MB (singer)
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MB (b. March 13, 1984) is a Canadian songwriter who currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has been writing songs since the age of 10 and began recording at age 16.
History
Pre-Recording History
MB wrote, what he calls his first "real" song around the age of 12. It was a song entitled You'll Be Sorry that is what he says was a way of venting his frustrations of growing up with bullies. While writing before that, this song helped him begin a new stage of writing as a way to capture certain feelings and experiences that occurred during particular times.
In 2000, MB recorded and released his first single entitled Blue that he wrote about a particular bad day of small things going wrong that continued to add up. The single featured a number of different versions including a dance remix and a lite mix as well as two instrumental b-sides, Last Day and Piano Song.
Blue/Miscellaneous I Era
In October 2000, MB finished the album called Blue that featured the song as well as nine other recordings. The album was released under Stars Records, a label MB started. From this album came the releases for Beyond My Heart, Everybody's Here and You Were.
Quick to followup the debut album, MB came out with Miscellaneous in March 2001 under Stars Records. That album was accompanied by the single for This Life and included collaborations with fellow indie recording artist Rob64 on two tracks. The song I Wanna Go Home, which was written and produced by Rob64, and as a featured artist in the track 'Wwwdotmysitedotcom'.
Miscellaneous II Era
In June 2001, MB released This Life to the PeopleBase chart on the Radio & Records message boards to quick critical acclaim. The song went to peak at #2 for two weeks and MB re-recorded and re-released the Miscellaneous album as Miscellaneous and it was marketed as the new official debut album from MB. It was a mix of the best tracks from the original first two albums along with a number of new tracks. The songs chosen were ones that MB thought of as special on a personal level to him. The most notable changes in the songs was the inclusion of John Morris in You Were and a rap from Rob64 in Everybody's Here as well as an edited version of I Wanna Go Home with Rob64 and the inclusion of the two instrumental b-sides from the original Blue single Last Day and Piano Song.
The second single to PeopleBase was the new version of Everybody's Here featuring Rob64, which went to #1 in January 2002. A CD-single was issued with remixes of the track as well as a dance remix of You Were and the b-side Tonight.
Also released was the double single Paranoia/Enveloped which didn't impact on PeopleBase. The single contained various remixes and edited versions of Paranoia.
During this time, MB had created the music for and produced the #1 hit by John Morris called Optimistic. John was on Stars Records along with MB and Rob64, who enjoyed success of his own with a number of hits and the album More To My Life.
Anonymous Era
MB released a song that didn't appear on any of his yet-released albums in April 2002 called Feeling Love. It was a track that had taken a new approach to recording and was playing off of the recent success of Miscellaneous. MB pulled out all the stops, with four different versions released at the same time, v.1 (demo version), v.2 (album version), v.3 (radio version) and v.4 (X-am remix). In addition to these, the single featured two brand new b-sides, You Never Know and Summertime (I Plan To Stay), as well as a [PPI] remix to Feeling Love and a new version for Everybody's Here. The song eventually peaked at #6.
Around this time, MB announced the release of a brand new album which would be called Anonymous, to signify the anonymity that he constantly surrounded his songs with. Due to the length of time between the release of the album's first single and the actual album, the b-side Summertime (I Plan To Stay) became a moderate hit on PeopleBase.
MB's second official album was released in September 2002. The album was one MB said was based more around the lyrics and less around the actual songs themselves. With the previous album, the songs was more of a pop-based sound that didn't follow a real direction while the new CD focused on piano-based music and lyrics of wanting to find love, and avoiding being lonely forever.
The second single from Anonymous was All I Need and it came out a month after the album, alittle over 6 months after the previous single. The original version of the track was over 7-minutes long but a radio edit was issued that cut it down to just over 4 minutes. It went on to become MB's biggest PeopleBase hit by spending two weeks at #1 in December. The CD single featured two new b-sides, Pieces and Empty as well as a demo version of It's All Good.
A third release from Anonymous came out in March 2003 to PeopleBase. It was a slightly remixed edit of This Is The Night. The original version was a song with MB and a piano accompaniment. Drums and percussion was added and the song was cut down almost a minute. It peaked at #16.
In October, the fourth and final release from Anonymous came out with a CD single. The song was a completely re-recorded version of It's All Good that had been recorded the previous year after the album was completed. The single was a double-a-sided It's All Good/This Is The Night and contained both remixes along with a Rob64 remix of the album track Baby, Please Don't Leave. The song was released during an attempted revival of the PeopleBase chart so it only peaked at #41.
After over a year and a half, the Anonymous era was wrapped up in the spring of 2004, during which MB was in the midst of taking a break from writing and recording. However, in September of 2004, Stars Records issued a limited-edition compilation disc called Back To School 2004 that featured the remix of It's All Good.
Inside;Outside Era
In 2004, after relocating from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, MB attempted to begin work on his third album by writing songs again. During this attempt, he renamed the record company Stars Records to The Max Records, after his music webpage The Max Online and began to build the label up.
In the summer, he recorded a demo that would go on to be the finished product of a song about not knowing who a person truly is, but only knowing what they wanted to protray themselves as in Inside;Outside. The song was a different direction musically and lyrically from anything previous and was what MB called an experimental track that would possibly be the direction his next album would take. The songs were being written but the album that was supposed to be recorded never began. So MB released the song as a single on its own to mixed reaction, which was what he was hoping for.
