Singled Out: Plain Mister Smith's Lucian & Francis

Plain Mister Smith tells us about the recently released new single, "Lucian & Francis", which features vocals from Tyson Motsenbecker and was inspired by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. Here is the story:

I forget where it was - probably in an Uber - these lines popped into my head: "Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Two great Painters if I'm not mistaken" It's often like this - I'll be standing in a shopping line for example and lyrics will bubble up from somewhere in my brain and sometimes they're great and sometimes they're terrible and cliche.

In this instance I was quite intrigued by this first lyric line. I started to ponder this, ruminating over the similarities between these two great British painters. I had been reading about them recently, and there were some similarities in how they wanted to confront viewers with their paintings, wanting them to react with urgency - to make viewers think. They weren't painting to make viewers feel lovely and nice. There is nothing comforting looking at Lucian & Francis' paintings.

So I started to fill out the lyrics, beginning to explore what's at the core of these paintings: ie. "Heinous but genius" and how they make you feel "Lurid Colours, Eerie Shapes, Look too Closely Leaves you shaken"

I had an instrumental I had been working on, which was quite heavily groove based, and I started to glue the Lucian & Francis lyrics to this instrumental and eventually the song was formed.

I had discovered Tyson Mockenbocker not too long ago from a recommendation from a friend and colleague. I was quite enamoured with his voice, so I approached Tyson to see if he would be interested in singing Lucian & Francis. He loved the song and gave it a go. I love the vocal Tyson performed on Lucian & Francis. I think you can imagine him gazing at the paintings as he's singing it. That's one of the beautiful things as someone who doesn't really sing: is giving lyrics and a melody to someone who has an awesome voice and hearing the song come alive.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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