«Chimes at Midnight»
When Madrugada regrouped to celebr… Read Full Bio ↴Madrugada
«Chimes at Midnight»
When Madrugada regrouped to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of their classic debut album «Industrial Silence» in 2019, they quickly realised that interest in the band had not waned in their absence. It had, in fact, increased, not least on the European continent.
What’s more, they realised that they loved being back together. Being in Madrugada had never been quite this much fun.
Says vocalist and guitarist Sivert Høyem: «It was if as the last piece of the puzzle had snapped into place. I’d never felt so self-assured on stage before. It was no stress at all, whereas in the past it had always been very stressful to me».
The tour was a triumph, with the band selling out shows in the their native Norway, plenty of festival dates and a host of concerts throughout Europe, where the band now sold out halls that were twice the size of the places they used to play back in the day.
10 years on from when the band called it a day after guitarist Robert Burås passed, the three remaining original members – Høyem, Frode Jacobsen (bass) and Jon Lauvland Pettersen (drums) – felt rejuvenated and ready for more.
They wanted to play more shows. In order to do so, new music had to be made. The trip they were on couldn’t be strictly nostalgic. And so it was that Madrugada, a band that usually takes its sweet time to agree on just about anything, ran straight off the stage and back into the rehearsal room in December 2019.
Jacobsen: «We were on a tight schedule. We booked time at Sunset Sound Studio in Los Angeles at the end of February, and had about a month and a half to come up with the material and whip it into shape. It went rather swimmingly. We were still high from touring, raring to go».
Høyem: «Everyone brought something – melodies, ideas – to the table. And then we’d all be let loose on it. We had the «Industrial Silence» album in our bloodstreams after playing it live on the tour, and I felt there was a direct line back to our formative years. Everything came out sounding like Madrugada».
The band worked in their own rehearsal space/studio in Oslo, in another studio, Velvet Recordings, 45 minutes outside the city, and spent a further week woodshedding in Berlin. 70% of the material they came up with, is spanking new. But they also rescued a couple of older songs from oblivion. «The World Could Be Falling Down» hails from the time of their first album. «Slowly Turns The Wheel» first reared its head somewhere between the third and the fourth.
Lauvland Pettersen: «The process was very different from when I recorded my last album with the band [«The Nightly Disease», 2011]. That was a case of ‘second album syndrome’. We didn’t have much going in, and had to come up with the goods on the clock. This time the material was not only written, but thoroughly arranged too».
The band arrived in Los Angeles in late February, happy to be recording in a legendary studio where classic albums by Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors and the Rolling Stones had been conceived.
Lauvland Pettersen: «It was a boyhood dream come true, for sure. A terrific gift: I’m here, I’m with my dear friends and we’re having the time of our lives».
Producer Kevin Ratterman (Ray LaMontagne, My Morning Jacket, The Flaming Lips) was waiting for them, and the plan was once again to get in the flow and work fast.
The band had given themselves two weeks to put the music, recorded live in the studio, to analogue tape. They met their deadline, and a good thing too. No sooner was the last song on the album, «Ecstasy», in the can, before the world as we knew it shut down. It was March 2020, and the plan had been for Madrugada to go home, rest up for a week and return to do overdubs and mix the album in a studio in Silver Lake. Instead, they had to go home, and stay home.
Høyem: «It was a ‘last flight out of Saigon’ kind of scene. And the tickets weren’t cheap».
Up until this point, the making of «Chimes at Midnight» had been a whirlwind affair. When it became obvious that the world would remain in a state of emergency for quite some time, it was important not to lose momentum. The album would have to be finished by unorthodox means:
Namely by Zoom and via big screen-TVs, with Ratterman and the American team on one end in Los Angeles, and Madrugada on the other, in Oslo, Norway. Frustrating? Oh yes. But the esprit de corps remained strong.
Jacobsen: «The technology enabled us to do overdubs in real time, with Kevin producing us from the other side of the Atlantic. Unusual, to say the least, and quite interesting. But the process became a lot slower».
It goes without saying that Høyem, Jacobsen and Lauvland Pettersen are painfully aware that one of Madrugada’s founding members, Robert Burås, very sadly isn’t around to work his magic anymore. But what other developments have the nigh-on 14 years since their fifth and hitherto last album, «Madrugada» (2008), and «Chimes at Midnight», begot?
Høyem: «The songs are a reflection of who we are in the present time. We’re older. We’re all fathers. I believe I have a more nuanced view of life than I had 20 years ago, a greater ability to feel several things at once. Madrugada’s aesthetic was very New York City and Berlin, we were a punk band that played the blues. All those elements remain. But this time around it felt appealing to explore the more dreamy aspects of what we do. The city we recorded in encouraged us to do so».
