Kiss Me Goodnight is one of the songs from my second album Collateral.
It is also one of the songs that caused me the most grief while I was writing it.
The song was originally written for my niece’s wedding. I had never really written a song to order before and, as it turned out, I found that incredibly difficult. The idea behind the song came from the fact that she was marrying an American and their relationship had been largely long distance. The one thing they couldn’t do, until they were finally together, was kiss each other goodnight.
That gave me the title, but unfortunately not the rest of the song.
I went round and round trying to find the right music and the right words, throwing away idea after idea until eventually the opening chords appeared. The lyrics took even longer. Somewhere in amongst the mumbling and experimenting came the line, “It’s not complicated, despite all the evidence,” and from there the song finally began to make sense.
Jermaine Nelson-Williams did a brilliant job producing and mastering the finished track. When I first heard what he had done with it, I was genuinely stunned. After all the frustration of writing it, the song suddenly sounded exactly as it should.
Best of all, the bride and groom loved it, which made all the anxiety worthwhile.
Kiss Me Goodnight went on to become one of the most listened-to songs I have released, which still amazes me. It may have been hard work to write, but I am very proud of how it turned out.
You can listen to Kiss Me Goodnight on all the usual streaming services, or on my album Collateral.