Sly was the combination of Craig Armstrong’s strings combined with Nicolette’s unique sensual vocals. Massive Attack had chosen Nicolette to appear on the album Protection after hearing her first album Now is Early and being suitably impressed by it.
Nicolette on why she choose to work with Massive...
[Verse 1: Nicolette]
I try to believe what I feel these days
It makes life much easier for me
It's hard to decide what is real these days
When things look so dizzy to me
[Pre-Chorus: Nicolette]
I already know my children's children's faces
Voices that I've heard before
There's always more
There's always more
[Chorus: Nicolette]
Wondering, leaving the sea behind
To my home which everybody owns
Wondering, wandering
Where we can do what we please, wondering
[Verse 2: Nicolette]
I feel like a thousand years have passed
I'm younger than I used to be
I feel like the world is my home at last
I know everyone that I meet
[Pre-Chorus: Nicolette]
Somewhere in the music I can hear the bells
I heard a thousand years before
There's always more
There's always more
[Chorus: Nicolette]
Wondering is this there all there is
Since I was since I began to be?
Wondering, wandering
Where we can do what we please, wondering
Sly was written by Nellee Hooper & Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles & Robert “3D” del Naja & Grantley “Daddy G” Marshall & Nicolette & Vivien Goldman.
Sly was produced by Massive Attack & Nellee Hooper.
Massive Attack released Sly on Mon Sep 26 1994.
3D on working with Craig Armstrong during the making of Sly [The Wire – September 1994]:
To sort him out we gave him a lot of influential tracks, a lot of 50s big band music like Les Baxter and stuff and really filled him in on what we wanted. And given like four or five reference tracks and the gr...