THEA: This song is our collaboration with the beautiful and immensely talented Michelle Pare, a vocalist/keyboardist I’ve known nearly my entire life.

(I also refer to Michelle in my comments under “Another Song or Two”…she was my partner in the acoustic duo I mentioned there.)

A quick bit of personal background:

Michelle had a tremendous impact on my life; I’m not sure I would have had a career in music without her. By the time I met her when I was 13, I had already made money performing and I had already been on the radio—but it was Michelle who partnered with me and pursued with me every opportunity that eventually led to everything I accomplished over the years. I was an awkward and somewhat disadvantaged kid, and she was anything but: Michelle was probably the most popular girl in our high school. But she saw something in me, and we became best friends, inseparably linked together despite the decades I spent on the road and in Seattle.

Some years ago, we were talking about songwriting and she sang her hook idea to me over the phone: “If only you knew”. That was it. Four words.

The thing is, I never forgot the four words, and I never forgot the melody she sang.

So this summer, we worked together with Chad to turn it into this song.

One composition note: Once we had most of our story/lyrics/form and the basic chord changes crafted, I mentioned to Chad that my only problem was the redundancy in the chord changes…I felt fatigue because though it’s a pretty standard R&B progression, I’d heard enough of it by the end of the first chorus. The final product has two slightly different pre-choruses that are each a nice change up and—at least to me—made all the difference in the world. I love the sound of the G#m7/A (it appears in “You Are Everything” by the Stylistics; you may recognize the interesting sound of it in the first pre-chorus), so I’m glad that found its way into the tune.

Michelle, my lifelong friend…thank you for writing this one with us. I love you. Always.