Sunday Night Sample - Dua Lipa - Love Again
By now everybody knows I am in love with Dua Lipa's music. If that makes me a sissy than so be it.
The 8th track on her second album Future Nostalgia is "Love Again" and it samples one of my favorite alt-rock songs from the 90s, which sampled a classic big band song from the 30s.
When you hit play on Dua's song, you are greeted with familiar trumpets in the intro.
That song was White Town's 1997 hit, "Your Woman". Which was a fucking jam.
According to White Town's Jyoti Mishra, the 53-year-old mastermind behind the song, said that his own song was also created to be “deliberately nostalgic,” as it combines Al Bowlly’s gloomy brass with George Clinton-style funk from the ‘70s, Depeche Mode-inspired ‘80s electro pop, and ‘90s boom-bap hip-hop.
The 1930 Al Bowlly song White Town sampled for "Your Woman" was actually titled "My Woman". It was recorded in 1932 by Lew Stone & his Monseigneur Band; thus, the original composers Bing Crosby, Max Wartell, and Irving Wallman are also credited as writers
Mishra told Billboard that he was never contacted by Dua for its use -- since, technically speaking, the song was Al Bowlly’s first. However, he is aware that “Your Woman” brought the lovelorn trumpets to public consciousness.
“Not many people know Al Bowlly and not many people know that much 1930s pop music… but then, you know, I'm a music geek,” Mishra, who created “Your Woman” on an Atari ST in his bedroom while studying at university, tells Billboard over the phone with a laugh. “It's very unlikely [Dua Lipa] remembers ‘Your Woman’ from her childhood [either]" -- Lipa, 24, would've still been in her infancy during the song's late-'90s peak -- "but then again, it was played for a while afterwards. So, maybe [while crafting Future Nostalgia] she remembered it vaguely and said, ‘What about this song?'"
"Love Again" was written by Lipa and her longtime collaborators Clarence Coffee Jr., Chelcee Grimes, and Stephen Kozmeniuk. For the base of the track Kozmeniuk focused on using analog synths and came up with a rudimentary chord progression. He then added a guitar riff on top and a drum break throughout the song. Acoustic guitars were then added on top. The story goes that one night while they were all in studio recording, Coffee began singing the riff of the 1932 track "My Woman" by Lew Stone & his Monseigneur Band over the top of what they had. Lipa thought the riff was from Star Wars, while Grimes thought it was eerie and spooky. Lipa then suggested that they should incorporate it into "Love Again". Kozmeniuk spent a lot of time doing so with several different pitch corrections as "Love Again" and "My Woman" were in different keys. Because of its use, Bing Crosby, Max Wartell and Irving Wallman were credited as writers, with no credit to White Town since he also sampled the original.