We are Fiaa Hamilton and Jihea Oh, a London-based duo called Sunset Olive, and our new single “Love Me More” started off as a bassline.
Jihea is an incredible bass player and she created some bass hooks with Jungleboi, who is an amazing producer and friend. It was from that moment that I (Fiaa), Jihea, Jungleboi and Pengwin (a great up and coming producer) all fell in love with one certain hook and developed the production around it.
The production development was inspired by a few artists, but mainly Dua Lipa and Silk Sonic; we loved the groovy vintage feels that resonate throughout. We then moved on to the melody, lyrics and concept ideas, personally my favourite part!
I and Jihea had gone through a dark time of our life and we were finally seeing some light and finding the true connection to self-love. We both went through a huge break up, which caused us pain, so much so that we began to take a real look at ourselves and what we were lacking – loving ourself more was something needed!
We also spoke about how we wanted to inspire others to find self-love – when you find it once it feels magical – so we decided to write about this so we can share this positivity with others who may also be searching for it. It’s so important to find this and care for your own mental and emotional wellbeing especially when there are a lot of pressures in the world.
“Love Me More” was written and produced over three sessions, we started it in wintertime and created a rough demo before recording it properly. “Love Me More” was one of many that we wrote over the last year, and when we formed as Sunset Olive we decided to concentrate on writing lots of songs true to us. When it came to the moment that Sunset Olive was ready to launch we chose this as our first song as it just felt right.
The recording process was organic and in the comfort of our own house – in a converted garden shed! It allowed us to not be on a time limit and really focus on the vocals. Vocals are my favourite thing to do, so this day was up there with some of the best days of my journey in life!
We had Joshua Alamu vocal directing the whole track, who also works with other girl bands such as Little Mix and FLO. We played around with harmonies, adlibs and vocal characteristics; Jihea had never really worked on her voice before our band, so this was a new flavour to Jihea’s life and we both sing completely differently.
It was amazing to have Josh there to help us find our middle ground, we were there till early hours of the morning! We didn’t want to leave. It was so much fun.
Once we had recorded and arranged the song, it was time to send it to Jamie Snell, the genius mixing engineer! He did bits with the track, we massively owe the smooth sound to Jamie! Whilst the song had been sent off for mixing, we had time to create some branding aspect – this was the first time the world was going to see us and we wanted it to be authentic and inspiring.
We started working with Lucid PR, Hasan was our go to! He understood us and helped us come up with a perfect photo shoot idea with photographer Massimiliano Giorgeschi in a 70’s vintage house.
By the time the mix was ready to come back to us, we had the pictures ready to go to Taura Lamb, who created our artwork. Once the artwork was ready, Matt Colton had mastered our track at the legendary Metropolis Studios, the timing was perfect and we were ready to find the right distributor.
We are working with Sound On, which is TikTok’s very own distribution services; we feel that TikTok is giving a great platform to unsigned and developing artists and that is exactly the support we needed.
Releasing “Love Me More” has been really special, the support from BBC Introducing has been a highlight and of course this amazing interview with We Plug Good Music! It really does mean the world!
Thank you for having fun, Fiaa and Jihea from Sunset Olive x
Listen to “Love Me More” below.
