worked together, we toured together, we were together almost constantly and then we were not. I use the word 'dissolution' and not 'breakup' for a very specific reason. 

Suffice it to say that when you spend a large amount of time with someone (anyone), whether that time is mostly good, or mostly bad, you will live with their presence and their ghosts for a long, long, long time. I wrote the title song quite a while after the relationship had ended, while I was sitting and fully marinating in the feelings of what it means to love. What it means to lose. What it means to go from seeing someone every day and every hour to hearing from them less and less and less, and exactly how that feels. 

We have so many songs, so many poems, and so much incredible artwork devoted to the fine art of falling in love. There seems to be an almost infinite amount of creative outpourings dedicated exclusively to the delicate process of getting to know someone, first infatuations, discovering the smell of their hair on your pillow and the glorious moment when your love for each other is fully expressed. We also have a huge library of breakup, revenge, and heartbroken songs. Everyone I know has that one record or that one song you pull out when you feel your heart is so crushed it cannot continue on. 

But when I think of songs that deal with the more subtle aspects of ending a relationship, I personally come up short. I cannot think of songs that described the way I felt driving by the house we recorded our old album in. I can't think of any artistic output that matched the feelings of horror, of lifelessness, of utter fear that gripped me when I came back to Santa Monica after 3 months in Europe and a couple months living in San Diego. I saw ghosts on the streets. I felt like I was a time traveler and that there was a distinct possibility that I would run into my former self and my former love in the past, walking through the tunnel under the 10 freeway as we used to do. Meeting at the sink in the McCabe's staff kitchen. Discussing plans and trading responsibilities back and forth. Giving each other rides. Rehearsing together. Fighting bitterly. Making up lovingly and with many tears. Fighting even more bitterly. Breaking up. Getting back together, predictably. I could barely stand to be in my old neighborhood for over a year. 

I try to think about the fading process that happened once I moved to San Diego, which I had to do in order to preserve the tiny shreds of myself that were left. A friend of mine here in Paris was talking about a recent breakup and she said, “I don't want the past to be a myth.” I can't think of songs that matched my feelings when I went from seeing things that reminded me of him every day, to seeing them once a week, to not seeing, not noticing them at all. It reminded me of a dying star; rays of light and warmth long gone but still requiring the massive time and space to travel from the logical center of my brain to the feeling center of my heart. The depth of the feelings required an even deeper space to process themselves. We don't talk about these things too much in our culture, I don't think. We want to rush to the end of a relationship to play the blame game, to be the first to move on, and it sometimes does work like that. Sometimes we get dumped and we are heartbroken, sometimes we end things and do the heartbreaking. And other times it's just too intense to be simple. 

My pain, anger, regret, sadness, happiness, and joy waxed and waned like a rogue moon during most of the first year that we were apart. I think the songs capture that. And the irony is not lost on me that many of the songs people love the most and talk about the most at shows are songs I wrote about my ex. When we were in a band, I had to sing songs with him about his unrequited love affairs. Every night we performed together, I sung songs with him about his crush on a friend; now I'm alone and singing songs about how I used to love someone. 

I don't know if these songs will fill the gap in artistic output that I'm talking about; I'm not sure they even do for me. I'm just sharing what was on my mind while working heavily on these songs. These are vulnerable songs, they're delicate songs, and they're songs deeply and truly, incredibly, from the heart. My heart. 


--- 
Things like auto-tune, heavy compositing, and especially “perfection” are not a part of my work ethic. My aesthetic inspirations come mostly from the school of 1950's and 1960's R&B: virtually everything that came out of Motown and the Brill Building. I am also heavily inspired by the songs of Cole Porter, jazz music (especially from the 1930's and 1940's) and the artistry that came out of Tin Pan Alley in the earlier part of the century. I am not into the “newfangled” thing and anyone who knows me well can attest to the fact that I spend most of my time living under a rock. In a mix or a song, I like hearing breaths, distortion when the recording technology can't quite capture the performance, slightly “off” notes, and anything that reminds me that I'm listening to another human being creating sounds with their imperfect body. 

