SPILL FEATURE: I ENDED UP LIVING A BIGGER LIFE THAN I’D EVER IMAGINED – A CONVERSATION WITH ANDY KIM

I ENDED UP LIVING A BIGGER LIFE THAN I’D EVER IMAGINED

A CONVERSATION WITH ANDY KIM

“I’m a dreamer more than anything else; my whole life has been kind of a dream,” says singer-songwriter Andy Kim. Known for hits like “Baby, I Love You” and “Rock Me Gently”, as well as co-writing the worldwide sensation “Sugar, Sugar,” which he also sang on the recording as part of The Archies, Kim is set to be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame on October 17th.

“First of all, it’s surreal,” says Kim. “I just love writing songs. It’s been my joy and my addiction. Ever since a kid, I wanted to write songs and hopefully make records and travel the world, so when you’re getting an award for something that you just absolutely love to do and could not live your life without it, it’s surreal.”

Early on in his career, Kim spent many years writing at the Brill Building. During this time, he worked alongside and was surrounded by many spectacular writers, including Jeff Barry, Phil Spector, Cynthia Weil, and Gerry Goffin, among others. “What was beaten into me was you’re only as good as your last two minutes and thirty-one seconds,” recalls Kim. “If you got another hit, you got another two minutes and 31 seconds. If you have a semi-hit, they may give you an opportunity, but if two songs or records go by and nothing’s happening, they’re on to someone else because there are other songwriters and producers and stuff like that. So, it scared the daylights out of me, but I was lucky… I came in knowing two chords, but somehow my mentor and producer Jeff Barry gave me an opportunity because there was just something about what I was doing and how I was doing it.”

Kim and Barry co-wrote the beloved smash hit “Sugar, Sugar” together. The song has become one of the most well-known songs from the ‘60s and is considered by many to be one of the best bubblegum pop songs of all time. However, it took a while for the song to really explode. “Nobody wanted to play it because it was the year of Woodstock, the Vietnam war was raging, so much was going on that nobody really wanted to play the song and the fact that it was a comic book now on TV,” comments Kim. “It took a radio station sometime in the middle of July to play it in San Francisco one time, and the promotion man was just blown away because when they played it, the radio station phones went off the walls. Their whole system crashed because people wanted to hear this song.”

Why exactly did “Sugar, Sugar” connect with so many people? “To me, it’s a mystery, it’s a mystery in the fact that I can’t think about anything other than they just loved the chorus,” continues Kim. “I remember the first time I met Leonard Cohen, and it was in the early 2000s. His music was being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and my song ‘Sugar, Sugar’ was being inducted at that time. We were sitting together, and the first thing he said was ‘I wish I had written that song,’ and I said ‘No, you could never have written that song, you’re so… and I had many adjectives back then to describe him, and he laughed… That chorus was magical, and I don’t know if you can write magic. You just have to be told, like ‘Wow, I love this, because I can’t explain it any other way or else I would have written 10 of those.”

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One of Kim’s most well-known songs is “Rock Me Gently.” Despite receiving no interest from any label, Kim thought that the song was special and wanted to put it out. He eventually created his own label, named Ice Records and personally financed the recording session for the song. Ultimately, “Rock Me Gently” went #1 in both Canada and the United States. “I never heard the word no to mean anything other than I have another opportunity for me to follow my instinct and do what I want to do,” says Kim. “When you have no choice, when every label in the United States said no, I just figured, well, you know what, I’ll start my own record company. I’ll be my own promotion man… I just loved the song. It stayed with me. I went around singing it. There was something about it that I believed in so much. So, I produced it. I thought I had produced the best record I could. My early records were produced by Jeff, and I learned so much from him. So, this was my opportunity to step out and say, ‘OK, well, what did you learn?’ So, I put it out in Canada, and I went to radio stations as a promoter. The one thing that I was aware of was that there was a radio station called CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, near the border of Detroit. I know that if you get played on CKLW in Windsor, that people in Detroit, the frequency is there, so they’re almost an American-Canadian radio station. I really promoted the hell out of it, and it got noticed in Detroit. Someone came up to me and said, ‘Look, we’d love to distribute your record,’ and it was a rollercoaster ride for about four months. Again, I’m one hell of a lucky guy, to be honest with you. I’m inspired by the vision of a bigger life, and I ended up living a bigger life than I’d ever imagined.’”

A song that Kim is especially proud of and thinks of as of late is “Shady Hollow Dreamer”, particularly “Just a shady hollow dreamer / I’m on the back porch of my days.” “First of all, my early hits, including the songs with The Archies and writing for other people, all of those things have been a wonderful source of income but I think as I got older and started writing things that were different, just because it’s the time in your life where you’re looking back and I’ve been looking back for several years now,” he comments. “When I look back, somehow, I always felt like I was on the back porch of my days.”

Kim, with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies, co-wrote “I Forgot to Mention,” which was released in 2004. He points to this as another pivotal moment in his career. “There’s Jeff Barry, who was my mentor, and I learned so much from him, and then there’s Ed Robertson,” recalls Kim. “Ed came to me and said, ‘You know, I would like to write a song with you,’ and in my head, I’m like, ‘Why? I haven’t had a hit in a long time.’ Ed resurrected me and really gave me an opportunity to be heard on the radio.”

Currently, Kim is working on another project with Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene. They previously worked together on the album, It’s Decided. For a while Kim was unsure if he had another album in him. “To have Kevin in my life is great because I’m always like people are kind of tired of hearing from me, and then he just beats it into my head that it’s not over yet,” he smiles.

One of the last things Kim shared was some wonderful words of advice for living your own life. “I don’t see any song that I’ve ever written as anyone else’s responsibility to like. You either like it or don’t like it, but I’m still gonna do my life because I’m living my one and only life, and so are you. You’re not living your family’s life or your relatives’ life; you’re living your one and only life with no sequel. So, what are you doing with it? That’s the thing you’ve got to ask yourself in the end. What are you doing about it? Because we’re all gonna die one day, and I believe there’s a God somewhere, and he’s gonna say, ‘How did it go? How did your life turn out?’ This is your story, and your life.”

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