Chad Price opens up about writing a love song and celebrating Black music
The singer-songwriter joined The Block's Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe to discuss his new single
Singer-songwriter Chad Price's latest single is a love song, but not the kind that listeners might expect: "I wish you were a love song/ something I can sing along to," the 2022 Searchlight winner sings on the earnest pop track.
Price tells The Block's host Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe that he's always wanted to write a quintessential love song while explaining that his track is "a self-reflexive, self-aware song about how this isn't the [ultimate love] song."
He also opened up about his involvement in CBC Music's Playlist Challenge that is spotlighting Black music in Canada, as well as what's in store for him career-wise for the rest of the year. The full interview is above and an excerpt is below.
If you're just joining us, you're listening to The Block, and you just heard a track called "Love Song," courtesy of my guest in the studio today, Chad Price.
Thank you.
Yeah, so the video for that song comes out today, and I just want to get into the inspiration behind the song a little bit because, you know, I listen to the songs and I'm like, "Oh, maybe this is what it's about," but it kind of feels like [it's] celebrating something that maybe didn't last or [is] hoping that it could have been something more.
Yeah, it's kind of based on hope. What happened was, I'm a fan of love songs. So many of us are fans of love songs, and as a songwriter, I've always wanted to write that quintessential love song. I wanted to have like a D'Angelo "Lady" or Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me," even though that's a sad love song.
Hey, it's still a love song.
Yeah. So, like, I greedily wanted one. But maybe pre-emptively, before I could truly and earnestly talk about love in that way. So I wanted to write it. I tried to write it.
Are you saying you hadn't experienced it in real life in order to write about it that way?
Not that ultimate kind of love. I didn't really know it at the time, but after trying to [write] it was kind of a sign like, oh, maybe this isn't it, because it's not coming to me, these words aren't coming. And the [words] that did weren't believable to me. And if they're not going to be believable to me as the songwriter, they're not going to be believable to anyone who listens to that song.
So I had to pivot and I said, "Well, I still want to write a song. Let me just write a song about the song that I can't earnestly write." So it's like a self-reflexive, self-aware song about how this isn't the [ultimate love] song, but I'm still going to sing about it. I'm still going to write about it and talk about how I want that song at some point in the future. So that's kind of where it came from.
An aspirational love song, song. An aspiration for a love song, song.
Yeah, it's a little bit meta.
So it was recently announced by CBC Music that you are a part of the CBC Music Playlist Challenge, and this is another opportunity for CBC to encourage and also raise awareness about the importance of music classes in schools. So maybe you can talk to me a little bit about how you feel about the importance of music in school.
Yeah, I'm honoured to be a part of that. First of all, I'm grateful that CBC reached out and asked me to be a part of this initiative. John Corbin and and Darren Hamilton made this beautiful curriculum that brings Canadian Black music into the classroom and kind of interweaves it with education and social justice and Black history. And it's so important to have that in the classroom, to just make people aware of that, and then to show these kids how this music makes a difference in our community, how it reflects our realities as Black people and how powerful that is. So I'm grateful to those two guys for doing that [as] artists and educators, and I can't wait to talk to the kids and see what they learned. And give them a little virtual concert and just celebrate Black Canadian music.
Yeah. Music is a wonderful, wonderful gateway. So before we leave and wrap up for today, I always like to get a little peek into the future of what Chad Price is up to. Is there any fun project that is on the way, or is there a wish [or] a manifestation you'd like to share with the universe of what you want to happen?
Well, right now I'm working on new music for myself. That'll be coming out in the summer and then a little bit more in the fall of this year, so that's exciting. [I'm] working with my producer friend [and] colleague Matthew Johnston in my hometown of London, Ontario. So that's happening. I'm also in the process of writing with a bunch of other artists. I've been kind of jumping back and forth between Toronto and Atlanta, a little bit in Nashville, a little bit in L.A. I'm trying to get the songwriting muscle going and just work with other artists and expand and develop that way. Yeah, just new music for myself and other artists, and I couldn't be happier to be working on that stuff.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. To hear the full interview, listen to The Block on CBC Music.