A Chat with Sean Bertram (16.06.25)
‘What’s On Your Mind’, the most recent single from Canadian singer-songwriter and producer Sean Bertram, marks his comeback. Wrapped in a lively, danceable beat, the song is a dynamic and emotionally impactful exploration of the intricacies of love, communication, and unsaid tension. We speak with Sean Bertram to discuss his new single ‘What’s On Your Mind’, and more below.
OSR: ‘What’s On Your Mind’ feels incredibly personal. What was the very first spark of the song?
Bertram: I wrote this song near the end of a 5-year-long relationship. It was at a point where I think we both knew it was going to end, and I was reflecting on what had gone wrong in those five years – what could have changed, how things could’ve been prevented, if they even should have been prevented, all those kinds of things. And I thought about how so many problems could have just been solved with honest communication. That’s when the first verse immediately sprang into my mind: “If only I could read your mind/This wouldn’t feel like such a test/If only you would tell me why/Then I wouldn’t have to guess”.
OSR: How do you balance emotional vulnerability with the upbeat energy in your music?
Bertram: I think it’s almost a reflex at this point; I have a hard time opening up and being vulnerable, so being able to kind of bury that vulnerability and the more personal messages of a song in an exciting groove feels like it takes away some of the fear of baring my soul. I feel like it’s become somewhat of a signature for me, the more I write music, and I’ve come to really enjoy the juxtaposition of that music/lyric relationship. It’s something I’ve started to lean into more and more because of that, and the balance seems to take care of itself.
OSR: You layered 17 guitar parts and 36 vocal tracks. What was the most challenging part of building this song?
Bertram: Building the song actually came very naturally, since I had most of the ideas for each part in my head as I was writing it. It was one of those songs where, even though I was writing it on just an acoustic guitar, I could instantly hear what I wanted the entire full production to sound like. The most challenging part, however, was mixing the song once I’d layered all of these different parts; this was the first song I mixed for the new album and it was a daunting task trying to balance and blend every track, but once I finished that and got the song to sound how it did in my head, I was confident I could tackle the rest of the songs on the album with ease.
OSR: Did you always envision the track sounding as danceable as it does, or did that evolve during production?
Bertram: I did always imagine it to be a very upbeat, danceable song right from the start. At the time I wrote it, I was listening almost exclusively to a mix of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, which had just come out. Jared Gershon, my co-producer, and I really loved the production on that Dua Lipa album and wanted to try and imbue ‘What’s On Your Mind’ with that energy, while also taking some influence from Off the Wall, specifically how the drums and percussion are treated and presented on that album.
OSR: How did your collaboration with Jared Gershon shape the final version of the track?
Bertram: Jared and I have been working together for ages now; we were playing in bands together all through university and all over Toronto, and we’ve always shared the same musical sensibilities, so whenever we’re in the studio together, it’s always super fun and feels effortless. On this song especially, when I sent him the first demo I made, he immediately understood what I was going for and knew just what to do to elevate it. He brought so much energy to the track with some incredible percussion and loops, and as always, put down such a groovy drum part. One of my favourite parts of the song that he played is something you can hear best in the first chorus and the bridge – he placed pots and pans on the floor of his studio and, using a combination of drumsticks, chopsticks, and his hands, played a really cool part that counterbalances the kit and other percussive elements. We had both been talking about our shared love of Phil Collins’ ‘Trashin’ the Camp’ from Tarzan, so he took some direct inspiration from that, and it’s something that I think adds a fair bit of magic to this song.
OSR: Was there a lyric or moment in the song that felt especially cathartic to write or sing?
Bertram: The bridge overall is definitely the most cathartic part of the song for me. Lyrically, it’s really simple – just two lines that repeat (“Won’t you trust me like I’m trusting you?/Don’t you love me like I’m loving you?”) – but it’s just such an honest and raw outpouring of the emotions I was feeling at the time. Near the end of that relationship, it was starting to feel more and more one-sided every day, like I was putting so much into it and never feeling like that was ever going to be reciprocated. Being able to balance that emotion musically with an almost aggressive slap bass part I’d written and a frenetic Rhodes part that comes into the second half of the bridge, helps to build that emotional pressure, which finally gets to release once the final chorus kicks in. Writing and recording that bridge was very freeing.
OSR: You’ve cited artists like Prince and Michael McDonald. What elements of their work influence your approach?
Bertram: I’ve always been a massive Prince fan (thanks to my mom’s music taste), and I take so much inspiration from his guitar playing. His rhythm parts, especially, tone-wise and arrangement-wise, are just masterful. ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ was a song that was going through my head a lot while working on this song. And beyond that, of course, his overall musicianship and the energy he brought to every song, whether it was live or in the studio, is always something I’m trying to aim for.
Michael McDonald is someone I got into more recently. I heard his album If That’s What It Takes for the first time a few years ago, and it’s been one of my all-time favourites ever since. That album specifically is a masterclass in writing, arranging, and studio musicianship. Producing this new album, I took a huge amount of inspiration from how each of those songs is put together, especially how he layers and writes guitar and keyboard parts.
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OSR: Do you write from a therapeutic place, or do songs often surprise you emotionally as they develop?
Bertram: I find it changes song by song. I don’t think I’ve ever written two songs the same way; they all come from a different emotional place, start on a different instrument, or are inspired by something else. Sometimes, like with ‘What’s On Your Mind’, it’s definitely from a therapeutic place, where I’m trying to sort out my own emotions about a specific situation, and the song helps to lay them out more clearly and concretely. Other times it will end up surprising me, where I might just start with a chord progression that I really like and then an unexpected outpouring of emotions or thoughts follows. I think I used to be more deliberate and academic with my songwriting, but these days I find myself leaning more in the direction of letting the song lead me and tell me where it wants to go, rather than the other way around.
OSR: What’s something about this track that most listeners probably won’t catch on first listen?
Bertram: Since there are so many parts layered on top of each other in this song, it excites me to imagine that people will be able to pick out new pieces with each consecutive listen, especially if they listen in different ways (phone speakers vs. car speakers vs. headphones, etc.) to hear the nuances of the mix. But something specific that most people probably won’t notice right away is that the bridge has a different time feel than the rest of the song. It’s a bit of a subtle music nerd thing, but the entire song has a sixteenth note swing to it (subdividing each beat into four parts, every other one of those four parts has a slightly shorter time value than the one before it, providing some momentum into the next note). In the bridge, however, it switches to a straight time feel (each of those subdivisions has the exact same time value, so every beat is split evenly into four). This was really fun to orchestrate and helps the bridge stand out in more ways than one, at the same time giving the final choruses that follow it even more perceived groove by switching back to the sixteenth note swing. Again, a very subtle nerdy thing, but a lot of people won’t consciously notice it, especially on first listen.
OSR: Looking back at when you first wrote this in 2020, how does it feel to release it now?
Bertram: It feels like a sigh of relief to finally have this song out in the world. It was already cathartic to write the song, but it was still pent up for so long with only me to hear it. Now that I’m kind of releasing it into the wild, it’s like I nursed a baby bird back to health, and now I finally get to watch it fly.
Many thanks to Sean Bertram for speaking with us. Find out more about Sean Bertram on his Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify.
