“I wrote his name on a thin piece of paper, tossed it away in the wind ...” thus starts Joyce Prescher’s latest single ‘Black on white’. A tender melancholic folk tune, that sings about letting unanswered love fade. The kind of innocent love you kept to yourself and yet somehow, without ever knowing, the other person breaks your heart.

The tune

“I wrote his name on a thin piece of paper, tossed it away in the wind ...” thus starts Joyce Prescher’s latest single ‘Black on white’. A tender melancholic folk tune, that sings about letting unanswered love fade. The kind of innocent love you kept to yourself and yet somehow, without ever knowing, the other person breaks your heart.

The tune opens with a beautifully fingerpicked guitar laced with cello, gentle fingers stroking the keys of a piano and so much empty space it really does remind of the void after someone’s left your life.

It’s a song about surrender. About allowing love to pass through one’s life, like a traveller.

But also, an expression of strength in reclaiming one’s place again by giving love ‘back to the night’.

Performed life, the intimately sung words can both silence a crowd then have a whole room sing along to the lines ‘Black on white, give him back to the night’.

About the song-writing process Joyce says: The song simply started with a feeling, then a few lines that unravelled into a cinematic piece of storytelling. It was the kind of song that just flows out and once it does, you sit there mesmerised and wonder ‘where did that come from?’. The melody came to me in a similar fashion. I didn’t have to force anything, it happened naturally and that’s how I prefer it.

Black on white was recorded at Allan Eaton Studio and Sing Sing Studios. The song was produced and mixed by Simon Moro of Ninety Nine 100 and mastered by Adam Dempsey. It features Daniel Farrugia on wind machine, Craig Newman on double bass, Luke Howard on piano and Lily Thornton on cello.