I’ve been at this for quite a while and there’s a decent bank of songs built up. I’d be interested to see the stats for the songs I’ve posted about to see what kind of time periods they’re from. I’d imagine the bulk of songs are from 2012-2015, while I was in college and spent a lot of time on buses.

“No Words” is from towards the end of that period. I remember being in college and realising that I had been mishearing the lyrics for months. I thought Erik Hassle was confessing to not being a wordsmith when he sang “I’m out of words, babe”. I liked the wordsmith lyric better. The dude has written loads of songs for himself and for people like Shakira and Rihanna so obviously he can put words together. It was like he was so disorientated by the person he’s singing to that he’s become shit at his job. And that’s what happens when you spend too much time on your own listening to the same songs. Stuff like that makes sense.

Erik Hassle is somebody I thought would be a superstar by now. He’s probably got a perfect level of success for a person, his songs have millions of plays and he’s got big writing credits, but he’s not massive. For me, he’s an incredible pop artist. His songs always have a sad disco vibe. His voice sounds like he grew up singing Prince songs. “No Words” is my favourite of his songs. There’s a great funky guitar lick throughout the song with a lot of the body of the song built up with the strings. In the verses the bass is really ominous and then when the chorus kicks in it switches up to something busier. I’ve heard him speak about the song and it was written at a time when a relationship was finished but the rest of his life was going well and he was otherwise happy. I think you really get that, because it’s a song that you can dance to, but the lyrics are obviously coming from a place of heartbreak.

You can listen to “No Words” by Erik Hassle here.