I love writing. I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. Nothing great, mind you, but just stuff. I was just chatting with my bestie from grade 6 (grade 6!!) and she remembered a poem I wrote for her for her 11th or 12th birthday and she quoted my own poem back to me, word for word. I was floored.
The poem was terrible, but it rhymed, so I have that going for me. Anywho, once I hit double digits and started going to high school, I kept writing. Nothing fancy. An entire story dedicated to meeting Davey Jones (yes, from The Monkees, I had a crush.) to other just ridiculous stories.
But I also wrote a few poems. So when I was on my High School Annual (Canadian version of a Yearbook) Committee, I had an opportunity to GET PUBLISHED. Hey, published is published. I’ll take it.
Since I was in high school and everything was a big deal, I wrote some incredibly angsty poem about hiding behind smiles and living in cages of making everything seem perfectly okay (please note: this is an Easter Egg. Continue listening to my music to see a reference to this phrase…someday.)
So I thought, you know what? I’m gonna write a song about how we all hide behind these masks in some way. And that’s where the song came from. . Throw in a catchy 80s new wave vibe and we’re cookin’!
From the Album, Across the Frequency, an 80s-inspired album, this song is a simple one: don’t live in the past. I, as much as anyone, have a tendency towards nostalgia, even when it’s not warranted.
To help give you an idea of nostalgic I can be, I was less than ten years old and I’d save gravel from the alley behind the house so I wouldn’t forget where I lived. I wrote my diaries in block letter so I’d be able to read them when I was “old”. Yep, that’s the brain you’re dealing with. 🙂
Anyway, I was also a bit of a pack rat. I may or may not (fine, I still have them) every letter and card I received during the 80s. Like, every one. I’m sure they’re falling apart by now. I kept notes and letters and drawings my old boyfriends gave to me. Finally, after many years, I went through most of them and said goodbye. In some cases, it was an easy decision because I’d stored them in the garage and, ah, rats got to them. (Sorry!)
So sometimes weather pushes along the need to move forward and not live in the past. As we’ve moved over the years, it’s been a great opportunity to “out with the old in with the new” and I’ve taken a last look, smiled and remembered what these things meant to me at the time, and said goodbye.
That’s it. No real moral of the story. Just an example of how sometimes if you’re so busy lived in a past (that seems to somehow get “better” with age), you’re not living in the present and appreciating all the amazingness that it has to offer.
kthxbye!
P.S. If you enjoy the song, please do me a favor and (yeah, I’m going to be that broken record — apparently it matters to YouTube), LIKE my song and – if it pleases you – SUBSCRIBE to my channel. I’m trying to build it up. (But not my ego! Don’t worry!) Seriously, it’s abysmal. Maybe I’ll hit 100 subscribers (I have small social ambitions.)
As always, you can find me all over the dang place:
After I got into the groove with my Chance of a Lifetime album (BTW, all those songs have Lyric Videos on YouTube now!) , I got it in my head that I really like doing this writing thing! I can just write a song to tell a story! Bite-sized, just like me!
So after some thought I decided, “I’m gonna write me an 80s-inspired album!”
I wanted a good cross-section of songs from 80s ballads to new wave to — duhhhh — rock. And so I plotted it out. After a few weeks of writing, I had my ten songs.
I’ve been doling out the songs, one per week, for the last three weeks. And, it’s been FUN! I have learned so much about writing (the first few singles I did – don’t listen, they’re terrible – were kind of random and meandery), licensing, distribution, and how to format YouTube videos and why it’s good to have consistency, etc. etc. etc.. But that’s a topic for another day once I’ve learned more. For me, it’s about getting what’s in my head into a song. So that’s what I’ll focus on.
I don’t want to bore my Facebook friends with details they maybe don’t care about so I thought to myself, “Well, uh, you dolt, that’s what you have your own website for! Sheesh!”
So here we are!
The Album is called Across the Frequency (comes out April 10th! But I’m releasing singles under separate covers because making covers for each song is kinda fun) and like I said, it’s 80s inspired. Mostly I wrote about time back then, but I have a modern song or two but with an 80s sound. So it kind of crosses the timeline a bit. I felt the title worked nicely.
Here’s the album cover that I’m really excited about.
I wanted to go for the 1980s vibe, but not the crazy colors and pop kind of covers like Queen’s Hot Space or Talking Heads’ Remain in Light or Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ Imperial Bedroom. No, I wanted more simple like The Cars’ Candy-O (some of my single covers will give that vibe, I hope.)
But the image above was born of me wanting a Frank Frazetta style cover without the girl in the metal bikini riding a tiger. So I thought, ok, lose the girl, keep the cat. Panthers are cool. So if you look, his musculature is exaggerated in style. And I wanted old world meets new. Which Frank also did. So you see the Barbarian kind of style and his futuristic style. I wanted to combine the two in a very subtle way.
Note the hanging vines and foliage around the sides and ground (old) and then the cosmos in the background (future) — hence, across the frequency. And, if you’re paying attention, there’s a little easter egg with the frequency symbol near the panther.
I’m fairly positive that I’m the only one who cared about all these details, but at the end of the day it looked just plain COOL and — to me — very 80s.
So far a few singles have been released — I release one per week on Fridays:
This super silly fun (assume 80s in everything I write about style) pop song is about growing up as a kid in the 80s with the iconic games and toys and just hanging out with friends. It’s really not meant to be deep. There’s also a reference to Generation X, which I am apparently a member. Forgotten Generation? I guess. Remember this song. This album has a purpose in each song. 🙂
Now this one is a wonderfully classic anthem rock song. Simple message, hard rocking beats, and lots of heart. I wrote this for my husband who struggles with MS and never ever gives up, no matter what he does. So I wrote this in maybe five minutes. There are some fun battle / sports references. It all counts, I’m sure. Look, I kept it simple, ok? Sometimes I’m really not that deep. Anywho, along with this hard rock anthem song – I went with a male vocal. It’s only one of two times I went with a male vocal on this album. The second one will make sense, too, when you hear it.
This is another rock song, hard-hitting, great beat. It’s about running. Sometimes we think if we keep moving enough, those things we don’t want to deal with will go away, but they don’t. While I didn’t write this about me, I do feel that way back then, I’ve done a little running in my day. Emotionally. Situationally. You name it. This one probably will ring a bit true for all of us.
….and that’s where we leave it, as of today.
Next week, I think I’ll do a post for the next song on the list. It gives me an opportunity to go a bit deeper. (And I don’t spam my Facebook friends.)
(All my links are down below via this one DistroKid one if you want to support me on this crazy journey I’m on.)
MelissaBianco.com 
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