It's unusual for my work ethic to “sit” on songs for so long, but in this case, I'm happy I did so. I've been playing many of these songs out for two, three, four years and it shows. I've had time to develop these songs, time to let them breathe in front of a live audience, and that's been fun. 

Thank you for listening. Please enjoy these songs.


credits
released 15 November 2012 
All music & lyrics written by Normandie Wilson 
All instruments performed by Normandie Wilson with the help of: 

Niklas Björk – bass on “Nobody Loves You (Like I Do)” 
Conor Deasy – guitar on “Undercover” and “Nobody Loves You (Like I Do)” 
Leia Hohenfeld – flute on “If Only” 
Erik Sunding – drums on “Nobody Loves You (Like I Do)” 
Gabriel Sundy – clarinet on “My Careful Lover” 

All piano, except on “Nobody Loves You (Like I Do)” recorded by engineer J. Lopez (Casa De Lopez Recording) 
at Kingsize Soundlabs in Los Angeles 

All vocals recorded by engineer Erik Sunding (Discrete Motion Recordings) except “Like I Do,” recorded by engineer Walle Richardsson (Discrete Motion Recordings) 
in Tambourine Studios, Malmö, Sweden 

“Nobody Loves You (Like I Do)” mixed by Erik Sunding 
“Undercover” mixed by Normandie Wilson 
all other songs mixed by J. Lopez 

Mastered by J. Lopez (Casa de Lopez Recording) 
Additional mastering by Nate Clarke 
Photography by Clémence Veilhan in Paris, France 
Design by Bacilio Mendez II in New York, NY 
and Megan Tarr in Los Angeles, CA

Undercover

At The Heart of Staying In Love

live instrumental jazz piece from Geography and Other Problems. 

Karl Hjalmar Nyberg - tenor saxophone
Erik Sunding - drums
Fredrik Sunding - bass
Normandie Wilson - piano

Cold Rain, Malmö

from Geography and Other Problems

You don't get mad at a basketball 
when it bounces from the ground
And every morning, all over the world,
no one's surprised that the sun keeps coming around
I know you know about chemistry, 
so there's no way you're gonna disagree with me
You've started a reaction that's hard to ignore,
oh, please, don't let me fall to the floor

Don't use my words against me 
Don't use my words against me
or I'll be lonely as I've ever been,
always dreading the why and avoiding the when

So if you want to meet me at a small cafe,
my dear, I'll always be on time
I swear up, down, and sideways on a stack of bibles,
I'll let you know if I'm running just a bit behind

Believe me, if you leave me, I'll go back to the ways
that got me through all those gloomy days
Lonely as I ever was, doing the things that I say that I'll do,  just because

Don't use my words against me
Don't use my words against me
Don't use my words against me
Don't use my words against me

Believe me, if you leave me, we'll go back the ways
that got us through all those gloomy days
but we'll be lonely as we ever were,
that's the only fact that I can attest to for sure

Don't Use My Words Against Me

New song from new album, Geography and Other Problems! 

Since you left my side, 
every day is grey without you 
I try to smile, but my 
world might as well stop without you 
My friends speak soft and slow: 
“I've never seen her look quite this low, and I'm worried so” 

On sunny streets, in Technicolor, 
She turns away from the call of her lover 
Her head hangs low, and everybody knows 
She walks in sadness 

Sedan du försvann 
är alla färger bleka 
Jag minns hur vi brann 
men himlen är grå när himlen tvekar 

They walk together to the beat of the same song, 
Oh, but meanwhile 

On sunny streets, in Technicolor, 
She turns away from the call of her lover 
Her head hangs low, and everybody knows 
She walks in sadness 
On muted streets, under cloudy skies, 
He stops to pause for a minute, but he's not crying – no - 
it was just a sigh 
He walks in sadness 

I walk in sadness

Meanwhile

Mod Piano, Vol. 1

This is mostly a gift for my mother and grandmother, who are always begging me to release piano-only songs. 

