Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap was released in 2005. You may find that a certain part sounded familiar since it was sampled in Jason Derulo’s 2009 hit single Whatcha’ Say. In this song, Heap makes use of a vocoder setting on a DigiTech Vocalist Workstation harmonizer, a tool that layers live vocal tracks into harmonies. No instruments were used in this production which I find impressive since you can still get a sense of the emotional weight through the sole use of her voice.
The lyrics speak on losing someone you had a close connection to, the divorce of her parents and moving away from home. “Oily marks appear on walls where pleasure moments hung before” is a metaphor for a change in surroundings, be it a physical painting behind removed from a wall, or a sad change in context once you look back on past memories. In either case, it’s a song that gets me in the feels and it was the first thing that came to my mind to share on this blog when I thought of audio production.