Info → Girl I Love You
Horace Andy performing Girl I Love You live while on the Heligoland tour in 2010. During the live performance, the LED screen would display current statistics and facts related to whatever country the band were performing in that night.
UK Release: 8th February 2010 (Heligoland)
Track Duration: 05:27
Formats: CD, Digital. View Discography Entry.
Written By: Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall, Neil Davidge and Horace Andy
Produced By: Robert Del Naja and Neil Davidge
Original working title was the inexplicably named “16 Seeter”, when the song debuted live in 2007. It remained known as such on the 2008 and 2009 tours, before being changed at the last minute to the name of the Horace Andy track it was originally inspired by “Girl I Love You”, when the name of the album Heligoland and the finalised tracklist for the album was revealed on MassiveAttack.com on the 23rd November 2009.
Massive Attack’s Girl I Love you is based off of the original Horace Andy track of the same name, first released in 1973 on 7″ vinyl.
The track features use of both synthesized digital brass samples contrasted with real brass instruments (in the final minute) in an effort to subtly confuse the listener. As 3D put it in a interview at the time “your brain will be confused at first, then you’ll get it”.
Girl I Love You continues the tradition of Massive Attack of not only bringing in Horace Andy on each album, but also reusing earlier Horace Andy recordings from his solo career as inspiration. Tracks like One Love, Spying Glass and Angel follow this pattern, with only his two songs on 100th Window being completely original.
Girl I Love You was first played near the end of the Collected tour on the 13th September 2007 at the Bilbao Exhibition Centre in Spain under the name of “16 Seeter”. It would continue to be played on the European festival tour the following year. The live arrangement of Girl I Love You at this time differed in its finished arrangement on Heligoland having a more ominous tone, which you can sample here in this Soundcloud stream. The more familiar album arrangement first debuted live at the beginning of the 2009 tour and would go on to be played throughout 2010 and then again on the 2014 tour except on the last few American dates in October 2014, when Horace Andy could not be present at those shows.
She Is Danger Remix – She Is Danger are a two woman electronic dub duo comprised of Lena Cullen and Maya Jane Coles. Their remix of Girl I Love You was first released on the Heligoland Remixed EP for free through Massive Attack’s Facebook page in early 2010. It also appeared on the Heligoland Special edition vinyl album and on a few rare promo CD’s released through Virgin EMI around the same time.
Flying Lotus Remix – Steven Ellison AKA Flying Lotus, is a electronic musician and rapper from California. His remix of Girl I Love You was first released digitally through Flying Lotus’s Soundtrack profile in June 2011. It has never received a physical release anywhere, but can be purchase in lossless audio quality from Flying Lotus’ Bandcamp page.
Girl I Love You is a remake or reinterpretation of the original Horace Andy song of the same name that was released in 1973 as a 7″ vinyl single in Jamaica. Only the lyrics of the 1973 song was kept, with the music being entirely new.
Daddy G talking about his working relationship with Horace Andy and why he is always willing to try new things with the band – “Working with Horace Andy, these are songs that are as far removed from what Horace would be doing in Jamaica as the sun is from the moon. It’s a brilliant thing to know that someone like Horace has had the guts to come out of his idiom and work with us. I sometimes take the piss out of Horace, I say to him, ‘Horace if you were to go back and play some of your tracks to your Jamaican friends they’d look at you like some weirdo.’ It’s so off-the-wall.” [Spinner UK Magazine – October 2009]
Studio Engineer Euan Dickinson on the brass samples used on Girl I Love You – “The brass sounds I came up with and everyone was liking that. The sounds were crappy Mellotron brass samples I had on my laptop, and they formed the basis of a next step on the track. I think I did it with Novatron brass, off a sample CD, put it in Sampletron and worked it through Ableton. And then we recorded actual brass mixed in with it in London, then turned up the crusty Mellotron sample to make it louder.” [Electronic Musician Magazine – March 2010]
Steven Ellison AKA Flying Lotus who remixed and digitally released Girl I Love You in 2010.
Girl I love you but your loving has gone forever
Gonna miss you but my love has gone forever
I say I love you but your loving has gone forever
Gonna miss you but my love has gone forever
Girl I’m back in Spanish town, ain’t no trouble coming around
You promise you will never let me down
If you love me that much you will stick around
It’s hard to tell that your love exist
But I know this one is for real
Girl I love you but your loving has gone forever
Forever…