It was a cloudy, gloomy day on March 13, 2020, when Adrian Sutherland and Jay Semko got together in a Sheraton Hotel meeting room in Saskatoon to write a song about longing for lost connections.
It took the musicians just three hours to write Once That Was You, a ballad about yearning for someone you’ve loved or who’s deeply touched your heart.
It’s the second single released from Sutherland’s upcoming debut solo album.
Earlier this summer, Sutherland released Right Here, the album's first single. For its music video, the musician took over 1,600 selfies.
The day Sutherland and Semko were writing the song, everything across the country was starting to shut down because of the pandemic.
“There’s the opening line in the song that is about that day because it really felt like, ‘Wow, the world is ending,’” Sutherland said. “And that’s the opening line to the song, it’s reflective of that time and day of what was going on and what we’re seeing unfold during our writing session.”
Sutherland said Once That Was You is his first recorded ballad.
“Sometimes songs are there waiting to be brought into our world. Adrian is such a natural writer and, despite the strange circumstances we were creating under, the words and music just organically flowed,” Semko said in a statement. “It was an amazing cosmic connection, and I remember feeling a real sense of serenity as we finished writing the song.”
The song was produced, engineered and mixed by Colin Linden, who also played guitars on the track. With Chris Carmichael on strings, Jerry Roe on drums and Johnny Dymond on bass, everyone worked on the track remotely from their own recording spaces.
“It was quite remarkable to be able to record that way,” Sutherland said. “We all found ways to do it and kept creating and recording. When you think about it — all the way from Nashville to Attawapiskat to Toronto — it’s quite remarkable we were able to create such a beautiful record.”
Titled When The Magic Hits, Sutherland’s debut solo album is slated for release on Sept. 17.
Listen to Once That Was You here:
