THE OBSERVER REVISITED
As a music creator, I’ve always been against using artificial intelligence to write songs from scratch, because in that case the creative process gets completely wiped out.
But when it comes to reworking an existing track originally made by a human, my view is different, for one simple reason: even the most renowned artists rarely release a song exactly as it came out of their heads.
Usually there’s a demo, which then gets shaped by other musicians, a producer, and a sound engineer, until it becomes the final product that reaches the public.
I’ve never had the privilege of working with top‑level professionals, except in the mastering stage, so I see what AI can offer as an ethical substitute for those roles.
The key is not to blindly accept what the algorithm suggests, but to build a sort of dialogue with it, tweaking, adding, or removing things until the result feels right.
That’s the spirit behind The Observer – Revisited. The original tracks from The Observer were analyzed by AI, and starting from its first draft, I refined them into what you can hear today.
You can read how and why I started to make music on the page Sir Joe Music
THE OBSERVER - REVISITED
Initially, the lyrics focused on the Maia prophecy of 2012 and its various interpretations, such as the end of the world or the start of a new cycle. However, I later decided to create a story that would remain relevant beyond that date, so I eliminated the reference to the Maia while retaining the theme of change, which can still represent the end of the world or the start of a new cycle.
This version was also released as a single in anticipation of the album. You can watch the relevant video on Youtube.
If you’re curious about the identity of the person I’m referring to as “She,” it is death, an inevitable visitor to us all: “She came down, and knocked at my door”.
The musical bridge between the refrain and the next verse was influenced by The Smiths’ song “Please, please, please let me get what I want“.
My musical journey was heavily influenced by “The Sign of Virgo”. In fact, I mentioned in the introduction that without this track, there would likely be no Sir Joe.
It may seem odd, but the refrain for the song was inspired by listening to an old Polish track called “Sen o Warszawie” by Czesław Niemen.
The track depicts an alien who lands on Earth and becomes horrified by the cruelty it observes, ultimately leading to the loss of its innocence and descent into madness.
Dual vocals were used to represent the alien’s lack of gender, and I wish to praise the contribution of Sara L.C., who recorded her part with a low-quality microphone in my kitchen.
The lyrics of the original track, simply titled Frei, were too silly to include in this version as well. So, while I was restructuring the song, I decided to completely rewrite the lyrics.
The singer’s name is… Herr X.
Regarding the song’s lyrics, it satirizes individuals who feign intelligence by using sophisticated language to conceal their weak arguments.
They express this theme through a collection of disconnected concepts and sentence fragments, exploring the notion of reality versus falsehood. In terms of its musical composition, the song’s introduction pays homage to “If I ever” by ‘Red Flag.’
‘The Observer’ album had songs with English and German lyrics, and as two languages that I particularly feel connected to were not yet represented, I composed ‘Sahara’, with its brief text in Italian repeated almost identically in Spanish.
Fans of D.A.F. may recognize the similarity between ‘Sahara’ and their song ‘Der rauber und der prinz‘.
Here is the instrumental version of one of the most liked songs of the original album.
The song primarily explores two themes: the concept of ‘haters’, which has become more relevant in recent times despite the lyrics being penned in 2010, and individuals who achieve success mainly through their connections.
I take great pride in this song, as the lyrics are a culmination of my extensive research and studies on self-improvement since 1998.
It incorporates theories by well-known authors such as Eckhart Tolle, Neale Donald Walsch, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, which I discussed in my book ‘Knowing the Deep Mind.’ Hence, the song concludes the album and serves as its title, The Observer.
The line, “You are needed for the symphony,” is a reference to Kate Bush’s ‘Symphony in blue‘, which includes the lyric, “…for now I know that I’m needed for the symphony.”
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