Feature: Luiza Girardello Decodes “The War to End All Wars”
What was the creative process like for this particular song ”The War to End All Wars?"
I first came up with the concept for the song years ago. I had to write a song about war for a songwriting class, and I hated the idea of writing about war so much that I couldn’t get myself to do it. I actually never turned in that assignment, but the idea of writing that is against the concept of war itself stayed with me.
Were there any challenges or breakthrough moments during the songwriting process for this "The War to End All Wars?"
I wrote the song on the week that the news about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine broke, in February of 2022. I tend to get paralyzed when news of tragedies reaches me, and this time wasn’t different. This concept of a song about the idea of war came to mind, and I decided to finally grapple with it.
I went through my notes and found something that I picked up from a different class, a history elective I had taken the semester before. The note said “war to end all wars”, which was a phrase used by the media around World War I, before it was ever called WWI. Some people believed that if a war large enough were fought, it could resolve all possible conflicts, and so we’d be over it as a society. We know in hindsight that it didn’t turn out like that.
I wanted to take that concept and turn it inwards: maybe the War to End All Wars isn’t really an external battle with tanks or guns or grenades, but an internal process that each of us has to go through with our own demons. Maybe then we’ll stop trying to solve our issues through the use of violence against others.
How did you work with the producer or engineers to bring your vision for this "The War to End All Wars" to life?
I first started working on the song with my collaborator João Vitor Costa Dias for my Senior Recital at Berklee College of Music. I wanted to present my original songs for this recital, but I’m not an arranger, so I invited him to be the music director.
Since my writing uses a lot of different styles of music, we decided to have the through line be just that: a lack of through line. So we leaned all the way into blending different elements. “The War to End All Wars” was originally written as a bossa on just voice and guitar, but he added a drum&bass style drum groove and a beautiful string arrangement to add some lightness to the more rock-based sound we went with for the guitar, bass, keys and drums.
At the beginning of 2023, we went to the studio with the same musicians who played in the recital and got all those tracks recorded. We produced it together, as well as with Edoardo Santini, who provided some additional production (and did all the mixing), and we were also lucky to be working with David “Speve” Kayne as the recording engineer, who got really creative to capture the sound we wanted.
How has studying at Berklee College of Music made an impact on your music career?
I first went to Berklee for a summer program, thinking I would never get accepted to the College. By the end of the program they were holding auditions and I decided to give it a shot. And to my own disbelief I got in.
Studying music really changed my approach to how I make music. I had had voice lessons when I was younger, and had written some music by myself by ear, but the way my brain works makes that really hard. I overthink everything, so trying to do something from a spontaneous place and being in the dark about the process makes it really frustrating. And because of the frustration I would just never do it. Studying music theory and having “recipes” to get started with the writing process, even without inspiration, changed everything for me.
I had also really drank the cool-aid of “studying theory blocks your creativity”. And for a while that can seem true, because everything is so new and you still haven’t processed it enough to actually use the new concepts. And I’m not saying it’s for everyone, I know so many musicians way more talented than myself who don’t know formal music theory. But for me, it was a game changer.
Could you share some of your musical influences and how they have shaped your sound?
Oh, that’s always a tricky question. I grew up on Brazilian music and rock. My favorite band as a teenager was Nirvana, and I started to get into metal after that, while also studying classical singing on the other side, so for a long time it felt like my different worlds of music couldn’t really talk to each other.
Later on, I started getting more into Jazz, which was one of the things I originally went to Berklee to study (even though I changed my focus while I was there).
This sense of disconnection between these different worlds in music is something that is still at the forefront of my music, and a lot of my current work is an effort to bridge those gaps.
My next few singles and my upcoming album blend a lot of these different styles. They’re all a part of my identity. And hopefully, the finished product is as new and exciting to listeners as it is to me!
