"Stan loved the demo, but he was on the fence about whether it was right for him to sing," Abrams recalls. "I just kept pushing him – like, I can hear you, this is going to be awesome, you'll slay this, it's a beautiful song. Then, when I finally got him like hooked bait in the tank, we started looking for the female duet, someone to really resonate with his voice."
Abrams' manager put Lambert on his radar, and it didn't take long to convince him that the rising Aussie performer was the obvious choice.
"I just loved her voice, I think she's an insane vocalist," he enthuses. "She's really showing her range on Cold Nights, just the power of her. It's beautiful. And Larissa and Stan, when they sing that second chorus together and they harmonise … jackpot."
Abrams is a master of collaboration, and Walker and Lambert weren't his only partners on Cold Nights. The song was co-written with Dani Brillhart and Colton Jones, LA-based writers Abrams had gotten to know after seeing their cover of Drax Project's Woke Up Late, which he also co-wrote, on YouTube. As with the rest of The Waters Between, the couple's lyrics explore themes of emotional distance.
"Our first session was writing the very primitive framework for Cold Nights, but I'd never written with them before," the producer tells. "They kind of disappeared into their room, closed the door on me, and I was just left to my own devices in their house. Then they came out, and they'd had a massive fight in their room, but they wrote most of the lyrics from that fight.
"I wanted this song to stay true to what we did that day, and for it to be about how someone has to be vulnerable, someone has to take the first step to close the distance. So most of the song is about the feeling of being cold, because you're alone, or trying to rectify something to make it warm again, but then the very end of the song is hopeful that you don't have to be cold alone. You can do it together."
Distance has been on Abrams' mind for obvious reasons over the last couple of years, but it's also something he's had to navigate through a career that's required him to at times spend a lot of time away from those he loves.
"The Waters Between isn't a concept record like the last few. The only [requirement] for me was that I wanted everything on this album to be about emotional distance, because when I started the album I was spending a lot of time away from my wife and our first child, in LA – spending big chunks of time there and just craving physical proximity. That's the only loose anchor."
Abrams and his partner are now settled in Hawke's Bay with their two boys, and he says he's happy to be spending more time at home, as well as the general shift in gears.
"I've enjoyed having a really structured routine, hardly travelling like I used to, and I'm completely comfortable doing stuff online. Certain things can be a little tricky, because when you're in a city like Auckland, or LA, or Sydney you create opportunities by just being around people. But hey, you can't have it all."
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