Jacobsen: «Chimes at Midnight» is not a conceptual album, it doesn’t point in one particular direction. That makes it somewhat different, in my mind. But it’s made to played live, just like the other albums».
Lauvland Pettersen: «It’s got maybe more of a singer/songwriter vibe to it, I think. If I want to write a ballad and give it the full orchestral treatment, I’m welcome to do it. It’s been therapeutic too. The shows were pure pleasure, and the album’s given me a feeling of closure».
Høyem: «‘Chimes at Midnight’ was born of an atmosphere of true joy and goodwill. To me, it’s a passionate album».
The members’ respect for their shared history is at the top of their minds at all times.
Jacobsen: «I’ve always had romantic ideas about bands in general, and our band in particular. I never wanted to make music outside of Madrugada. I wanted to make it with the people I started out with».
Madrugada are
Sivert Høyem
Frode Jacobsen
Jon Lauvland Pettersen
with
Cato Thommassen and Christer Knutsen
Album discography:
«Industrial Silence» (1999)
«The Nightly Disease» (2001)
«Grit» (2002)
«The Deep End» (2005)
«Madrugada» (2008)
«Chimes at Midnight» (2022)
Biography from their site: https://madrugada.no/#biography
Theres's another band from the 70's that use the same name:
2) Madrugada was a band from Bergamo, Italy, formed around 1970, and had a long life that lasted until 1978. The group derived from some 60's beat bands like I Condor, that included bass player Alessandro Zanelli and keyboardist Franco Orlandini (from Mat 65 and who later worked with Equipe 84 and Claudio Rocchi), and later changed name to Le Lunghe Storie, and along them from Le Bugie and Gruppo 3. But the basic nucleus came from Terza Classe, which also gave birth to Perdio.
Though not properly a progressive rock album, their first one, only released in 1974 by Philips, contains some interesting parts.
It contains seven tracks, some of which were arranged and signed by Roberto Vecchioni (a singer-songwriter that's still very popular nowadays), while three songs were composed by Mauro Paoluzzi.
The first side shows some influences by a West Coast styled sound, with multivocal parts very well executed but not particularly original. Second side contains the long Mandrax, led by Gianfranco Pinto's keyboards, that's probably the best album track.
Except for a limited use of acoustic guitar on Uomo blu the band didn't use guitars and their sound was strongly based on keyboards and richly arranged vocal parts.
Second album came three years later, this time the trio was helped by some guest musicians like Lucio Fabbri on violin (Piazza delle Erbe and later PFM), the jazz saxophonist Gianluigi Trovesi, and Luciano Ninzatti (from Eugenio Finardi's band Crisalide) on guitar.
With a much better production and sound, this can be considered the best of their two albums, with long tracks like the opening Romanzen or Aragon showing a very good composition quality. Another nice song was È triste il vento, that had previously been played by another group from Bergamo that had a close connection with Madrugada, Perdio.
Like in the first album there are some odd different-styled tracks, like the folky Noter de Berghem and the silly Katmandu (that was also released on single with È triste il vento, but with no success), but Incastro can be surely appreciated by progressive music fans. Unfortunately it didn't have a good promotion by the record company.
In concert, Madrugada played on tour with Area, Claudio Rocchi and Biglietto per l'Inferno, and in Lugano (Switzerland) with Kevin Ayers. Moreover they played in many concerts for political movements like Avanguardia Operaia and the Radical Party and the Re Nudo magazine. The band split at the end of the 1970s.
Pinto and Zanelli collaborated with Mauro Paoluzzi in his shortlived Pangea project, which produced only a promotional album in 1976.
Keyboardist Pinto has collaborated with many Italian and international artists (Patty Pravo, Roberto Vecchioni, Adriano Pappalardo, Riccardo Fogli, Gianna Nannini, Brian Auger), and in the late 90's with the reformed progressive group Perdio.
He works in a music school in the Parma area and still plays now in studio, with live bands and in the piano bar circuit.
Bass player Billy Zanelli formed the semi-punk group Judas, with an album on Spaghetti label in 1978, and later played with Roberto Vecchioni.
Discography
LPs
Madrugada (Philips, 1974)
Incastro (Philips, 1977)
CDs
Madrugada (AMS/BTF, 2006 / Universal, 2010)
Incastro (AMS/BTF, 2006 / Universal, 2010)
Singles
Katmandu / È triste il vento (Philips, 1977)
Whatever Happened To You?
Madrugada Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
don't just leave me this way
with nothing left to go on with-
Is there nothing you could say before you turn and walk away
I can't believe your heart!
There's something wrong with it...
Whatever happened to you...
it could easily be rearranged
this sort of thing that's not new to me
but,now when I'm looking at your face
there is hardly any traces
of this sort of love that's so good to me
and I must sing this from my heart
about our sudden love gone wrong right from the start...
