Behind The Tracks: Red Vanilla - I Thought I Had It (Single) (2026)

Ana (Vocalist): ‘I Thought I Had It’ was very Queens Of The Stone Age inspired - George was listening to ‘Songs For The Deaf’ at the time he wrote it, and you can hear their influence particularly in the riff in the outro of that song.

The stripped back, raw emotion of ‘Sunkissed Pools’ was Radiohead-inspired - less is more when it comes to songs like ‘No Surprises’, and we wanted to make something similar where the story within the song speaks for itself, supported by pretty chords, some twinkly synth, and that was enough.

‘Ask Her If She’s Happy’ and ‘Oh No, I Got Older’ were inspired by Paramore, especially vocally. My favourite songs to sing have always been by Paramore, and it excites me so much to add in Hayley Williams’ vocal style to our own music. We wanted to recreate the ‘RIOT!’ pop-punk energy on these songs - angsty, high energy, and still with our own original sound.

‘Electric Blue’ was inspired by Wolf Alice - I was listening to ‘Visions Of A Life’ on repeat at the time I wrote these vocals, and I really wanted to try writing a spoken-word verse like ‘Sky Musings’. We used the title track from that album as inspiration for the song structure too - we loved the transformations throughout that song, and how there are so many changes in dynamics, which shows on Electric Blue too.

‘Hazy’ was inspired by the simplicity of Nirvana’s classic grunge rock sound. We wanted a ‘fun’ song that’s just tonnes of distortion, nothing too heavy lyrically, and something people would wanna jump around to at a gig. The loud-quiet structure of soft verses and a heavy chorus was pulled straight from anything off ‘Nevermind’.

I was personally inspired by The 1975’s honest and vulnerable storytelling in the lyrics of ‘Play Me Something New’. Listening to ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is a whole hour of creative stimulation, and we both really wanted to write something that had the reminiscent, sentimental sound of songs like ‘Inside Your Mind’.

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