Strangers coming to streaming on 3/18 Share your thoughtsmore

Love Me is a feel-good song that addresses the harsh and unrealistic standards of beauty for young women. I wanted to create a fun song with catchy lyrics for a different demographic than I generally cater to: young girls. When I first heard the beat for Love Me, I wanted to go in a completely different direction with the song. I had thought it would be a Justin Bieber/Chance the Rapper/Khalid “The One” type song. Fun, bouncy, catchy, and yeah, a little swaggy. I had pictured this being a song that my friends and I would have listened to in the car on a summer day headed towards the beach. And while it is that kind of song, in a sense—it’s definitely not what I had originally planned on it being. My writing process is: Listen to a beat and freestyle over it, recording myself into the voice memos section of my phone so I don’t forget what I’ve said or how I’ve delivered lines, and then write down those lyrics and refine them a bit. But I rarely, rarely end up changing the lyrics and flow. So I let the song be whatever it is organically… That’s how I think life should be and that’s what I’d like my music to be: whatever it takes shape as. Love Me wound up being more of an anthem for younger girls in my mind. I had pictured my niece listening to it and a younger version of myself (middle school and early high school). Keeping that in mind, at that stage of life, the beauty standards for girls/young women can be brutal and completely unrealistic. And now, with social media and the ability to edit photos, use filters, and frankly the accessibility of botox, fillers, and cosmetic procedures—the pressure to conform to these “beauty standards” has multiplied. As we continue to normalize altering our bodies for cosmetic purposes, we continue to apply pressure to those to conform… or be perceived as “lesser than.” Quite frankly: this is a shitty way of shaping our culture. While it may not serve the pockets of the cosmetic industry, it’s important to push back and remind ourselves (especially our sponge-like youth) that we are beautiful and worthy as is. Exactly as we were born, exactly as we are in our most natural state, with crooked teeth, frizzy-hair, finger hair, toe hair, acne, extra subcutaneous fats, etc etc. Full disclosure: this song I really contemplated on not releasing publicly. I didn’t want it to change my “image” in any sort of negative way. I knew that the majority of my listeners were not the tween/teen girls so I hesitated because I didn’t want to “lose” fans. But at the end of the day, this is an important message I wanted to get out and I enjoy the song. So to me, that’s all the matters. If I lose fans or if people don’t “get it,” that’s fine. All it means is that it wasn’t for them. So as always, I want to end by encouraging any of the other musicians who may be reading this to get clear about what your primary goals are for music and let that guide the way. If you want fame and status, well then you have to understand that you may be chaining yourself to the very fickle desires of others. That means you’re making music for a set of people and they’ll be essentially controlling your public image and your music… and I would argue that ultimately winds up controlling yourself in totality because music and public image bleed together into our truest selves. This means releasing music that you are guessing your fans will like, it’s catering that to them. (And there’s nothing wrong with this, as long as it’s truly what you want to do). But if you want to create music that you like or if it’s a cathartic process for you or or or, then it’s a good idea to remind yourself that you aren’t doing it for the streams and the external validation. I speak to myself as I speak to you. Here’s to loving ourselves. more