Whatever happened to you? (x2)
Tell me now...you tell me now...
You run lover,run!
I have cared for you all along
ever since I first fell for you
It's still a very special song and now
it's made it's all begone,
but,you know it always did work so well for you
and I must sing this from the heart
about our sudden love gone wrong right from the start...
Whatever happened to you? (x2)...
Oh,you're cold lover,cold
living alone in those days of old
You can only love a shadow and a memory
for all those wicked lies you told
for your life that has yet to unfold
I swear before the end that you will remember me...
Whatever happened to you?...
Tell me now...tell me now..."
In Madrugada's song "Whatever Happened To You?", the singer pleads for their lover to stay and not leave them with nothing left to go on with. The singer feels that there's something wrong with their lover's heart and wonders why they've changed so much. They question what has happened to their lover and why their sudden love has gone wrong right from the start. The singer blames their lover for being cold and living in the past, unable to love anything but a memory.
The lyrics convey the pain and confusion of a relationship gone wrong. The singer's frustration with their lover's behavior is apparent as they plead for them to stay and try to salvage what's left. The use of repetition in the chorus adds to the desperation of the situation, highlighting the singer's need for answers.
The song's powerful vocals and haunting instrumentals create an intense atmosphere that matches the raw emotion of the lyrics. Overall, "Whatever Happened To You?" is a song about lost love and the longing for closure.
Line by Line Meaning
Stay lover,stay
Please stay with me, my love.
don't just leave me this way
Don't just abandon me like this.
with nothing left to go on with-
With nothing left to hold on to.
Is there nothing you could say before you turn and walk away
Can't you say anything before you leave me?
I can't believe your heart!
I can't believe how heartless you are.
There's something wrong with it...
Your heart must have something wrong with it if you can leave me like this.
Whatever happened to you...
What happened to make you like this?
She said whatever has to change
She said that changes need to be made.
it could easily be rearranged
It could be easily fixed or reorganized.
this sort of thing that's not new to me
This kind of situation is familiar to me.
but,now when I'm looking at your face
But now that I'm seeing you in person,
there is hardly any traces
I can hardly see any remnants
of this sort of love that's so good to me
Of the love that used to be so good to me.
and I must sing this from my heart
And I have to sing this with all my sincerity.
about our sudden love gone wrong right from the start...
About how our love went wrong so soon after it began.
Whatever happened to you? (x2)
What happened to you? (repeated)
Tell me now...you tell me now...
Please tell me now, I need to know.
You run lover,run!
You run away, my love!
I have cared for you all along
I have been taking care of you all this time.
ever since I first fell for you
Ever since I first fell in love with you.
It's still a very special song and now
Our love is still very special to me even now,
it's made it's all begone,
But you've made it all disappear.
but,you know it always did work so well for you
But you know our love always worked well for you.
and I must sing this from the heart
And I have to sing this with all my sincerity.
Oh,you're cold lover,cold
Oh, you're so cold, my love.
living alone in those days of old
Living alone, remembering the old times.
You can only love a shadow and a memory
You can only love a shadow of the past, a memory.
for all those wicked lies you told
Because of all the lies you told.
for your life that has yet to unfold
For your future that is yet to come.
I swear before the end that you will remember me...
I promise that you will remember me before the end.
Whatever happened to you?...
What happened to you?...
Tell me now...tell me now...
Please tell me now, I need to know.
Contributed by Mateo L. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Fatma Nur Çıttır
Kanala bayıldım yalnız.Şarkıların devamı gelsin lütfen.Hatta İngilizce altyazının yanında Türkçe'de eklersen daha da müthiş olur :)
SOU CHATZI
This song and his voice, shake my heart
Karla Lopez
Amo esta canción...
Alana Almeida
Amo amo ❤
Tonia Evi
Sivert τι θα γίνει με την πάρτη μας; πρέπει να γνωριστούμε, να με ερωτευτείς και να μου τραγουδάς τις τραγουδαρες σου.
Γ1ΩΡΓΗΣ
Για αυτό το τραγούδι τον ερωτεύομαι και γω για να μου το τραγουδάει :)
aspis kef
χααχαχα θα μπορουσα να μπω και εγω στη σειρα?
RuHuN _GeMiSi
..arşimet durumdan memnun, ve arşimet hala çıplak, aynen KIRAL gibi.. gece yine şeytana yaklaşırken, gökten 3 elma düştü.. birinci elmayı gözü hiç doymayanlar yedi, ikinci elmayı kul hakkı yemeye alışık olanlar, üçüncü elma'nın yarısı aşk oldu, diğer yarısı kurtların rızkı idi.. gökten 3 elma düştü.. hani bana diye ağlayan yine mazlumlar oldu.. gökten.. üç.. elma.. düştü..
Planetillo
Best music ever
lucia cintra
I love it, ohhh heart