Hannah Duckworth On the Making Of “Caffeine”
What was the initial spark or idea that led to the creation of "Caffeine?"
A few years ago when I started writing songs, I had a phase where I decided to do a songwriting exercise every morning by going to randomwordgenerator.com and generating a random word which I would then use as a title of a song. The first time I ever did that I got the word "Caffeine", and the song was written within 10 minutes. I just immediately thought of the chorus melody and hook and built the song from there. I brought it to my songwriting partner Dillon Vincent and we demoed it out acoustically and thought it was such a fun little song.
How did you work with the producer or engineers to bring your vision for "Caffeine" to life?
I worked with Mike Pepe and AJ Peacox to produce this song. I brought them a more emo, soft-sounding acoustic demo but I really wanted the song to be big, bright and fun. I also wanted to experiment with more of a pop leaning style than I had done before, while still keeping my edge, so we incorporated more digital beats and pop synths into the verses of the song while keeping the chorus true to my rock roots.
How does this song fit into your overall artistic vision and what can listeners expect from you in the future?
My whole artistic persona is based on contradictions, which I think makes “Caffeine” and its music video a perfect example. I like to give off this darker, edgy and haunting vibe from my physical and visual brand, but my songs are fun and upbeat! For the music video, I wrote a kind of twisted storyline where Hannah Duckworth is plagued by a love addiction so she seeks a hypnotherapist for help. The hypnotherapist, lacking his own lover, hypnotizes her and selfishly infiltrates her dreams and becomes her addictive love interest. In the video Hannah has a rather haunting and chaotic vibe while singing this sweet, adorable upbeat bop - and I just love how those two elements play off of each other.
Can you walk us through your creative process when writing and composing music?
My process has been changing and evolving a lot over the past year as I've started doing more co-writes. My favorite way of writing a song is when I'm doing something completely random and an amazing melody or lyric pops into my head from out of NOWHERE and boom, a song is born. However, that's less common, unfortunately. So when I set out to write a song, I like to start off in a quiet space alone with a notebook and just start thinking of words, phrases, themes, feelings, potential titles, etc until something clicks. It can take a while, but eventually when I get something, I'll keep trying to build off the idea for 10-15 minutes or so. If I'm going to a session, I'll decide on my 1-2 strongest ideas to present and go from there. If I'm home and casually writing, I'll pick up a guitar and get my songwriting partner Dillon involved and we will figure out a guitar arrangement and start to demo the song out ourselves. Then if we like the song, we may take it to a producer to bring it to the next level!
What role do you feel emotions play in your music, and how do you channel them into your performances?
I love performing and bringing energy to a stage and audience. I usually try to write songs that I know I will have fun performing, and that my audience will have fun dancing and moving to. I like to take my emotions, whether good, bad, happy, or sad and channel them into some kind of angsty fun song that people will relate to and also just enjoy having on and singing along to.