And then there was one! Before we look at the final piece from “Third Perspective” I thought I'd mention how quickly things can change with streaming. With a little bit of help with the spotify algorithm, “Evening tide” went from being my most underperforming track off the the album to one sitting in the middle in terms of streams. It's quite easy for spotify to give tracks a boost by adding a track to another artists radio playlist. You only have to get in the mix with a very popular artist to see a healthy boost. “Evening Tide”, “Out of Isolation” and “Safe” all received a nice little bonus over the last week or so.
Onto the last track off of the album. “You'll Never Know” is actually one of my favourites. After releasing both “Morning Tide ” and “Surge” to very meh responses I learnt that the more passive listening route would gain more traction. The problem is that I want to write music that will be listened too rather than stuck in the background somewhere. I don't mind this, it's just a bit demoralising. I realise that most people listening to classical music do so with calm or relaxing pieces to study or sleep too. It's just the way things are with the style of music I write. This has opened my eyes to some new possibilities though.
Saying all of this though, when I have an album in mind, I like the idea of finishing the album with a reflective piece of music. I did this with both of my charity albums and wanted to continue that here as well. “You'll Never Know” is a very free and open intimate piano solo which could be seen as a tear jerker or a bittersweet love song. I personally see it as the latter but I like the subjective nature of it. It is written for my wife, Kate, and the title comes from a thing she always says to me. She will ask “How much do you love me?!” My answer is always “You'll Never Know”!
I could almost put lyrics to the music in my head with this piece and I find this very therapeutic to play. After it's release, “You'll Never Know” easily became my best performing track. All this being without any marketing through ads (maybe I should look into it!). It got added to lots of playlists and has taught me that I should release at least one very chilled or sleepy piece on my EP's as it is easy to promote these tracks.
And with that, we come to the end of our journey with “Third Perspective”! I've found it very helpful to put down my feelings and thoughts about the album in these programme notes. I will definitely be doing these for my other pieces but I may see if there is a way to feature these selections in a folder so listeners can learn a bit more about the pieces on any given EP or album.
Thank you for reading all about the music on “Third Perspective” and joining me on this journey.