All Over Your Body – new single by Mono Mind

We’ve been expecting some news around Mono Mind since a couple of months ago we could see that a new song premiered on BPM / Sirius XM where they are still playing it twice a day. Now All Over Your Body sees a worldwide release on streaming sites. Listen to it on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer or YouTube! In case you feel like singing along:

All Over Your Body

Some days you take it slow and spend time with me
Some days I find you watching what I can’t see
Some days I realize you reach out for me
Some days I don’t get at all

Some days you’re stuck with demons inside your head
Some days you get the urge to see if they’ve bled
Some days you go too far and wish all was dead
Some days I don’t get at all

Reading what’s on your mind – I got the time
Trying to stay behind – I got the time
True love is hard to find – I got the time I got the time I got the time

Do you wanna dance like I wanna dance
Do you wanna go like I wanna go
All over your body All over your body All over your body

Sometimes you’re burning and I look for the glow
Sometimes you’re cold and you remind me of snow
Sometimes you come and go but it doesn’t show
Some days I don’t get at all

Reading what’s on your mind – I got the time
Trying to stay behind – I got the time
True love is hard to find – I got the time I got the time I got the time

Do you wanna dance like I wanna dance
Do you wanna go like I wanna go
All over your body All over your body All over your body

Words + music by Per Gessle + Alex Shield
© Jimmy Fun Music

Update on 13th April:

PG about Mono Mind upon this release:

After basically living in a recording studio for almost forty years I tried to find new ways of creating pop music. I wanted to do something I’d never done before. A new challenge. Still pop, of course (that’s in my DNA!) but created and presented in a new manner.
I started fooling around with different gadgets working with my own voice, recording in different octaves and different keys just to see what might pop up. In the end of the day it’s all about the voices. We all focus on the voices when we listen to pop music. With Mono Mind I can explore new musical paths with different collaborators and different vocalists.
As this is more than an “artist project” I don’t want to front it myself so I created cartoon characters to illustrate Mono Mind. How gorgeous! I had so much fun. Still do.

You can watch the video to the song HERE!

Per Gessle about Mamma and Pappa on P4 Musik

There was a conversation with Per Gessle on Swedish Radio’s P4 Musik program yesterday. It starts at 33:32 HERE.

The program leader, Carolina Norén introduces Per as Sweden’s answer to Bob Dylan [they played Bob Dylan’s I Contain Multitudes before that /PP], a real Swedish songwriter and pop icon. She says Mr. G released 2 new songs recently and the radio plays Mamma first. Then Per joins in via phone and it turns out he is still in Halmstad since Easter. He says it’s a strange time we live in, but it’s nice living in Halmstad.

Carolina asks Per where he got the inspiration from for writing Mamma for Mother’s Day. Per says he was writing songs in English for an English project and the idea just came up that shit, it’s soon Mother’s Day, so why not writing a song for that occasion. So he sat down and wrote a text. It turned out to be nice and he recorded it with Helena Josefsson. Then he thought shit, he should write a father song too and he wrote Pappa, which was a bit harder to write. He locked himself in the studio and then played the songs to a few people and they thought they were damn fine. They recorded them quickly and the single was out before Mother’s Day, which is lovely.

Carolina notes that if she compares the 2 songs, in Mamma’s lyrics you can’t find the word ”mamma”. Per says he didn’t want to write the songs in a way or paint them at all costs as if they are about his own mother and father. He actually wrote a story about a mom. He thought of a person, a mom, a woman in the beginning of a relationship and that life goes on and life ends. Of course, he used his own relationship to his mother, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a true story about her. It’s the same with the lyrics of Pappa. It’s a bit dark and has an exciting drama in it. The 2 songs are very different. Mamma is tender while Pappa is a bit darker.

Carolina asks Per who he is more similar to, his mother or his father. Per thinks he is rather like his mother was. He didn’t have a long realtionship with his father since he died when Per was still a teenager. He always heard it in his life that he is like his mom, so it’s probably true.