I write frequently, lately not as frequently as I'd like, but songwriting is a major part of my life experience. And as any songwriter knows, you have to write a lot of little songs and a lot of songs that aren't A sides in order to create your greatest songs. These songs are not table scraps by any means; they're little stories without words, little snippets from my life that I am very happy and grateful to share with you. Many of my songs have too much of a story behind them. I often write page after page after page of lyrics and end up having to cram them into 3 or 4 minutes. And then sometimes I start writing a song and I realize that it doesn't need to have lyrics. Yet I often want to explain the story behind the song. 

So here are some little musical stories for you to enjoy...  


Bird Song #2

I was in Toulouse, France staying at the flat of my friend Camille, who plays in a great pop band called Alone With Everybody. (We met in 2010 when he went on tour in the USA) He let me stay in his flat while I was in Toulouse for a couple days in May 2012. I was sitting at his keyboard, just practicing and getting some musical vibes out when I heard a bird singing just outside the window. The bird's song was so beautiful that I just sort of started playing with the bird, and on the first demo recording of this song, you can clearly hear its call. It was a lovely moment and I'm happy a beautiful song came out of it. In fact, whenever I think about this little bird, my heart is very joyful. I have a big smile on my face right now.  I wrote another piano-only song on my first release called “The Birds Are Singing,” hence the title, “Bird Song #2.” 

Good Things

I am often inspired by words and combinations of words, and this phrase kept coming to me at a time in my life where I was full of joyful and hopeful energy, excited for the future. The old-timey, cheerful vibe came pretty naturally. Working lyrics went something like: “Good things are coming, baby / but we'll have to wait and see / all the good things / that are coming to you and me”

All My Tears

Written during a darker time during the 'Great Fruitful Songwriting Period' of 2008-2009. Working lyrics were “All the tears that I cried / over every inch of you / wasted every single one”

A Little Faster

I wrote this song after accidentally brushing hands with someone at a work meeting many years ago in San Francisco. The version with lyrics appeared on my first EP I put out in 2007.




I Was Just Waiting For You To Call Me Back

As it says. I called a friend and he said he'd call me back in a little bit. So I wrote this song while I was waiting for him to call me back. No big story here.

Take Care Of The Tree

I gave a tree as a housewarming gift to a lover, and even helped him plant it in the backyard, which involved a lot more digging than we expected. It was a complicated time for me, and I expended a great deal of mental energy worrying about the future of the relationship. I began to feel extremely attached to the tree, however, and I found myself spending even more time and energy worrying about not only the future of the relationship, but also about the future of the grapefruit tree that we had planted together. It had been rescued from a Home Depot by my neighbor and nursed back to health. He sold it to me for $10 after telling me the dramatic tale of how he convinced the store to give him several of the trees since they were not taking care of them properly. I was concerned about the tree, and I wondered what would become of it if, or when, the relationship ended. I wrote this song while thinking about many of the complex issues at play in the relationship as it stood. And it became about the tree, mostly, with working lyrics, “What it will be, will be / just promise me / you'll take care of the tree.”

UPDATE: The tree is doing fine, although it has not yet put out any flowers or fruit yet. It hasn't grown too much in the past few years, but I don't know how fast grapefruit trees are supposed to grow. If anyone has any advice about citrus trees, please let me know. 

Tell Me More (intro)

I wrote a very short song called “Tell Me More” for my EP “Glitter Patter” that I put out back in 2007. When I was producing the song I played around with everything I had in my apartment at the time, including pop bottle caps and the sound of the fizz in soda water. I had always envisioned the song as being much longer and part of a song cycle, but I never explored the arc of the song to its fullest extent. This is the piano part I came up with for the intro. There were some working lyrics but they are truly awful and will not be published here. I like the rawness of this recording, which was actually done in 2007 in my downtown LA loft on Spring Street. 

Carnations

I will definitely revisit this song with lyrics and a fuller arrangement. I played around with the delay effects on the piano as it stood and just loved the way it sounded. Enjoy this demo mix, inspired most likely by one of my favorite artists, German choreographer Pina Bausch. (I don't totally remember) 


Theme From “Together Again”

[story redacted]


Bird Song #2

Good Things

A Little Faster

Carnations

martini-sipping, diamond wearing swing pop. influences: Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, Hal David, Brian Wilson, Carole King, Cole Porter. hobbies: looking good, feeling great

normandiewilson

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