James Vincent McMorrow has a very special guest on his new single - his five-year-old daughter Margot, who provided impromptu lyrics and singing after wandering into the studio where her dad was recording.
Taken from his upcoming new album, Wide Open, Horses, the new track is entitled Give Up and is out next week.
Speaking about his little girl's star turn on the track, the Dublin singer says, "My five-year-old daughter sings on this song which is pretty mind blowing and not something I ever expected to say.
"When I was making the record I moved some studio gear into the house, I wanted to hear actual life in the background while I was working.
"One day, Margot came into the room without me noticing and just started singing, over and over again `everyone, everyone, everybody’s bad’."
He added, "It made me laugh, if I wrote that lyric it would be ridiculous, but a five-year-old singing it made total sense to me.
"I did shows in Dublin last year and tried an early version of the song with her lyrics in, it connected in a way you can’t contrive. When I asked Margot to sing on the recording, she changed the lyrics (true artist) to `everybody’s sad’, which made it even better.
"Because that’s what the song is about - the amount of time I’ve spent trying to find happiness by staring at the sky hoping it would hit me square in the face.
"But it doesn’t work like that, and hearing a kid sing that over and over again, it makes sense in a way I could never get to myself.
"So, thank you Margot for this song, I’m fairly protective of her so she’s not going to be part of the campaign beyond this video, I just wanted to share it because this is literally the vocal you’ll hear her sing on the song and I think she’s a legend, One take, what a pro."
Wide Open, Horses, McMorrow’s seventh album, is released on14 June and he has already road tested it in the live arena.
Last year, he booked two nights at The National Concert Hall in Dublin, recorded a handful of lo-fi demos, and practiced the material for a week.
McMorrow then took to the stage in front of a live audience to "see what worked and what didn’t work."
"I literally performed the album before it was recorded," he says. "The whole point was to expose the flaws and also highlight the special little moments. It was an odd experiment, but it worked great.
"The notion is so simple - write songs and perform them live. Without cameras, they were the best shows I’ve ever played, which is interesting because no one knew the music!
"Everyone was just experiencing it though. I had friends in the lobby talking to strangers. Who talks to strangers anymore? It was lovely. It was a heartening experience for everyone involved."
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