Wildest Dreams

“When the pandemic hit, it's like there was nothing else to do, so we made an album,” says Majid Al Maskati of the Canadian duo Majid Jordan. But really, the seeds were being planted for Wildest Dreams, their third LP, long before, as they were riding the success of 2017's The Space Between. Between touring and traveling—in hotels and tour buses, in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Bahrain—they were consistently working on music, evolving into an even more polished version of themselves. “I think looking back to our last album, the music is like a photograph that we were able to see who we were then and where we are now,” producer Jordan Ullman tells Apple Music. “I think there's just a lot of growth—musical growth, personal growth, our family and friends, our circles getting a little bigger, thankfully—and we were able to put together an album that represents that hiatus.”

The result is something like ecstasy unmuted. From the opening seconds of the synth-pop jam “Dancing on a Dream” to the final moments of the tranquil serenade “Sweet,” Majid Jordan zeroes in on the weightlessness that comes with surrendering to love, hope, and joy. “When Maj and I got together at the beginning, we wanted to make music for the people around us and ourselves,” Jordan says. “That positivity in our music is really a lifestyle that we hold close to us—we're here to make people enjoy themselves.” “It's like we're on the edge of our wildest dreams right now and anything feels like it's possible,” Majid adds. “I hope people get the chance to breathe the same way that we did.” Here the duo walk through each track on Wildest Dreams.

“Dancing on a Dream” (feat. Swae Lee)
Jordan: “We want people to turn on the album and start enjoying themselves immediately. ‘Dancing on a Dream’ was definitely the select for the first song I think almost the whole time while we were putting together this album. It was also one of the first songs that we got to work with Koz, who co-produced this with us. We started working with Koz on it, and it definitely led to a bunch of other musical journeys on this album, but this one for sure is like the door reopening after years.”

“Summer Rain”
Jordan: “We're influenced by so many different types of music, and definitely one of them is '80s synth dance music that kind of borders on almost like a rock song. We always try to put push ourselves and what we can do and also revisit what we've already done before. ‘Summer Rain’ is definitely a song that musically challenged us and gives that euphoric feeling for a dance record that still has meaning—I think that's really difficult to actually accomplish.”

“Stars Align” (with Drake)
Majid: “‘Stars Align’ is about that perfect moment. It feels like everything coming together. The song title says it all, really—the place and time [when] everything's aligned for these wildest dreams to come true.”

“Waves of Blue”
Majid: “I grew up in Bahrain on an island, so I used to spend a lot of time by the water just imagining what being in love would be like, because I hadn't been in love at that point—I was still young, probably 14, 15. And kind of in a similar vein of ‘Dancing on a Dream,’ ‘Waves of Blue’ is uplifting, and it makes you feel good. That's what we were very intentional with, returning after such a long time and such a difficult time—trying to enhance feelings of positivity and optimism. That feel-good factor, I think, is important for the world right now.”

“Wildest Dreams”
Majid: “We made ‘Wildest Dreams’ the same day we made ‘Summer Rain,’ and that's the funny thing about music—you just don't know where it's going to go. One is very '80s and driving, and one is very slow, very heavy on the bass, and the vocals are going everywhere. But I think the idea was to create a visual, like giving a person a shape that embodies a wild dream and then realizing that even your dreams, your imagination can't create someone that's standing right in front of you. Like ‘it's a miracle God gave me you, there's an angel laying in my bed, broken halo hanging off her head’—it's about people coming together and just that feeling when you open up to somebody.”

“Forget About the Party”
Majid: “I think just like stripping everything back, we don't really have a lot of songs like that on the album. It's a pretty produced album in terms of instrumentation and arrangement and stuff, so we just wanted to have a simple song that was easy to listen to. And also another song with meaning, just that's on an acoustic track, which is something we're learning to accomplish the more we go along. But it's just encouraging people to just kind of let go—the doubts, the fear, the feelings of loss.”
Jordan: “I remember the first time I heard Maj saying the idea, my initial thought was just not to get in the way of it at all. The guitar just accompanies it in a way that I think is the best version of that song. And that I think is also one of the best versions of our music—a stripped-down version where you are just listening to Maj’s voice and just some music that accompanies it.”

“Been Through That”
Majid: “We've all been through when you're looking back on your life, just moments that you had to go through stuff—it's basically that idea. I see you, I recognize that because I've been through that.”
Jordan: “Yeah, and when we can communicate these things to other people, we can forgive ourselves and not hold on to it. To make it something that would be more dark in the production lane, it just didn't make sense. It made sense to make it as fun and groovy as possible, because it's really just kind of a conversation that we're having and put it to a song.”

“Life Worth Living”
Majid: “I think this one is going to be a sleeper weird song that comes back in our career later down the road. Just something about the content of the lyrics: ‘What is a life worth? What is a life that we consider worth living?’ There's some interesting lyrics in the verses—‘you deserve the love you get, people know you from your silhouette, hollow living on time you borrow’—everyone's kind of had those feelings of just like emptiness, but they're being recognized as how they're being perceived and dealing with that. We all just want to get over that and enjoy life.”

“Love Unconditional”
Jordan: “‘Love Unconditional’ actually was an idea that Maj had written about eight years ago, and I came across it. Something about what he was saying really resonated with me at that time, and I kind of just flipped it into something that had more energy. Then Maj just took it over the top with the added hook. It's just something that, like, when I envision some of our music, I envision it in like a live setting, and that one is going to be incredible to experience with people.”
Majid: “And the phrasing of the first line too, ‘I remember when I used to bathe in the comfort of your shade’—it's like a very Arabic type of phrasing that I kind of borrowed from. Just the way that they personify inanimate objects or things like shade. I was just playing with that kind of idea, and then it led into the rest of the song.”

“Sway” (feat. Diddy)
Majid: “[This was] a dream-come-true moment. Someone who made music that reached everywhere in the world, and he was very excited to be a part of the project. He's a fan. He reached out and we said, ‘Well, listen, we have this song that's kind of inspired by the vibes you used to make.’ And we played it for him and he loved it. He FaceTimed me with his whole family dancing by the pool, and he was like, ‘Okay, I'm going to lay something on this tonight.’ We just wanted him to just do his thing, you know, just no rules, create whatever you want to make. It ended up becoming ‘Sway,’ which I think is like a nice party song, just as things are starting to take off for the night.”

“Sweet”
Majid: “I still don't know how we made this one. It was like a 20- to 30-minute thing. I don't know how it happened.”
Jordan: “It's funny, I have the whole video on my phone, 'cause I set up my iPhone when we were first making it, so I have the whole 20 minutes on a video. This was just a moment that Maj and I were in the studio together. It was just us two, and I sat down at a Rhodes [piano] and Maj was singing and something just magical happened that felt very special. We wanted to protect that energy and take our time with it, so I think it only makes sense to leave people on that type of note of hope and love and how special those moments can be.”