TEN CITY Drops Hot New House Music Album LOVE IS LOVE
Written by Jon-Michael Foshee
Ten City’s Byron Stingily and Marshall Jefferson follow up their triumphant Grammy-Nominated reunion JUDGEMENT with a hot new take on the genre the House legends helped establish and spread throughout the world.
“I put out my first recordings in 1985, and so I really wanted to challenge myself with this album,” Byron Stingily said. “What type of stories haven’t we told before? We’ve made songs about love, we’ve made songs about this and that, so a lot of these new songs were an attempt to say things that really haven’t been said a whole lot before.”
The vibes you feel listening to LOVE IS LOVE unearths emotions of how we felt when we heard our first House tracks, those rhythms and lyrics that really spoke to us and made us feel like we were seen, like we found where we belong. But that’s just one dimension to the new tracks laid down by Byron and Marshall. LOVE IS LOVE feels new. An excitement bubbles up when the beats dig in and Byron’s voice hits the stratosphere — you realize you’re home, but home just got upgraded.
“We tried to do something for everybody on this album,” Byron Stingily said. “Musically, even within House Music, you have so many different styles — you have Soulful House, you have what we call Club Bangers, you have things that are more EDM (Electronic Dance Music), you have things that are more Tech.
“We even have some Acid House elements in the song, Losing My Mind. We tried to cover the different styles and genres even within House Music and Dance Music. We even have a retro-ish pop song in Magic on the album.
“We tried to do it all where it fit into the style of a Ten City album,” Byron Stingily said.
LOVE IS LOVE tells a story, one in which people from all different walks of life can see themselves. These are real emotions, real issues we face every day regardless of status, race, creed, or gender. These feelings are universal. This album speaks straight to the heart.
“[The title track] Love Is Love is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story where you have two people in love and others don’t really understand their love, or others disapprove of it. So, at this point, what are you going to do? Are you going to give in to society and how they feel, or are you going to go with your heart?” Byron Stingily said.
“We have a song on the album, Casual, where it’s talking about a man who wants a relationship with a woman, and all she wants from him is for things to be casual, and he’s feeling like he’s not being valued. And so that was a sort of flip-the-script story. A lot of the songs are sort of written in that way to “change roles.”
“To have a song about, “She Left Me For A Girl Named Phil,” a lot of people take that song different ways. We don’t even know who Phil is. People make so many assumptions about who Phil is, but it’s about roles being changed in relationships.
“We wrote I Love Me because we wanted to do some positive songs.”
Positivity is ingrained into the DNA of House Music. It welcomes everyone and beckons you to leave any judgement at the door. As Byron said when he was recently interviewed by Variety Magazine about House Music’s strong showing at the 2023 Grammy Awards in new tracks by top artists like Beyoncé, Lizzo, Doja Cat, Cardi B, and Drake: “House music, it’s a very positive music and I don’t want to hold it in in the underground.”
That message of House Music’s positivity and inclusivity is evident in the diversity of Ten City’s new tracks, and in the meaning behind the songs and the emotions that went into creating them. LOVE IS LOVE has something for everyone, and the journey it takes you on is just FUN. Try not to shake it a little bit when you crank this album up, we dare you.
“All In One Night basically came about by thinking of a movie like The Hangover — you’re doing all of these things with your buddies in one night, you’re on this wild bachelor or bachelorette party and you’re going to do it all in one night. It’s the ultimate party song,” Byron Stingily said.
“There are a lot of strange things going on in society, in the news — a lot of strange things are happening. There’s even an uptick in people having “alien sightings” and other things. Strange Times sought to discuss that, and, musically, we tried to give it old carnival freakshow-ish type of sounds with the organs. We just wanted to do something a little trippy and a little more artsy with that song.
“When you’ve been in the music business for so long, this album was really an attempt to in one breadth recapture ourselves, and in another breadth to reinvigorate and reinvent ourselves by introducing elements into our music that are very current. We were trying to strike a really sensitive balance in making sure that we have the elements that people who love Ten City music would appreciate, but at the same time having enough elements where a new crowd would be like, this is really a cool album. We tried to make sure we struck the balance between them both,” Byron Stingily said.
And that balance between the true-life lyrics that speak to us and the fresh beats that move us is the reason Ten City connects with us. We feel what they’re laying down because we’re out here living these themes every day.
At the core of Byron’s writing and performing prowess there exists a legacy imprint from one of his mentors, prolific singer, songwriter, and producing giant, Lamont Dozier, whose sudden death in 2022 rocked the music world.