Carolina also brings up Mono Mind and tells Per there is so much creativity in him. She is curious if the new English project is related to Mono Mind or what it is at all. Per says a lot is going on. He always had several projects going on at the same time. There was his solo career, Gyllene Tider and Roxette and they are all different. It fits his personality very well that he can jump from one project to another. He is working on Mono Mind, on English songs and Swedish acoustic songs. During the past years he started working with other musicians too and it’s very different now, because he had always been a lone wolf before. When you are working in a team, there are a lot of compromises and he is not sure what comes out of it, but we will see.

Mr. G says holidays are overrated when Carolina asks him about vacation. Haha.

PG part ends with the radio playing Pappa.

 

Interview with Per Gessle by Diario Popular

Sebastián La Mastra from Argentinean newspaper Diario Popular did an interview with Per Gessle about Mono Mind and songwriting and Per told some anecdotes and talked about his admiration for the Argentine crowds. Read the interview in Spanish HERE!

In the interview Per talks about how it all started with Mono Mind and tells it’s a little more groove oriented than what he did so far, but without losing his writing style. Almost everything was done on the computer. It has become a tool to try different ideas with different collaborators. Per hopes to continue with Mono Mind for many years. He has many plans, as always, and the possibility of performing live shows is on the table. Mr. G says he would love to perform in South America and Argentina, it’s just about making things work financially.

About songwriting Per tells it’s easier to write mid-tempo songs or ballads than uptempo ones. Those 3-chord gems are hard to make at his age. You have to have the ability to keep yourself “simple” and that’s hard to do when you have written as many songs as Mr. G. He always tends to complicate his music. He hates that.

PG says the songs he writes are not about him, but they are written by him, therefore he is there somewhere. But at the same time, everything is fiction. He is a writer, he’s not making confessions.

The reporter asks Per what the funniest and most emotional memories are during his long career. Per tells the story of his trousers got broken on stage in Mexico back in the days and their 1995 Roxette concert in Beijing.

If he wasn’t a singer-songwriter, he would have loved to work in another artistic field. Maybe as an architect or interior designer or art director. Who knows.

Per mentions It must have been love and Queen Of Rain, Sleeping In My Car and The Look as his favourite songs. He also tells that all those years of touring with Marie were incredible, she is an incredible singer. Per says he was lucky.

To the question how he would define himself Per replied “lazy, lazy worker” and he shares his biggest dream, “peace and love on planet Earth”.

The guys talk a bit about Baladas en español. Per remembers that when choosing which songs to record, he only picked songs for Marie to sing. Except Vulnerable, which is interpreted by PG. The songs sounded great in Spanish, without knowing what they were about. It was a very strange experience, but at the same time fun. Per says he knows only “Hi, a beer please” in Spanish. To the question if he records anything in Spanish again, Per replies he doesn’t think so. But you never know. That’s what makes life interesting. Anything can happen.

The reporter asked Per to tell about his memories with Roxette in Argentina. He says South America and particularly Argentina have always been their favorite places to perform. They didn’t expect that kind of affection the first time they went. The crowds were so loud and they knew the lyrics. If only they could go back and perform to Argentine fans.

 

Per Gessle about Mono Mind on Musikplats Stockholm

After Per Gessle got back from the US to Sweden this week, Fredrik Eliasson from Swedish Radio P4 Stockholm immediately did an interview with him to be broadcast yesterday on Musikplats Stockholm. Listen to it HERE!

The interview was about Mono Mind and before it was on air, they played I Found My Soul At Marvingate. Cool to hear it on the radio!

Fredrik introduced Mono Mind as Mr. G’s secret project that got out of the closet recently. Then he welcomed Per as Dr. Robot and Per said in a slightly changed voice that ”yes, I’m here” (trying to imitate Dr. Robot’s voice, but it didn’t work well without the computer distortion, haha). Fredrik wished a belated happy birthday to Per and asked how it was to celebrate his 60th. Per said it was quite intense for 2 days with a very few people. He said his wife is very social and he is the opposite, so he just sat in a dark corner and it went fine. Haha.