One Way Undone Era
In 2005, he began another attempt at working on an album and this time he gave himself a timeline at which it had to be completed. If it wasn't done, whatever was finished up to that point would be put out as either a single, an LP or a full EP, depending on what was there. By March 2006, the new album was complete with enough songs to qualify for a full length album and enough for MB to say he was satisfied with the finished product.
The first single to come from the new CD was called Evolve. It wasn't a typical run-of-the-mill pop single but a track that MB says fits into the theme of the new album well and is about societies way of treating people that don't fit into the desired norm that the majority of people fit into. The CD goes beyond Anonymous in every way, MB has said; lyrically, musically. The songs all have a point to them and all have a role. Evolve finished moderately well but served the purpose of helping to get attention back to MB and the release of his third long awaited album One Way Undone.
MB has set up a myspace account in support of the new CD which has helped to garner interest for it, as well as releasing the songs to the friendly M4B message boards.
The second single Julien was released in June and has so far received excellent comments and is rising up many personal charts.
Writing History
MB has been writing songs for as long as he can remember. He wrote what he calls his first "real" song when he was 12 years old called You'll Be Sorry, a song that was his way of taking out frustrations on the common troubles of youth. He says "some kids resort to beating other kids up, others resort to shouting and swearing and others turn to paper and art to taking out their anger. This song was the first time I learned I could do that."
MB says that while he was able to put his thoughts on paper in the form of songs, he never really considered it to be a form of therapy. He has said that it was just his way of making something somewhat useful out of a situation. His song usually referred to his constant loneliness and occasional crushes in school, such as This Life and Feeling Love. Those were his attempts at putting to paper his feelings on his own life.
One of the most emotional songs MB wrote earlier in his songwriting was a track called The Dark Side, in which he says he wrote after reading a newspaper article about parents that had locked their daughter in a small closet for months where she was forced to live in her own waste and eat stale bread and water. It was then that he became more aware of the problems with his own society and wrote the song. Hauntingly, it was written just months before 9/11 and after that, the song seemed to apply even moreso to the world.
After taking a break from writing in 2002, MB returned to the writing world with new ideas and new styles and a new yearning to put thoughts into a written form. The song Lukewarm became the song that helped MB the most in his life and made him really think about the direction he was taking. He has said that after he wrote it, he hid it in a book and kept it hidden from himself for a while until he realized the truth in the words. Until now, MB has written to take out frustrations and yearnings but never as a form of facing a fear. It's a song he says is among his most important writings and helped to inspire most of the One Way Undone album, including the songs Evolve, People Talk, Julien, Safe And Sound, The Fear and The End Of Olde Time. Those are the songs, he says, follows a storyline that maybe someday, he would like to write into an actual story.
Discography
Albums
| Album cover | Album information |
|---|---|
| Miscellaneous
|
| Anonymous
|
| One Way Undone
|
Singles
| Single cover | Information | |
|---|---|---|
| Blue
| |
| This Life
| |
| Everybody's Here
| |
| Paranoia/Enveloped
| |
| Feeling Love
| Remix]''' |
| All I Need
| |
| It's All Good/This Is The Night
| |
| Inside;Outside
| |
| Evolve
| |
| Julien
|
Chart History
| Year Released | Title | Chart peaks | Album | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MT40 | PeopleBase | Globalchart | |||
| 2000 | It Came From Beyond My Heart | #8 | — | — | Blue |
| 2000 | Blue | #3 | — | — | Blue |
| 2000 | Everybody's Here 1 | #7 | #1 | — | Blue / Miscellaneous II |
| 2001 | You Were | #8 | — | — | Blue |
| 2001 | This Life 2 | #3 | #2 | — | Miscellaneous |
| 2001 | Paranoia | #6 | — | — | Miscellaneous |
| 2001 | I Wanna Go Home 3 | — | #8 | — | More To My Life / Miscellaneous II |
| 2002 | Enveloped | #34 | — | — | Miscellaneous |
| 2002 | Feeling Love | #4 | #6 | — | Anonymous |
| 2002 | Summertime (I Plan To Stay) 4 | — | #41 | — | Feeling Love CDS |
| 2002 | All I Need | #2 | #1 | — | Anonymous |
| 2003 | This Is The Night | #35 | #16 | #45 | Anonymous |
| 2003 | It's All Good | #31 | #41 | — | Anonymous |
| 2004 | Inside;Outside | #22 | — | — | Inside;Outside CDS |
| 2006 | Evolve | #16 | — | #202 | One Way Undone |
| 2006 | Julien | — | — | #108+ | One Way Undone |
Notes
- Everybody's Here was re-recorded with Rob64 and re-released to PeopleBase separately in 2001 from the Miscellaneous II album.
- This Life was released as the first single to PeopleBase and was followed by Everybody's Here second.
- I Wanna Go Home was released as Rob64 featuring MB. The version by only Rob64 peaked at #6 on MT40.
- Summertime (I Plan To Stay) was never officially released.
| Chart | Title | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feeling Love | All I Need | This Is The Night | Evolve | Julien | |
| FreakyFlyBry's Top 100 | #31 | #18 | #57 | #52 | #26+ |
| Adam's Top 40 | — | #1 | #2 | — | — |
| Drew's Top 40 | — | — | — | #10 | #13+ |
| Jessica's Top 40 | — | — | — | #25 | #28+ |
| Nick's Top 50 | — | — | — | #11 | #9+ |
| Faraway Top 40 | — | — | — | — | #40+ |
Links
- [MySpace Page]
- [Soundclick]
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