David Myhr - Everything Is All About You CD

With a 30-something year career in the music industry David Myhr has really only one goal left, “to keep making the kind of music I want to listen to”, says the former Merrymaker. And that he does on Everything Is All About You, his 3rd solo album proper, arriving physically September 18 and digitally October 2 via Oglio Entertainment. 

“Inspiration can strike at any time,” he says. “If I’m lucky, I’m alone and there’s a piano nearby. I collect small ideas that later come together into songs.”

These days, David often shares those ideas with like-minded collaborators.

“I don’t have a message to convey to the world beyond the musical one, and what matters to me is the final result. So I often choose, much like Elton John and Benny Andersson, to work with people who have a gift for words.”

Bill DeMain (Swan Dive, Marshall Crenshaw, Boo Hewerdine, Kim Richey) returns to the team with wordsmithery on the two first singles – the Beach Boys flirt “Summer Summer Summer” and the sunny ”Take a Run at the Sun”. But also, on the album’s focus track, the third single “Say Yes”, the American songbook style surprise “Continethntal Drifter”, and the cute father-daughter ditty “Doodlebug”.

“His lyrics contain equal parts melancholy, romance, and hope. There’s no lack of darkness, but in the end there’s always a sense of light, and that suits me well. Some people think music needs to contain darkness to be moving. But, unlike others, my songwriting isn’t therapy, where I constantly have to process events from my life. What moves me is music that takes me somewhere else and lets me drift along. That’s what I want to achieve with my own music.”

But it’s not just lyrical collaborators this time around. While David continues his fruitful co-producer alliance with Andreas Dahlbäck (Per Gessle, Julian Lennon), they have slackened the reins enough for a number of collaborators to leave their mark.

“Even though I’m the artist on the album cover, I don’t have to do everything myself. I can handpick co-writers, musicians, and arrangers who help give each song exactly the frame it needs. It’s a great feeling that so many accomplished musicians and songwriters want to work with me. I take that as a sign they like my songs… it can hardly be because they see me as a cash cow!” David laughs.

The Los Angeles-based Frankie Siragusa (The Posies, The Lickerish Quartet), a gifted multi-instrumentalist with a similar love for melody & harmony, has left significant production fingerprints on the album. 

“Frankie recorded a huge number of overdubs for us to work with. The same goes for Brad Jones, who describes his contributions as ‘the icing on the cake,’” David smiles. Jones (Josh Rouse, Matthew Sweet, Jill Sobule) co-produced and co-wrote songs on Myhr’s previous Lucky Day album (2018). On Everything Is All About You, Brad has co-written the heartening and uplifting ”Someday Soon”, the minor key ballad ”Crystal Is Thinking of Something" and the rockin’ title track "Everything Is All About You" 

Likewise Iain Hornal (10cc, Jeff Lynne’s ELO) layered up vocal harmonies on the lead track “Summer Summer Summer”, just like Linus of Hollywood (Bowling For Soup, The Smashing Pumpkins, Cheap Trick) on the co-write “Milk & Coffe”, and so on. “It was a true joy, almost like a Chrstimas gift, to open the session files from all my collaborators. I completely trusted their own creative process. And I was always very pleased to hear what they came up with!”

The album’s closing track, fittingly titled ”Finally”, is a co-write with Swedish film composer Jimmy Lagnefors (with whom he wrote the heavily ELO-inspired film song ”Spellbound” back in 2016). David describes the song with tongue-in-cheek humility:

”It’s a follow-up to ’Yesterday’"

Despite the extensive contributions of others, David’s unmistakable melodic sense shapes the album and his distinctive pop voice leads the tour-de-force of classic, timeless pop/rock songs. The pursuit of the Perfect Pop Melody never ends but with this collection of songs, David Myhr comes closer than ever before.