We had the pleasure of interviewing Fairview, and here’s what they had to say:
Q: Did you have a clear direction/idea of how you wanted “Back Then” to sound before you started creating it or did it come together in bits and pieces?
FAIRVIEW: We always knew we wanted it to be simple instrumentation. This song is kind of our way to reminisce about our parents. We also both grew up on country music and wanted to lean into the country genre by adding a twangy electric and some steel guitar.
Q: What inspired this song?
FAIRVIEW: During the pandemic, we found ourselves watching a lot of movies, and listening to a lot of music. After we rewatched our favorites, we started watching classics that we hadn’t seen before. I (Lizzy) remember putting on Pretty Woman, because I had never seen it before, and knew it was one of my mom’s favorites. I texted her telling her I was watching it, and she told me that she went to see it in theaters with a friend when she was my age. This kind of sparked the idea that our parents were once our age, doing the same things we do. And how many parallels we probably have with them. As we continued to write the song, and came across photos of them when they were younger, seeing how similar they look to us, how some of the fashion trends of the 80s and 90s are back in style, how we still go to the same towns, same restaurants that they grew up in, it sparked this question in our minds- I wonder if we’d be friends if we knew them back then.
Q: Can you walk us through the creative and production process for this song?
FAIRVIEW: This song was written on an acoustic guitar, and we wanted to keep it very stripped down. We worked with our producers Dan Monahan and Tom Higgenson. In the studio, we added a clean electric guitar solo to give it a little shimmer, as well as some steel guitar which was played by a talented friend of ours from Nashville named Freeman Arthur! Other than that it is very much just acoustic guitar, vocals, and some light percussion pieces.
Q: I’m usually interested in knowing origin stories. What’s Fairview’s origin story? How did this duo come to be?
FAIRVIEW: The two of us (Matt and Lizzy) actually grew up and went to grade school together. We’ve known each other since we were kids and in high school, we started two things: a romantic relationship, and a musical relationship. We then started recording and touring the country performing love songs on stage, singing them in harmony with one another.
Q: What impact would you like to create with your music?
FAIRVIEW: Music is such a huge part of our lives. It enhances moments and feelings, brings back nostalgia and memories, and it inspires us more than anything. If the songs that we write can do any of that for other people, we’ll be happy.
Q: What’s one thing you’re both really looking forward to achieving musically this year?
FAIRVIEW: Our big goal is to finish a mixtape or an album this year. We’ve been writing a lot this summer and are hoping to put out a body of work by the end of the year. We’ll be releasing a few singles in the coming months, the newest one being Back Then! We also love continuing to create TikToks and short-form video content to get our songs in people’s ears.
Interviewed by Zoey King
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