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Originally written September 22, 2005.
The words of this song are quite beautiful, and as usual the version you find copied all over the internet is wrong.
hese are the right words, as far as I can establish:
I believe we all have one true love
Somewhere in this world, I do
When it seemed all my dreams were falling through
That’s when I found you
I believe for every heart that whispers in the dark
There's a ray of light somewhere shining through
It was sink or swim when the tide came in
I found myself when I found you
I found the closest thing to heaven
Yes in you
I found the deepest love I knew
Oooo ooooh, I believe, yes its true
I found myself when I found you [ooh yeah]
I believe for every door that’s closing
For every heartbreak there’s hope for something new
From the ashes rise a glimpse of paradise
It’s the flicker in your eyes
When I found you
I found the closest thing to heaven
Yes in you
I found the deepest love I knew
Oooo ooooh, I believe, yes its true
I found myself when I found you
A life unfolds
No one knows
I thought love was
Just a tingling of the skin
I felt so alone, all alone
More than you could ever know
You share deeper love
Sweeter love
When I found you
I found the closest thing to heaven
I found the deepest love I know
I found the closest thing to heaven
I found myself
When I found you
I found the closest thing to heaven
Yes in you
I found the deepest love I knew
Oooo yeah, Oh I believe, yes its true
I found myself when I found you, you
Folks probably only know me as the crazily obsessed Britney fan who defends her against all attacks and gets in fights with anybody who says a word against her. But did you know that before “In The Zone” came out I wasn’t a fan at all? Oh, I liked Britney herself - what’s not to like? But I didn’t like her music. I’d borrowed the “Britney” album from the library (and....um.....they never asked for it back!) but it didn’t gel with me at all.
All....apart from one track that always made me sit up and take notice - “When I found you”. Here were some beautiful words set to a beautiful melody, with a magical and elusive production and vocals that sounded very different from anything else out there. It was this track as much as anything else that intrigued me about Britney the artist and started to gnaw away at my brain in preparation for “In The Zone”.
The provenance of “When I found you” is somewhat obscure. The sleeve notes of “Britney” only tell us that it was written by Elofssen and Hill and produced and recorded by Peter Kvint in the Jailhouse Studios, Stockholm - yet another dimension to the Swedish connection that has been a part of Britney’s recording career from Max Martin through to Bloodshy and Avant. Jorgen Elofssen also had writing credits on Crazy, Sometimes, What You See (Is What You Get) and Girl in the Mirror.
No live musicians are credited in the notes, but we know that Peter Kvint plays guitar and keyboards so we have to assume that most or all of what we hear has been played and programmed by him. He doesn’t appear to have worked on any other Britney songs, so there are no other reference points to make comparisons. No additional background singers are credited either, and in fact all the backing vocals sound like Britney herself.
The song begins with a distinctive guitar riff on the LH channel, which is repeated more softly there and on the center channel at various points in the song. Britney enters in very sharp focus dead centre, backed up by synth strings spread across the mix. Attractive guitar figures appear on the LH channel, while strange shimmering, oscillating guitar effects appear on the right. At 1.30 and 1.50 Britney duets with her backing vocals and at 2.45 she provides a counterpoint in a higher register.
There is a clearly defined but simple bass “tune”, not just one-note thumping, and an extremely basic percussion track reinforced here and there by what may best be described as synth tambourine. The audio soundstage is fairly busy throughout, with additional organ sounds and Max Martin-style bubbling, squelching and scratching effects.
Everything proceeds quietly and reflectively until, at 2.15, in what we now generally call the bridge, everything suddenly goes crazy! The volume rises, the production both intensifies and envelops in a most extraordinary way, additional synth riffs enter, more reverb is applied and the listener feels as if he/she has opened the door and strayed into a room where something entirely different is going on. Maybe one of my famous lapdances?
Britney’s vocals are for the most part soft and whispery, just as they are now. At 0.58 (“when the tide came in”) and 1.46 (“a glimpse of paradise”) she adds some power as necessary and at 2.14, as she enters the bridge,.she’s almost wailing and her vocals remain at a somewhat higher level throughout that section, as if she knew she was singing over a louder background.
“When I found you” is a companion piece to “That’s where you take me”, quiet little tracks placed near the end of a lively and assertive album and similarly ignored both by reviewers and by fans when “Britney” was released. Perhaps both tracks would still be languishing in obscurity if Britney was making new albums.
But the last year has given us a chance to reflect and re-examine. And if we use our hindsight carefully we can begin to appreciate that much of what we assume to be weakness and inability in Britney’s vocals is, in reality, the product of artistic choice. Britney is the one and only female vocalist over the last ten years who has always preferred subtlety to volume and that, far more than her characteristic croaking effects, is what I find so fascinating about this supposedly goofy young woman.
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