It’s a match made in summer hit heaven, as local producer Dean White teams up with 19-year-old Cape Town-based singer-songwriter Cailyn Shelby on the upbeat Pop single “The One (For Me)” – out today across all digital platforms.
The single is the brainchild of producer Dean White who created the track before approaching the talented Cailyn Shelby to add her voice to it. He recalls the inspiration and journey creating the single, saying “Like most of my songs, I was playing around on my bass guitar listening to old funk groups like Bee Gees and Kool & The Gang. I was inspired to write a funky bass line with pop elements from the ’80s and spent a few hours writing different riffs and analysing them. The process came quite naturally. I knew that the main element of the song will be the bass line with the groove of the drums. So, I made sure to figure them out first to have a solid foundation for the rest of my track. When I eventually finished the song, I contacted my friend Cailyn because I knew I wanted her voice on the track. We spent months and many studio sessions perfecting every little piece. Working with Cailyn was an honour and I learned a lot from her and her team. The song is very special to me because it symbolises the new direction that I’m going with my music, creating music that satisfies me creatively.”
Cailyn Shelby is one of SA’s great new singing talents who recently achieved wonderful success with her debut single ‘My Four Friends’ topping the charts on some of SA’s top radio stations, including Jacaranda FM.
Dean approached her with the single while she was away with her family, asking her to write on it and giving her an idea of what he wanted the song to be about, along with the feel for the song. She recalls the first time she heard the song and how her lyrical and melodic inspiration for it came about, saying “As soon as I started playing it, I got ideas flooding through my head, starting with a falsetto melody of what is now the pre-chorus. About 2 weeks before I received the song, I had a lyric – which is now the opening line – that I had written into the notes on my phone to use but couldn’t figure out where to take it from there. This song adopted it so perfectly and it grew from there.”
As the song built, the theme behind the lyrics developed as well. “Essentially the song is about meeting someone at a club and falling for them. But I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted it to be the anxiety of seeing this person for the first time and talking yourself up to go talk to them. Then this fumble of words and this confession that you have noticed them, can picture this life with and need to know them,” and Cailyn really enjoyed writing her part for this song. “For myself, it was a fun song to write. I think the song was always going to be written one way or another, but I don’t think I would have written it as the fun upbeat dance track that it is now known as.”
