Foreign Land

FOR SOME STRANGE reason I started on a song about cheating today. Caused me a lot of trouble. I was asked to topline this track from a former L.A. based hiphop producer – now living in Copenhagen, actually – that I didn’t work with before. The verses were complete ripoffs from an urban Billboard #1 from a few years back, and the chorus had these weird major progressions that made the vibe kind of broadway in a strange 143 BPM popstep universe. Anyways, I had no inspiration at first. No melody, no words. All I could manage was to sing along on the chord stabs’ melody notes like a parrot repeating what’s already there. Tried with the track, then without it; I tried stealing from other songs in and outside the styles and then modifying it to this song, but nothing worked, really. I mean, parts of it were fine, of course, but since the producer had told me that the last few toplines on this track hadn’t really worked out, I decided my shot had to be gold. But again, no wonder it was a hard one; these chord were strange and somehow not inviting at all.
I had been walking a marathon in this two room Barceloneta flat I’m staying in (plus laundry, dishes, 150 pushups and five minutes of planking (procrastination FTW)), and my neighbors were probably getting good old gruñones by listening to the same beat over and over again, but suddenly it was there – the hook. Not like one of those times where the song just pops up writing itself; more like shy pieces only sticking their heads out. I had to drag them out of there one by one; a few words from my notebook, a couple of new melodies, and one whole line that I’ve been carrying around for a few weeks. And after some hours of searching and tugging I had it. Most words weren’t there yet, but the melody was complete. Fuck yeah!

10PM: Since I now had the melody I decided to change location and go to a bar and write the missing lyrics for it. I know this great place serving Barnawoods and 1,40€ macchiatos, and I thought this would be perfect. The 7 minutes walk ended up taking me an hour and ten minutes, since I paid zero attention to directions and instead thought about lyrics and the subject of sexual cheating. During this “stroll” I mentally went from hell yeah to why did I do it – cheating, that is. Listening to all these cheating songs and thinking a million thoughts from I know I shouldn’t to I hope I won’t get caught, made me more and more paranoid with an increasing gut ache feeling of guilt and shame. Behind every corner I expected an undercover girlfriend ready to bust me.
I never cheated, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one on this planet excluded from the club. Never even close, actually, and not planning on it, so I don’t know why the song had to be about this. But I guess those chords where so outlandish to me that I had to put on a stranger’s hat to feel them. In this case the hat would fit John Legend and Christopher Martin better than me, but somehow the guilt and stomach ache all felt kind of familiar to me, probably based on kindergarten shovel stealing and movies. Is that empathy, or am I just transferring familiar feelings to foreign situations? Or maybe cheating doesn’t even have to feel that way.

Finally, I’m here, and I’ve got the whole thing now, thanks for asking. Bridge, chorus and post; verses left open for rap. Tomorrow I’ll record it and send it over to the producer – keep an eye out.