David Hodges, my co writer, and I wanted to create a song that would communicate that the “conversation continues” even if someone isn’t in the room. They could be away from you, or in the backyard, or maybe even no longer with you, but love keeps the conversation going. People you love are in your thoughts and the conversation can be just as real as if they were in the room and by your side. There is a deep need to share who we are with people we love even if it is about the mundane things that are happening in our day or the deeper things that may be going on.

The director of A Man Called Otto asked me to write a song for the film. He was familiar with my work as a singer/songwriter and approached me.The songwriter in me was thrilled. As the producer of the film I was a bit anxious because if he didn’t like the song I didn’t want him to feel awkward about having to tell me that. So, we agreed that if he didn’t like the song, we would move on. I reached out to David Hodges to collaborate with because we had written for a movie together before and we had a great experience. Matt Rollings, my co producer, and I worked together on my album Rita Wilson Now and Forever: Duets, and both agreed on what we wanted the production the song to sound like. Strings were very important. There are two versions of the song in the movie. The first one is an acoustic version that David Hodges sings. The end credits version is fully produced and is a duet sung with Sebastián Yatra to give two very different versions of the songs. Needless to say we were pretty excited when the song made the Oscars shortlist in 2023.

Both David and I felt cautiously optimistic when we finished writing the song. I always love each song I work on…they’re all your babies, so it is hard to be objective. But, we felt like we had been able to give the director what he wanted tonally and emotionally. When you are writing for a movie you are writing with a very specific set of guidelines. You want to be subtle and also allude to themes in the film. You try to not be too literal. In this case, the director, Marc Forster, knew where he wanted to use the song in the body of the film and also in the end credits. So, we knew there would be two different experiences of the song which made it really fun to do. We tracked the song acoustically and with a full band and a strings section. Because the duet has a male and female voice, we had to modulate it so that it could work for both our voices. I really liked that because it lifts the song and gives it a sense of being more positive and emotional.