With a unique double-melody and an astounding 55 vocal tracks layered in to create a choral tidal wave, not to mention a duet with GRAMMY® Award-Winner and recent American Songbook Hall of Fame New Standard Award recipient Melissa Manchester, Johnny Schaefer‘s new single and video, ‘You Can’t Hide the Light‘, is a joyful dose of truly modern Pop Music.
The song’s origin comes from a painful situation, but the end result is one of optimism and positivity. “My husband and I were caregivers for my mom until she passed away from breast cancer late last year,” he recalls. “We were staying in her home, sorting through her affairs and, after a few days, her landlord forced us out — in the middle of the pandemic — even though we legally had the remainder of the month to stay there. So we decamped to an air b’n’b, and I woke up in the middle of the night with the core of the song bouncing around in my head. I’m a very spiritual person, and rather miracle minded, and I was thinking about what was going on. I was really mad at the landlord, but then I framed the situation from a spiritual path and it changed my perspective. When people are not being their true selves, they’re forgetting who they are. In our true states we’re light, we’re one with each other. What we play out here, on Earth, is not our ultimate reality. If we remember that, if everyone focused on seeing the light in each other instead of darkness, the world would be a very different place.”
As the song’s energy builds to a crescendo, a Greek Chorus-style countermelody builds the song into a dazzling mix of sonic textures, profound lyrics, and layered vocals. A key component is Schaefer’s duet partner, Melissa Manchester. “Melissa Manchester and her music were a beacon of light for me in the late ’70s as a closeted gay son of a preacher in conservative Porterville, CA. I used to write songs and send them to her on cassette back then.” After after being named as a Semi-Finalist in the 2020 UK Songwriting Contest for two songs, he felt confident enough to approach Manchester about recording “You Can’t Hide The Light” as a duet. “I thought the lyrics were brilliant and profound,” Manchester enthuses. “The production was just sensational. I called Johnny and said ‘I don’t know why you think you need a duet, this is a very complete version. He insisted, and I’m thrilled he did. He heard it as a duet and, honestly, he has created a very unusual and complete world of a song. What’s interesting is that the layering is all at the same level. He’s created his own Greek chorus with the so-called backgrounds. They aren’t background parts, they’re literally compacting several worlds into one world. It’s really intriguing and wildly listenable.”
The compelling video for ‘You Can’t Hide The Light’ centers around a two-minute long continuous shot in which the camera pans back and forth across the stage revealing different combinations of the singers and their dancing counterparts with each pass. “The lyric uses bared wire as an analogy for obstacles in relationships and is about seeing the light in one another, even if the other person forgets,” Schaefer notes. “I visualized myself and Melissa on either side of a barbed wire fence, and thought having dancers represent our spirit or alter egos would be cool. Sometimes I’d be singing to the dancer instead of Melissa to show we’re the same. The video also builds like the song, because after the barbed wire is cut we’re all together and, at the end, the dancers are singing too.”
photo credit: Jesse Cova Photography
