Where do songs come from? For Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Lew, the title track of his new album, Destiny, emerged from his sleep.
“I remember having a dream where I just felt a feeling of empowerment—I woke up and I just carried this feeling,” Lew tells the Toronto Spark in an interview along the False Creek seawall near his home in Vancouver.
“I literally went over to the piano and it seemed like the melodies just flowed out. And it was neat.”
The catchy and emotionally laden chorus also came quickly. In that period of his life, Lew was reading a book by self-help author Joe Dispenza. The indie songwriter believes that this likely informed—on an unconscious level—the optimistic lyrics in “Destiny”.
“It’s very metaphorical of each step that I take in my journey, manifesting the next step,” he says. “It’s like watering a plant that keeps growing and growing and growing. So, the song ‘Destiny’ really embodies that.”
Lew is not the first musician to write a song following a dream. Keith Richards has said the same thing led to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, as did Jimi Hendrix for “Purple Haze”. Another musical icon, Paul McCartney, has revealed that two of his greatest compositions, “Let It Be” and “Yesterday”, originated in his sleep.
“I always thought ‘that’s very peculiar how someone can have such a beautiful piece of music come to them in his dream,’ ” Lew says. ” ‘Destiny’ was one of the first ones where that happened for me. It was really surreal.”
Daniel Lew performed “Destiny” at last year’s Jade Music Fest.
Destiny leads Lew to Visa card creator
Another track on Destiny, “Trade It All Away”, has an entirely different origin. Lew is also a physiotherapist with an inquisitive mind. One day, he was curious to know who invented the Visa credit card, so he went on Google to find the answer.
He discovered that the founder was a former banker, Dee Hock, who resigned in 1984 to pursue his passion for farming. Hock had a Twitter account, which listed his email account.
“I had never heard of him despite him starting something so gargantuan in society in terms of the financial world and banking system,” Lew says. “So, I emailed him—I had some questions for him. He responded to me within 12 hours and shared a little bit about his story.”
They continued corresponding couple more times over the course of a year. Through these emails, Lew realized that Hock had managed to retain values that he picked up as a kid growing up on a farm. In 2022, Hock died, which motivated Lew to offer a musical tribute.
“I thought it was time to write the song because I learned from him,” Lew discloses. “He shared some wisdom from his life and the journey that he had been on. So, I put that into the song.”
Lew likens his creative process to a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece comes together over time. The music usually arises first, followed by the lyrics.
However, in the case of “Stand Up for Ourselves” featuring Caroline Ding, the words emerged first. In this Dylan-esque harmonic rap, Lew and Ding urge listeners to respond to anti-Asian hatred with a “kick-kick-kick like Bruce Lee”.
“Songwriting is definitely like a muscle that has to be exercised,” he says. “You gain some momentum once you start doing it more frequently.”
A very long road trip
Lew also loves performing live, whether it’s busking on Granville Island or singing to larger audiences at the Jade Music Fest. He recently returned from a cross-country tour that began in Kamloops and Salmon Arm and concluded in Montreal. Along the way, he performed in communities Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.
“I probably put in over 10,000 kilometres,” Lew says. “That’s the most I’ve ever driving in my life—and I was driving alone. You can’t imagine how much time was spent in reflection.”
One of Lew’s more popular songs from Destiny is “Man in the Captain’s Seat”. According to the songwriter, it’s drawing online listeners in the U.K., Germany, Norway, and Sweden. Lew acknowledges that he was influenced by David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, which is famous for the lyric “Ground Control to Major Tom”.
However, rather than telling a similar story from perspective of a male astronaut, Lew shares the feelings of an astronaut’s wife in “Man in the Captain’s Seat”. It’s full of emotion, as he demonstrates in an impromptu performance while sitting on the bench.
“It’s not necessarily Major Tom himself, but it was inspired by that concept of watching your partner go off into space,” he says. “It’s uncharted territory. You’re left behind to fend for yourself.”
After he sang “Man in the Captain’s Seat” in Waterloo, Ontario, a woman complimented Lew on his performance. She told Lew that he reminded her of legendary Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
“I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s an honour!’ I don’t know if my name should be in the same sentence,” Lew says modestly.
“Music is meant to be shared”
Another tour highlight came in Thunder Bay. When he rolled into the Ontario city, he learned that the local CBC radio station had played the evocative “Let the Angels Shine” from Destiny. He was thrilled that it was aired alongside an Otis Redding classic, “Sitting on the Dock of a Bay”.
At nearly every stop on his tour, Lew shared a story about performing “Let the Angels Sing” at a Vancouver SkyTrain station. On this occasion, a woman was on the way to the airport and asked if Lew would sing a song. He replied, “Of course. It’s music. It’s meant to be shared.”
By the end of the song, the woman was in tears. She asked Lew if she could give him a hug. It caught him off-guard but he said “Okay”.
“Two strangers are having this embrace, pull apart,” Lew recalls, “and she tells me she’s on her way to Calgary to visit her father, who is potentially on his death bed in the hospital.”
The woman told him that despite her situation, his song still uplifted her spirit and washed away her negativity. To Lew, it was a reminder that even as he tries to build his career as a singer-songwriter, incidents like this always supersede commercial considerations.
“It comes back to what I think is the power of music.”
Visit Daniel Lew’s website or follow him on Instagram @danlew_. Learn more about diverse communities from the Toronto Spark website. Follow the Toronto Spark on X @TOSparkOfficial.
