I was crouched in the stairwell of a London hostel in the summer of 1999 when I first jotted down verse ideas for "Uptown." I remember looking up from a red notebook that was all torn and crumpled up from travelling and seeing a girl looking like a Spanish princess coming down those stairs smiling at me.

Before I knew what hit me she had sat down and started charming me with a thick accent that beckoned me to some sleepy tavern inn off the beaten pathways of Madrid. She spoke English and Spanish to me just the same and kept eyeing that bent up old red notebook. It didn't take her long to ask me what I was writing in there so I told her it was a song called "Uptown." She said she wanted to see it so I handed the notebook over to her and let her have a look.

She read the page, smiled at me again, asked me for my pen, and wrote something down with a mysterious grin on the edges of her lips. Then she closed up the red notebook, gave me back my pen and kissed me on my mouth before standing back up and continuing down the stairs towards the London summer night lights.