The guys talked about Mono Mind’s debut album that it was released on Per’s birthday. Mr. G shared the info that he started releasing singles in 2017 and the first single was Save Me A Place. He said no one knew he was behind the project and the song suddenly became No. 1 on the dance charts in the US and kept the position for 6 weeks. It was much fun to achieve this at his age and with an anonymous project.

Per talked about the characters and that he wanted to change his voice and how it worked in the studio when he was sitting there with Christoffer Lundquist for weeks. It’s not vocoder or any other gadget you can hear, but they created the new voice on the computer themselves. Each song took appr. 2.5 days to create. It was very exciting.

Per said the idea was to create some kind of modern pop music and pop music nowadays is made on laptops. So he wanted to try to mix it with his classic songwriting and it has become a new chapter in his career. Fredrik asked Per about Nashville where he went rather acoustic and Per said Mono Mind started already before Nashville.

Before they played Down by the Riverside, Per said it’s one of his favourite songs. He thinks Dr. Robot’s voice is the best on this one.

The guys then talked about Helena Josefsson. Per said she has a fantastic voice and it fits Dr. Robot’s voice very well and it brightens up all songs.

Per said Mono Mind is still like a playhouse for him. The album was released on 12th January and on 11th he was thinking shit, if it was really a good idea to reveal this project. What if people don’t like it? He would be a bit sad. And what if people like it? How to go on with it? And then there were questions if he goes on tour with Mono Mind. But how to do it? It can be something similar to how Daft Punk or Pet Shop Boys tour, but who knows. The only sure thing is that Per wants to continue working with Mono Mind and develop the whole project, the characters and their stories. One can do anything with such characters.

Per talked about the market for this type of music. He said there are a lot of competitors out there and you need much luck to succeed. He can’t see the same journey with Mono Mind as they had with Roxette, but it’s much fun to record and talk about it anyway. Fredrik jokes with ”are there any exchange students around?”. Haha.

As a last question, Fredrik asked Per which song he is the most satisfied with on Mind Control. Mr. G was thinking for a while, then he said In Control. They had some magical hours when they recorded that song. He likes its construction, the changes in it that don’t usually happen in dance music. There is a kind of progressive rock 1972 in it, Barclay James Harvest style. He thinks it’s magnificent music coming from him and laughs. After the interview they played In Control.

 

Lyrics for all the French LaLaLovers

Dr. Robot was kind enough to share the lyrics to LaLaLove’s French version, LaLaLove (LaLaL’amour). Merci beaucoup! Listen to the song HERE on the LaLaLove – The Remixes EP and sing along! Cooky Carter does make French sound cool, doesn’t she?

LaLaLove (LaLaL’amour)

We loved to drive a million miles
A fastback car and you and I
You craved the speed, I don’t know why
Some simple need to feel alive

Every heart is a weaver
Of dreams of la la la la love and devotion
When the two of us are put into motion

We run on la la la la love and devotion
I really loved ya
Ooh how I loved ya

Je m’souviens de toi, tellement bruyant
Un t-shirt gothique dans la foule
Tu n’étais jamais satisfait
Ce DJ nous a fait tomber amoureux

Every heart is a weaver
Quand nous deux sommes mis en mouvement

On marche à la la la l’amour et à la dévotion
C’est vrai, je t’aime
Oh comme je t’aimais

Chaque cœur est un tisserand
à la l’amour et à la dévotion
Quand nous deux sommes mis en mouvement
à la l’amour et à la dévotion

We run on la la la la love and devotion
C’est vrai, je t’aime
Oh comme je t’aimais

On marche à la la la l’amour et à la dévotion
C’est vrai, je t’aime
Oh comme je t’aimais

 

Words: Per Gessle + Martin Josefsson
Music: Per Gessle + Alex Shield
© Jimmy Fun Music 2018