Focus Your Audio do their best to preserve a lifetime of memories on their haunting and poignant new single The Long Goodbye — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
There are times in one’s life when you realize life is short and time is precious — but memories, despite illnesses that can make them disappear, can last forever. For Vancouver duo Focus Your Audio — singer Sarah Stewart and musician Bobby McAloney — those feelings are vividly captured in this precious single. It’s a gorgeous, tear-inducing effort detailing the topic of dementia and how difficult it is to see loved ones slip away.
Although universal in its empathy, Stewart says the song was inspired by her nursing career and meeting a special elderly woman with dementia. “The Long Goodbye was written about an incredible woman, someone whose details I didn’t want to lose,” she says. “This song was based on a single mother who beat all odds, attended medical school in the ’60s, and went on to have an incredible impact on the world around her.”
Stewart says the woman’s daughter said something that deeply hit a nerve: “I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it when my mother won’t remember my name; I guess that’s why they call it the long goodbye.” Stewart recalls: “It was at that moment that I was hit in the chest with layers of gravity. I instantly said to myself, ‘I’m going to write a song about this, and The Long Goodbye was born.”
Produced and engineered by Mike Young of Mother Mother at Vancouver’s Studio Y and Hipposonic Recording Studio, the song truly came to life when Stewart’s lyrics melded with a “beautiful piece of instrumental music” by McAloney. The sparse instrumentation features Stewart’s beautiful vocals and McAloney on guitar, with cellist Peggy Lee adding even more gravitas to the moving single.
“When the lyrics were written, the merriment of that and the music left us with a gift that was meant to be shared with others,” Stewart says. “Every time I listen to this song, it’s like the first time. I go through all of the emotions of watching loved ones empty themselves over and over again in the walking out of their own long goodbye.”
The duo have made inroads in Vancouver music circles and the Canadian music scene. In 2019 Focus Your Audio released their debut EP and have released singles ever since. Collectively, their songs have amassed over 300,000 streams. On Your Own garnered global attention when Swedish DJ / producer StoneBridge (Ne-Yo, Beyonce) remixed it on his SiriusXM channel. They’ve shared the stage with Tobias The Owl, Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar, among others.
Check out The Long Goodbye above, hear more from Focus Your Audio below, and say hello to them on their website, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
