THE STORY AND MEANING BEHIND THE SONGS ON 'LIGHTSPEED'
by Robin L


1. In Your Arms

This song was written on the first real songwriting session we arranged for ourselves. In the summer of 2008 we were able to spend our holidays in a beautiful mansion in the province of Zeeland (the Netherlands), to write new Destine songs and work on a lot of other band-related things. It was amazing to be in the middle of nowhere and that enabled us to be extremely focused, day by day. In Your Arms was one of the three songs that we worked on in this period that eventually made the album. The first thing that came to us was the vocal hook in the chorus; and we finished the rest of the chorus soon after. I had some more trouble with the verse: I was never really too sure about it, until we recorded the song as a demo version. It’s strange how much that can change your perspective on new songs sometimes.
The meaning behind the lyrics is not as clear-cut as some of our others. It paints a pretty dark picture of someone that’s lost and in need of help. Obviously going underground is a symbol for seeing your life going down the drain in one way or another. That could be being left alone, or seeing no way out of the situations you’re in. The sirens sound from way too far, which means that help will come too late.
We released In Your Arms as a single in Holland and were really surprised by the fact that it got played on some of the biggest nationwide radio stations. Obviously we had faith in our new songs, but never expected it to be such a success.


2. Everything In Me

I tend to be a pretty slow writer, even to the point where I can stand myself because I take way too much time to finish up a new song. Usually there are a few weeks between the first idea for a song, and the last note that I record on the rough demo for the song. This particular song was probably one of the fastest that I ever wrote: the entire thing was finished in one day. I just wrote down the first lyrics that came to mind and planned on changing them later anyway, but eventually we kept the biggest part of it. It’s definitely one of the more uncomplicated songs on the record, as far as lyrics and structure. The drums and guitar parts are pretty technical though. I remember our drummer Robin F coming up with the drum rhythm for the bridge at one of the first times we played the song in the rehearsal room, and I instantly fell in love with that groove. Needless to say it was a real pleasure to work with producer James Paul Wisner on all songs, but on especially this one his sound is really important: even though the song is pretty mellow and funky, he always makes sure that the choruses are as powerful and 'in your face' as humanly possible and still keep the catchy melody on top of it. Exactly as we love it. I remember being in the studio and 95% of the drums for this song were recorded in 5 minutes.


3. Burn

I never really gave a lot of thought to it, but this – together with Stars – is actually one of the two songs on the record that I completely wrote at home in Tilburg. I wrote it when I was pretty pissed off and tried to channel that irritation into something creative to lose it. Which is always the best remedy in my experience. Nothing is more satisfying than bending something negative into a brand new song that you’re happy with.
The song is about the determination to get to the place you want to be, and to reach your goals and dreams. The fact that there are a lot of difficulties on that path, could get you totally irritated and de-motivated, but those difficulties always remind me of the feeling that nothing in the world can possibly stop you if you work hard enough for it. As soon as I found the concept of the lyrics in the chorus the words came really fast. It’s a feeling of wanting something so bad that you would almost die for it. Burn grew out to be one of my favorite songs of the record, especially to play live.


4. Stars

This is one of the few songs that I started with writing a guitar riff. Most times I start out with a chorus, but this was definitely the other way around. I decided to let the riff continue in the verse too and wrote lyrics for that first. I remember taking a lot of time for the rhythmical flow of the vocal until every word was on the right place, almost as if it were some sort of a rap. I never had any doubts about this song; it was always clear that it was something that we were definitely going to release. When I showed the song to one of our publishers, he said that it almost sounded like a pop track that could be appropriate for mainstream artists too. Maybe he was right, but I never really felt that way, I always found that the song was pretty close to what we’ve been doing since the beginning and it definitely felt like a Destine song.
It was actually one of the most difficult songs to record, there were some essential decisions that had to be made. We had a hard time finding the right sound for the lead guitar, we were not sure how much vocals the bridge needed, and were not sure whether the last guitar riff of the song shouldn’t be twice as short. It’s all a matter of trying out as much things as possible and in the end everything worked out good.
For us and the label it was obvious that Stars should be a single, but decided to release In Your Arms first, because we liked the first single to be loud. In Your Arms pretty much paved the way for Stars as far as radio airplay and chart entry in Holland. At some point the whole thing got really bizarre: I’ve been playing in bands and writing songs since I was about 10 years old. Now I still did the exact same thing: I just wrote a song in my bedroom and a couple of months later it got played on radio and TV every freaking day, for months. It’s a very unreal feeling when you go shop in mall and the first song you hear in a clothing store is your own. Needless to say we’re excited about Stars’ success, but will never change our songs just to get on the radio. We still make the music that we would like to listen to ourselves.

More to come the next days.