The "Liar" Song Story
You’re not creative! You’re not him, or her. You’re nothing like them. You’re cool or whatever but this is more of a hobby for you, and over there they’re really living this…
All of this and more speeds through the intersection of my head on any given day. So imagine how weird it was when I got this crazy idea out of nowhere.
Wandering through the autoplay feature of YouTube late one evening, I randomly started to wonder if I could flip a song sample. It’s a bit crazy because technically I’d be sampling a sample. At the time of this idea, I hadn’t touched a sampler or even a keyboard, in years! So it was definitely a bit of a reach. But I couldn’t get this is line out of my head. The line, the voice, the way it was expressed all converged in my imagination and echoed a truth that not many of us reside in comfortably. All of us have heard the language of doubt and what if’s. It drives us one way, towards the comfortable apathy of risk-free living. But what if this simple line could sow a seed of truth that would germinate and burst through the gardens of lies planted by us, others, even our places of origin? I couldn’t escape it.
For a few hours I spent my time working on the “how” instead of dreading the “if,” and soon afterwards the line was freed from my imagination and came to life on the canvas of my MacBook Pro. Admittedly, I was a little surprised- but I didn’t have time to celebrate because now I was hearing music and melody too. What I thought would be a dope line was becoming a dope song.
The next day I came back to the track and built out musical spaces for verses and a chorus having no idea who would be on the song. There weren’t even any prospects. A couple days later I found out that a guy that I’ve known for like 17 years was recording music again after a hiatus. During the same few days, my wife (the most brilliant person I know) reminded me about how talented my younger sister-in-love is. After a brief conversation with both of them I had artists on the song. All I had to give them was the story of my initial struggles with fear and the truth that I heard every time I’d quiet my soul.
With that, a beat, and horrible rendition of the chorus featuring me singing into my phone, they went to work with the pen. Soon we were recording this song called Liar. It actually took us about 8 months of writing and re-writing, mixing and remixing (way longer than it usually takes to make any music) because every step of the way we heard and thought about every possible reason why we shouldn’t finish it, let alone release it. But the heart of the song wouldn’t let us quit.
“There are far too many amazingly talented people being haunted by their great ideas AND the fear that they aren’t good or creative enough to make them happen”