Songs I Wrote in My Late Twenties
I was ready to move on. And as soon as I did, it was like the floodgates opened. Songs came pouring out.
This is part 3 of a series. To read part 1, click here. To read part 2, click here.
Hiya!
I’m currently working through a little retrospective of music I’ve made in the last decade of my life. Last week I went over songs I made when I was between 23 and 26.
Now it’s time to move on.
I teased a little last week that I started to have trouble writing in my mid-twenties. This was down to a few things:
learning a whole bunch of rules and ways to write songs which left me feeling uncreative
being mentored by a teacher I admired but we were spreading my work too thin
working a low-income job on my feet all day
living in a studio apartment with my boyfriend at the time who was also a musician
…realising that relationship wasn’t working and knowing that if I wrote songs, my true feelings would come out
Have you ever been scared to look at your life too closely, because you know what you’ll find?
Eventually I couldn’t ignore it. I had to break up with him, it was painful but we had run our course. I was ready to move on.
And as soon as I did, it was like the floodgates opened.
Songs came pouring out.
And the first song I wrote was obviously going to be a breakup song.
The Way We Were
Oh I could never hold you
In the way that I once used to
‘Cause I told you that I wanted to let go…
‘The Way We Were’ is about that moment after you end a relationship but you still miss being with someone. You want to have that person to hug and call at the end of the day but you know that you can’t go back, you have to keep moving forward.
I got really into Phoebe Bridgers at this time (this was pre-Punisher I think), and Anaïs Mitchell (member of Bonny Light Horseman and creator of Hadestown), and Tallest Man on Earth.
I genuinely had Tallest Man on Earth playing on a loop in my house for a good few months. It was like a salve to my broken heart. Boo hoo hoo!
Whilst absorbing all of this inspiration, I was starting to play guitar differently. You can hear it in The Way We Were — that fingerpicking style was coming into my repertoire. Also, and this was definitely a Tallest Man on Earth influence, I had started using open tuning (which is where you tune all your strings on your guitar to make a chord). I still use Open G just as often as Standard tuning, these days.
After falling out of love, I stumbled back into it, head over heels. One of the things which thrilled me about this new relationship was that this guy (who is still my guy to this day) was into the same music as I was. Punk, Country, Rock, Pop. I told him my favourite Magnetic Fields song and he told me he had a tattoo for it on his chest.
He told me he loved all my INKA stuff, when I wrote short, funny, scrappy songs. I was feeling inspired by all the emotions I was having around this time, but also inspired by the music we both loved, and I wanted to create something fun and raw and true.
When You Walk In
I wrote ‘When You Walk In’ about falling in love and wanting to gush about it and that rushing feeling of discovering something new about yourself. The chorus goes, didn’t know I had a language inside of me, but it talks when you walk in. Because that’s how I felt! I felt like all of a sudden I had this thing inside me which had been there all along which was finally able to come to the surface. Dawwwww. Being in love is fun!
Production-wise, I just wanted something that sounded crunchy and lo-fi. I sent the song to a guy I’d met at a gig whose songwriting I loved, and he added most of the production, including that great little glockenspiel line which reinforces the chorus melody. Check out his band, Preen.
‘When You Walk In’, despite being written after all my breakup songs which would make up my EP Hurricane, was the first song I ever released on Spotify. I remember the day it came out — I was working in the cafe and walked in to my coworkers blasting it and dancing behind the counter.
For the music video my sister and I came up with the idea of a cowboy dancing very far away, the camera slowly zooming in. When it comes to music videos I try to use the limitations to my advantage — so I leant in to the blurry, lo-fi aspect of the footage, until it became a clear a stylistic choice. Also I always think music videos are bolstered by stories within them. So we gave this cowboy a story. Many thanks again to my sis’ husband James who was roped in to play the cowboy before he even knew it!
Pandemic Boombox Anthems
‘The Way We Were’ and ‘When You Walk In’ were written years before they were released. It took me a while to get myself to the point where I could organise myself and get the courage to find producers and mixers to help me make music which was Spotify-worthy.
But I would say the thing that helped me get to that point was a little EP of demos I posted to Bandcamp during the pandemic. I got super-inspired by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, who grabbed his old panasonic boombox during lockdown and recorded an album of songs, Songs for Pierre Chuvin. John Darnielle has always been a beacon artist for me, a ‘if-he-can-do-it-I-can-do-it-too’ person.
I thought back to when I was a kid and my favourite thing to do was record myself and my sister on cassette, making up songs and pretending we had a radio show. So I bought a boombox off of Ebay. And I recorded some small songs straight on to a cassette.
I Miss Everything is about, uhhhhh, missing everything, because you’re on lockdown. I was in my London house with one of my flatmates for that first COVID bout, and she played the piano on this song.
I miss holding you, I miss knowing you, I miss everything
From My Twenties To My Thirties
Now, we’re all caught up, just about! I am in my thirties and making music in bigger and better ways, maybe now you can see the journey I’ve been on to get here.
So now is the time that I want to tell you about my next project, my debut album. It’s called Typical Forever, and if you’ve been following this newsletter for some time, you’ll know that it’s a concept album about geology. Songs about volcanoes, fossils, earthquakes… but also about being human.
I am absolutely pooping my pants as I write this but I have completed the album and am now running a Kickstarter to get it released!!! I am launching it on Monday 15th April and you can click below to see the pre-launch page and get notified when the campaign is live:
Your support will allow me to distribute this album, get it on the radio and also manufacture CDs to give to backers and sell at future shows.
If you have any questions about the Kickstarter just hit reply to this email and I’ll get back to you asap!
🎙 Upcoming Gigs
I’m playing London and Glasgow in April! Get your tickets now:
TONIGHT! London, 11th April: Stories in Song, @ The Green Note | Buy tickets
Glasgow, 27th April: With Fergus McNeill, @ The Dream Machine | Buy Tickets
✍️ JOIN ME IN THE COMMENTS…
Have you ever gone through an extended writer’s block? Why did it end?
Did you have a pandemic art project?
What song that I’ve shared so far has been your favourite?
Wanna hear the songs I write now? Check out some ways you can support me & my music:
buying a ‘Gneiss Guy’ tote bag on my Bandcamp
listening to my music on Spotify (or not, if you’ve read my last newsletter)
buy my music on Bandcamp and make a real difference
forwarding this newsletter to a friend!
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Til next time! Be good,
Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