Exclusive: Stream Melina Coolen’s New Curated Spotify Playlist Feat. Songs That Inspired Her New Single “Nothing At All”

The Ronettes – “Be My Baby”

This song was a big inspiration for “Nothing At All”, as you can probably tell from the iconic drums at the beginning! My goal was to create a song whose retro bubblegum vibe was undeniably inspired by the Brill Building era, and can you think of a better song for inspiration? When I was recording the backing instrument tracks earlier on in the year, I listened to the Wrecking Crew’s recording sessions for this song on Youtube to get some ideas (by the way, I highly recommend checking their sessions out, it’s super cool). This inspired the bass (me) and I used this as a reference track for my talented drummer (Jacob Slous). I believe you can feel the Hal Blaine inspiration in his playing and hopefully the Carol Kaye in mine! (As a pianist primarily, I’m feeling quite proud of my bass on this song!)

The Monkees – “Sometime In The Morning”

I really wanted “Nothing At All” to be a beautiful touching love song in this vein. There’s such a tender gentleness in “Sometime In The Morning” that speaks to the heart and I kept that in mind as a reference throughout. This was a reference track for the drums – I wonder if this is Hal Blaine as well but the drummer credit is unknown on this song. It also represents my Carole King influence as this is one of her and Gerry Goffin’s songs in the early Monkees years.

Margo Guryan – “Under My Umbrella”

I thought this was a good example of songwriting and arrangement style. I buried the piano a bit in “Nothing At All”, but if you listen closely, you can hear the extended chords, which I think, compositionally, gives it that late 60’s early 70’s vibe like this song.

Vicky Leandros – “Wenn du geh’n willst”

I realize a lot of people here, especially of my age, probably do not know who Vicky Leandros is, so I hope this is a lovely introduction for those who do not know this powerful vocalist. I was introduced to world music at a young age, so I listened to her music since I was a child. This song inspired the guitar: The guitar was the last instrument I added to the song, so by then, I knew that the direction had shifted a bit from early Wrecking Crew to slightly later (but still 60’s) pop. At first, I asked my guitarist (Darrel Cameron) to use nylon strings like Tommy Tedesco. But when he sent it back, something didn’t sound right to me. So I tried to brainstorm some reference tracks and this song came to mind. I thought Darrel emulated this sound beautifully, and I think the guitar really added to “Nothing At All’s” sunshiny pop vibe.

The Seekers – “Red Rubber Ball”

This song came to mind later during the creative process when I was thinking up reference tracks. I love the bright sunshiny guitar here and with Linda’s versatile voice, her folk/pop quality to her RnB style brought to mind The Seekers and Judy Collins and added the other missing piece to my 60’s music emulation.

Renaissance – “Carpet Of The Sun”

Yet another song that came to mind when adding voice and guitar to “Nothing At All”. I feel like I’m saying that a lot, but I like to leave a lot of space for my songs to grow into their own identity and find themselves. So I usually have a couple songs in mind at the start and then along the way as the direction gets more clear, more reference songs come to mind.

Nana Mouskouri – “Soleil, Soleil”

This is my favourite Nana Mouskouri song. I actually heard it on a tourism commercial for Virginia when I was a child. And since it was before Shazam, I didn’t know who was doing it till much later. It always felt like a hidden gem of sunshine. I liked that sunshiny vibe for “Nothing At All”. You can just imagine yourself laying down in the grass with the sun shining on you.

ABBA – “Hasta Mañana”

When adding vocals to “Nothing At All”, I couldn’t help but think of ABBA for the quality of strong emotive pop vocals. They were very creative in the studio and I sort of kept that in mind as inspiration while engineering. I was reading an article some months ago about how they shifted pitches around after recording them, which was a factor to their unique sound. And although I’ll admit I did it more for tuning reasons, I did sharpen the strings sound which isn’t something I normally do to a vst instrument.

Mocedades – “Eres Tu”

Isn’t this a beautiful song? This is another one I couldn’t help but think of later on in production. Although, I didn’t add the horns to give that 70’s vibe like on another one of my songs, Fairytales Again, I still think you can feel a bit of the early 70’s in “Nothing At All”, too.

The Beach Boys – “God Only Knows”

This was another inspiration for creating a touching tender song. Keeping its dreamy layers in mind, I added the strings with heavy reverb and emphasized this especially at the end to leave you with that touching, feel-good energy.