The Story Behind "Make Me Free"
This month's release is the final installment in our Year of the Groove [where we've put out one electronic music release a month for a year,] and what a year it has been! As much as I'm tempted to launch into a recap of the Year of the Groove, that is for another blog post. Today is all about this month's maxi single "Make Me Free". Giddyup!
The Story Behind "Human" - Dedicated to Nichole Nordeman
I'm excited to tell the story behind this song because the past two months' singles had much different inceptions than this release. Instead of writing to someone else's target given for a pitch opportunity and having to crank it out in a couple of days, this song came to be through the more artistic and organically inspired path. I simply wrote it because I wanted to. It was something on my heart, the melody just "came to me" as the muse whispered it in my ear, and I documented what was forming in my head as I went about my days. I'm going to break it down into the various facets and talk about the reasons and creative process.
Moms and non-Moms both: Supermodel Astronauts!
Last October our Year of the Groove release was the electropop song Supermodel Astronaut. At the time I'd posted my Supermodel Astronaut Manifesto blog entry, but at the advice of someone close to me, I ended up taking it down when we got Huffington Post coverage for the Supermodel Astronaut Challenge. I couldn't predict where the media would take it, and I didn't want my words to be misconstrued and scrutinized, and sometimes you just don't know how other people will perceive things. But now that the spotlight's not shining so brightly on this, I want my words to live because I believe that women being hard on themselves is just a reflection of how culture can be hard on females in general.
The unorthodox story behind "Until I Have You"
As so often is the case, the path to creating anything is rarely short or straight, and this song is no exception.
As I've written in the past, one of the few remaining ways for songwriters/artists/producers to make money with music anymore is to license songs to film, TV, and advertising. Sometimes we get an email that has come to us [and goodness knows how many others], giving the specifics of what someone is looking for. Sometimes there's another song they've temped into their video, but it's a song that's either unavailable or too expensive and they want something that FEELS and SOUNDS like that song, but is NOT that song. And sometimes we decide to set everything else aside and do our best to crank something out that might fit their needs, in hopes that we might land the license and pay some bills.
Photo Shoots, Shoot outs, and a tick...
Recently Kurt and I had a photo shoot since we were running out of images to get us through the Year of the Groove. It's always kind of funny to me when, from the outside looking in, my life might seem a little extra glamorous for a day. I always feel like I need to make clear to people that it is only a mirage. And it's not even that people around me think my life is glamorous, because all they need to do is come to my house and see that my recycling is piling up, I only fold my laundry once a season, and nothing more than 12" back in my fridge is probably safe for human consumption. But online, it's so easy to filter what gets posted, and only allow the majority of acquaintances to get a glimpse of the highlights. [Don't we all do this? This is why we should never compare ourselves to others.]