You can just call James Franco “daddy.” Or rather, you can call James Franco and musician Tim O’Keefe Daddy. That’s what the duo go by for their art- and music-based partnership.
The pair’s album, due next spring, is called Let Me Get What I Want and features Andy Rourke, bassist for The Smiths. Fans don’t have to wait too long to get what they want, as Daddy released a single on YouTube this week, “You Are Mine.”
The song is about high school love and features robotic vocals, a simple beat and a new-wave style. The song, along with others from the LP, were inspired by a section from Franco’s book Directing Herbert White: Poems called “Poems Inspired by Smiths’ Songs.”
“Transforming James’ poems to songs took on its own creative process, which was a new direction for me,” O’Keefe recalls. “Because the words weren’t written by me, I had to take on the character of the individual whose perspective I was singing from,” O’Keefe told Rolling Stone. “‘You Are Mine,’ like many of the songs on Let Me Get What I Want, expresses experiences that were relatable to my own high school experience, and therefore I had a lot of my own emotions to pull from.”
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By admin • 0 comments • 39 | Daddy • Music • News |
Let Me Get What I Want is of course a reference to The Smiths’ 1984 song “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.” As Pitchfork points out, the lyrics on the album are taken from Smiths-inspired poems in Franco’s poetry book Directing Herbert White: Poems.
A press release notes that the LP, as well as its accompanying film, will focus on “three characters as they weave through the dark ways of high school: love, death, and dreams,” reports Consequence of Sound.
Franco elaborated on these ideas further, telling Rolling Stone: “High school is a time of longing for the unattainable. We dream big, but we’re still too young to make anything significant happen. At least I was too immature and sensitive to be the person I wanted to be. ‘You Are Mine’ is about one teenager dreaming about another, even though they’ll never be together.”
O’Keefe added: “Transforming James’ poems to songs took on it’s own creative process which was a new direction for me. Because the words weren’t written by me, I had to take on the character of the individual whose perspective I was singing from. ‘You Are Mine’ like many of the songs on Let Me Get What I Want expresses experiences that were relatable to my own high school experience, and therefore I had a lot of my own emotions to pull from.”
The band’s Soundcloud bio further clarifies the forthcoming project within the context of the duo’s overall ethos: “While sampling has been an established and prevalent method of modern music making, Daddy’s approach moves beyond the ‘art of sampling’ into the act of appropriation. Not just appropriating a genre of music, but the moments it inhabits, and the characters that embody it.”
In the case of the dark, broodingly pulsating “You Are Mine,” the duo is taking appropriation to the point of reverent appreciation, as they take on a Smiths-inspired post-punk sound to new, more garagey heights.
Let Me Get What I Want follows a number of EPs the duo released after forming in 2011 that are still streaming on their Soundcloud.
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James Franco’s resume is already impressively long: acclaimed actor, Oscar host, Seth Rogen foil, film director, published poet, eternal college student. That apparently isn’t enough, however, as he’s just added another one: label-signed rock musician. Daddy, the rock band Franco headlines with multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Keefe, just signed to Kobalt for their upcoming album, Please Let Me Get What I Want.
“We are really excited to partner with Kobalt on our upcoming Daddy album and film,” the band told Billboard. “Kobalt has the right forward-thinking approach to work with a project as unique as ours, where we see our work not only existing within the music realm, but extending into the film, art space and beyond on an independent basis.”
As the album title suggests, Daddy is heavily influenced by The Smiths. In fact, they even recruited former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke to play on the album, and one previously-released track is titled “This Charming Man.” It’s not quite a cover of the original Smiths song, but rather an adaptation of a poem Franco wrote based on the song. Franco’s book of poetry, Directing Herbert White, has two sections dedicated to poems inspired by The Best of the Smiths greatest hits collection. Each poem is named after a song.;
Each track on Please Get What I Want will reportedly be accompanied by a music video. As with Beyonce or FKA Twigs’ recent mixtape, the videos can be watched individually or in sequence as a film. Please Let Me Get What I Want is due out in 2016.