This is the first in a series of posts which will unravel the stories behind the songs of my debut album (ahem, available right HERE), giving you a chance to have a good old nosey into my past! Haha!

I’m going to start with the story behind track 8, Give Me The Good Stuff.

In the summer of 2009 I found myself in Rio De Janeiro, floating blissfully between playing volleyball on the beach, and swimming through the night on a cool sea of caipirinha and Carioca beats.

On my last night in Rio, I met a Scandinavian girl, who I would ultimately spend the next few weeks travelling south with, through various parts of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and finally Argentina. By the time we were in Argentina, we had grown close and were enjoying the fruits of our summer romance. It was passionate, carefree, complete hedonism. Those last few days in Buenos Aires were some of the best I’ve ever had, and as I reluctantly left to fly back home for my graduation ceremony in Durham, I remember feeling a rare moment of complete happiness.

I landed into Heathrow, straight onto a train to Durham, one last night of mayhem in the local nightclub, wake up, pick up my degree, smile for the camera and straight in the car to London, where I had a couple of days to get find a place to live ahead of starting my new life as an Investment Banker. I wasn’t super happy about going into banking, but with no money left and a generous serving of social pressure and long-developed family expectations, into the rat-race I crawled.

3 weeks in and I still hadn’t taken a day off. If I wasn’t sitting through mind-numbing tutorials or forced ‘networking events’, I was prepping for the looming regulatory exams. I couldn’t help but quietly mourn the loss of my recent happiness as I slowly acknowledged the bare feeling of unfulfilment.

In the cold of my new penthouse apartment, there was only one person I wanted to see. I wanted her to walk through the door and rescue me from this grey bullshit world. I wanted her to lift me, warm me, Give Me The Good Stuff that I pined for. But, she was miles away, floating around Peru somewhere.

So at 4am, I stood at the keyboard and by 4.20am I’d written the song. I played it over and over until sunrise, void of the knowledge that I would go on to play the song in a recording studio 15 months later, void of the knowledge that I would go on to play the song to her 18 months later, drunkenly perched outside a London cocktail bar.

It was just a normal day. I was finding a seat on the morning train, coming back to London from the place where I call home: Yorkshire. I get to my table and sit down, and within 2 minutes a very rude old man starts abruptly ordering this other woman to take her handbag out of the aisle. They have a little argument, where she asks him not to be so rude, but ultimately she complies to his order. It really upsets her and was needlessly mean, but in true British fashion, everyone pretended that it didn’t happen. Even me.

I kept looking at this woman for the next 5 minutes and she was looking really angry with herself and I could see that this had really impacted her. So, I decided I would write her a short note to cheer her up. It said,

‘He is a wanker. Don’t let him make you have a bad day. It’s sunny outside and it’s Friday tomorrow : )’

As I showed her the note, she looked at me with total confusion (why is this stranger giving me a note?), and then as she read it she exhaled and a big smile came across her face. She silently gestured thanks as I returned to my seat. I sat back, feeling good that I’d helped, and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She had a huge smile on her face, and a few minutes later was giggling on the phone to her friend. It made me feel so good to have helped that stranger. I didn’t have to do that, but I was so glad that I did. In a weird way it cheered me up too, because I had a rare feeling of pride in myself!

It was then that I decided that I would start performing similar random acts of kindness wherever possible; helping strangers who need a little help, but would never ask or expect it.

I spend a lot of my time in London, a place with millions of strangers who never acknowledge the presence of anybody else. Despite being surrounded by people, many find London to be a cold and lonely city. I too often feel that way, but I don’t do anything about it. I just become one of the motionless faces on the tube, looking into space with my headphones on. But London is the perfect place to perform these random acts of kindness, because when you take you headphones out and look around, you see that there are hundreds of people all needing a pick me up, as they fight their way through a day in England’s Big City.

So, now I’m going to look around for opportunities to make people’s day’s better, and urge you to have a go at doing the same. We can make the world a little big better! I’ll let you know how I get on! If you’d like to let me know how you get on, message me on my Facebook page, or at info@stephen-ridley.co.uk.  You never know what will happen when you open your heart to the world!

One of the greatest living men, Mr. Will Smith…

“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out and say ‘I’m gonna build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that has ever been built’. You say ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid’. You do this every single day, and soon you have a wall… There is no reason to have a plan B because it distracts you from plan A.”