Review
Genre and Mood
Alle Farben and Graham Candy found a natural match on Sometimes, a deep-house pop song with an electronic shimmer and a summer heart. It is bittersweet, dreamy and uplifting at once, the sound of a sunny day with a little cloud in it.
Song Summary
The song is about the days that do not go to plan, the ups and downs everyone knows, and the quiet hope that things will turn around. Alle Farben builds a soft, bouncing groove of warm bass, gentle kicks and bright melodic touches, and Graham Candy’s high, fluttering voice carries the melody with a fragility that makes the simple lyric feel personal. The memorable detail is that voice: once heard, it is hard to mistake. The production never fights it. The beat stays light and springy, leaving the voice room to wobble and soar, so the song feels like a walk along a Berlin canal on a warm afternoon, somewhere between happy and homesick.
Musical Breakdown
The track sits comfortably between radio pop and the lighter end of the club.
Intro
A bright, gentle melody and a soft beat establish a sunny, open mood.
Verse 1
Graham Candy enters intimate and wavering, setting out the song’s mixed feelings with disarming directness.
Build-up
The groove fills in, bass and percussion pushing the energy steadily upward.
Chorus
The hook arrives with a warm lift, light enough for a summer playlist and moving enough to stick.
Outro
The melody circles back and fades, leaving a mood that is both happy and wistful.
Concepts in Focus
Underneath Sometimes runs a house groove played softly: a steady kick on every beat, light percussion between the kicks and a warm bass, all kept low in intensity. This is deep house in its pop form. The rhythm comes from the club, but it is mixed to support a singer rather than to push a dance floor, which is why the song works on daytime radio as well as late at night.
The hook is Graham Candy’s voice. He sings high, often slipping toward a light falsetto with a quick, nervous vibrato, and that quality, which Wikipedia calls quirky and high-range, is what made his collaborations with Alle Farben stand out. On a house track the vocal is usually one layer among many; here the production steps back so the voice can be the most distinctive sound in the mix.
Sometimes also had a life as a remix. In 2015 the Dutch duo Mr. Belt & Wezol reworked it for clubs, a common path for melodic album tracks of this era: the vocal stays, while a new beat and arrangement move the song toward a harder dance floor. Bakermat did the same for the album’s single She Moves; compare the saxophone-led warmth of his own Bakermat – The River.
Artistic Context
Alle Farben is the alias of Berlin DJ and producer Frans Zimmer, raised in Kreuzberg, who started DJing in Berlin clubs and bars in 2010 and took his name, which means “all colours”, after first calling himself “Hundert Farben” in homage to the painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Sometimes is the seventh track of his debut album Synesthesia – I Think in Colours, released on 25 May 2014 through Kallias and Sony Music; the title links his colourful name to the idea of hearing in colours. Graham Candy, a singer and actor from Auckland, New Zealand, moved to Berlin in 2013 and sings on two of the album’s songs: Sometimes and the single She Moves (Far Away).
Impact and Reception
She Moves (Far Away) was the album’s breakthrough, reaching number 9 in Germany and earning Graham Candy his first gold single; Sometimes followed as the pair’s second song together and, according to Wikipedia, helped bring Candy to prominence alongside it. It did not match She Moves on the charts, but it kept a long tail on deep-house compilations and in remix form, including the 2015 Mr. Belt & Wezol version. It remains a clear snapshot of the moment when gentle, melodic German house crossed into the pop mainstream. Put it on for a slow summer evening and enjoy its small dose of melancholy.