“I definitely see fingerprints in LOVE IS LOVE of how Lamont always talked about making songs and stories, and making sure to pay attention to the details of songs, making sure that every word meant something within the context of that song. I definitely try to make sure that each song told a very definitive story and tale this time around,” Byron Stingily said.
That detail, that connection, is evident in the smash commercial and critical success of Ten City’s recent reunion album, JUDGEMENT, and Byron and Marshall assembled that same team to bring LOVE IS LOVE to life, along with a few new players.
“It’s pretty much the same crew from the last album,” Byron Stingily said. “Marshall Jefferson, of course, with him being a Ten City member. Emmaculate and Shabazz Curtis produced and co-wrote some of our new songs. Emmaculate did two or three songs on JUDGEMENT, and he did five on this one. Martin Block did horns — he did horns and string arrangements on a couple songs on the last album.
“We kept our team intact, and we all knew what we needed to do. We wanted to make a more diverse album this time,” Byron Stingily said.
“Maurice Joshua, who produced Better Man on the last album, produced the song Family on this album. Terry Hunter, who’s been a friend of mine for years, added the song, Woman of the Sun. Ivory Vaughn is an R&B writer, he’s worked with a lot of different people, a lot of Neo-Soul artists like Raheem DeVaughn. He’s one of Terry Hunter’s co-writers, he’s well-known.
“The two guys out of England, Wh0, they did Summer of Love and Feel It Too on the last album. On this album they did All In One Night, I Love Me, and Magic. Nobody really knows who they are, they wear these black masks and everything — I don’t even know who they are.
“el Boogie and Church Lyles are the main background singers, and in some instances they do a lot of co-back-and-forth parts with me on the album. Those two guys are incredible singers in their own right,” Byron Stingily said.
LOVE IS LOVE is Ten City’s first album off Patrick Moxey’s new label with Warner, Helix Records, after leaving Ultra Records, the home of Ten City’s JUDGEMENT.
“Patrick reached out to us for our last album when he was at his old label, Ultra Records,” Byron Stingily said. “He showed faith in us to do an album after we hadn’t done one in years, and we believe in being loyal. It was a little scary at first because it’s a new label, and with a new label sometimes they’re working things out, like how they’re going to promote and market things, and they’re trying to get their team established. And they’re in a new system, they’re in a new label, and they have to learn where they are within that label and how their songs get marketed within the whole new system. You don’t know what to expect.
“At the end of the day we could have stayed where we were at, but we really wanted to be loyal to Patrick because he showed us how he believed in us and in our vision,” Byron Stingily said.
As it turns out, loyalty pays off. LOVE IS LOVE is quickly climbing the charts all over the world, but it is experiencing an especially strong showing right here at home. House Music has always had a strong following in America, but many House, EDM, or other Dance albums debut strongest in Europe and sometimes Asia. This is a testament to the fact that Ten City’s home crowd is not only still growing strong, it’s thriving.
“What’s really interesting, specifically, is that when I do a project the majority of sales are typically in Europe. Believe it or not, this is the first album in a long time that the majority of the plays are in America,” Byron Stingily said.
“The number-one place for downloads for this album so far is Los Angeles, and I would have never thought that in a million years. The top cities streaming this album right now are LA and London, but after London there’s New York, and then they got Brooklyn as its own city, then you got places like Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Charlotte, and, of course, Chicago.
“To have an album that’s getting played more in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world is great. I’ll take success anywhere in the world, but there’s something about when your music gets received at home that’s special,” Byron Stingily said.
“Most of our live shows that are already set up for this summer are in England and in Europe. We’re confirmed for the Hardwick Festival in London, and we’re also performing at another festival in Liverpool. The details for other shows are still coming together.”
“I know everybody wants their projects to be successful, but with us being on a new label, we kindly ask everyone to please go out and support it,” Byron Stingily said. “I want to show that our music is a viable style of music, and I would like to see more good Dance albums from more Dance artists. I want to show that people will go out and purchase music of this genre and of these artists, and I also hope that there will be more albums like ours.”
We hope so, too, Byron. Keep those Ten City hits coming.
You can download Ten City’s brand-new album, LOVE IS LOVE, Right Here, Right Now.
You can purchase High-Definition .MP3s of the title track single Love Is Love Right Here, and the hot first single A Girl Named Phil Right Here from Amazon Music.
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Byron Stingily is also one of the founders of Chicago Devotion, a company built to be a gathering place where people can find the help they need now. The Chicago Devotion web portal features the team’s efforts to bring hard-to-find resources and information to the people so they can achieve their dreams – another example of the work Byron puts in every day to better people’s lives.
For more helpful resources and information for your needs and to enrich your daily lives, gather together on the Chicago Devotion Home Page and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, @ChicagoDevotion.
