I get so Nostalgic with you!
Picture taken by the amazing Ricardo Bouyett :)
Boyhood Blog #2
AHHHH. You know that feeling when you’ve been planning something for so long and then you finally get to see it all come to fruition? Well, I have something very exciting to tell you…
My newest single “Nostalgic” is coming out on November 17th!!! (pre-save here)
I’ve been trying to write this song basically my entire life. There’s this very specific genre of music that I like to call tunnel songs–the songs that underscore your Perks of Being a Wallflower moment when you want to feel particularly “infinite”. My version of these songs harken back to 10s alt-pop: soaring, euphoric, and bombastic pop songs that also have this undercurrent of melancholy and yearning; reaching for a moment that has passed or may never happen at all.
I knew I wanted to make a tunnel song and I knew exactly how I wanted it to feel but getting there was nothing short of a logistical nightmare. Throughout the process, I believe I made around 9(?) different iterations, all kind of revolving around the same situation but never truly hitting the nail on the head in one way or another. That is, until lockdown happened.
Much like everyone else, during the pandemic I found my own little weird corner of the internet– the slowed + reverb community on YouTube. Their concept is taking pop songs and (you guessed it) slightly slowing them down and adding a bunch of reverb to them. For some reason, this combination was very comforting to my pandemic-induced anxiety and is something that I still turn to this day. Thank you, YouTube!
One night, I came across a slowed + reverb version of “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry (one of the best pop songs of all time). This particular video has a very striking image of a girl riding on the back of her partner’s motorcycle, riding off into the sunset, while the song plays in the background. The top comment on this video? “This is so nostalgic”...I heard the melody instantly.
Nostalgia is such a loaded concept and it perfectly captured everything I was trying to explain within the song–the joy of first love, the sadness of that time being gone, and the yearning to go back to it once more. Once I had the first draft done, I contacted my collaborator Wonderarp and he immediately knew what I was going for: BIG drums, heavy synths, and atmospheric emotion. The song was everything I wanted it to be and more.
There’s a whole part 2 to this song’s saga, but I think that one deserves its own blog post :)
For now…
What I’ve been listening to: as we all know, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is out now, but I feel like it is my gay duty to inform you. Also have not stopped listening to “One of Your Girls”
Playlist shoutout: you can check out my monthly music update here