Happy Ears: Game Over by Peter Aristone
Written by Peter Aristone
Sacha Skarbek, who produced my Happiest Accidents EP, had collaborated with songwriter Tom Baxter many times in the past and encouraged us to meet. At Sacha’s London studio, Tom and I began discussing music and lyric ideas and quickly hit it off.
Tom suggested an idea of writing a song about the broken ego of a man who loses the game with the woman he dated. In real life, I had just gotten married and was in an amazing and happy place, so it was hard to get into that type of feeling. The result is really a combination of both sides of a spectrum - musically the song is actually pretty upbeat and kind of happy-sounding, while lyric-wise it is about that lost game with a girl you are in love with. So, in the end we both got what we wanted from the song and were satisfied with it.
The song was originally written with most of it being in odd time. When we began working on it with Sacha we decided to simplify it a bit and leave the odd time signatures in just a few spots of the song. That was probably a wise decision because the day before we started recording it, a British Awards ceremony was taking place and our drummer obviously partied a lot there. When we started the recording session he was suffering from a terrible hangover and struggled with the odd times and lots of rhythmic changes. After gallons of coffee and an hour-long meditation he got back on his feet, unleashed his full potential and his part ended up really awesome!
Eventually I was hesitant to put this track on the EP as it was quite different than the other songs for the album and I wasn’t sure it fit there. I spent some time thinking and changing my mind five times before I eventually decided to have it on the EP. Another difficulty with the song was at the mixing stage. I asked my very good friend and producer from the country I live in - the Czech Republic - to try to do his mix as I felt that we could experiment with the song more. The result was that we ended up with two killer mixes, each a bit different from the other but both equally good. I spent a lot of time trying to decide which one to use. Eventually the original mix by a great sound engineer and mixer, Guy Massey, won the spot on the album, as it fit in more sonically with the rest of the music.
I’ve played the song live many times since and I have to admit I kind of connected with the lyrics eventually so now every time I can see flashbacks of my embarrassing moments with girls I was trying to date or had some short unsuccessful romances. Yes, I confess, I had a few of those, more than I’d like actually!
Listen to Game Over.
Find Peter Aristone: