New Song Preview: Tom Thomas Collab - Keep Going / Can't Stop

As you may have heard, while I was on my week-long break, I decided to get together with Tom Thomas to co-write a song 👀

After chatting for a while about what's been going on in each of our lives, and some things we've been wanting to write about, we decided to write about the battle with our own brains about being indie artists.

As an indie artist, you have all the jobs. You are the creative, the talent, the manager, the promoter, the tech person, communications person, the publisher, the administrator, the social media person, the packer and the shipper...the whole team, and that's just for the music. That doesn't even really cover the streaming side of things or anything extra (like, for example, Patreon 😅 or a part-time job).

And it is absolutely rewarding. And it is absolutely worth it. And it is absolutely a dream.

But it is also incredibly draining. And 90% of the work that gets done is thankless and behind the scenes. Nobody sees that stuff. There's no glory in that. There's no recognition. There's no payment. It just needs to get done.

So we wrote a song about how draining it can be.

Is it vaguely reminiscent of Vampires and indie pop girl? KIND OF, OKAY 😂 But this one gets a lot more into the battle of it. How conflicting it is. To both love and hate it. To be overwhelmingly grateful for it and everything you've been able to gain and achieve. While also being overwhelmingly stressed and frustrated and burnt out.

Feeling like it is giving you everything you have, while also taking everything from you.

That lowkey feels like it should be a lyric, so...maybe I'll write yet another one someday 🫣

I wanted to share this screenshot of the writing process with you because this was just a really funny moment in the process.

While writing this song with Tom, I learned a lot. I learned that I should have used my laptop 😂 because it turns out that not everyone writes everything down in a notebook, and it actually makes more sense to work in a collaborative document so we can both see what each other is thinking and where we're at with it. 🙈

I learned that it isn't quite as scary to open up to another creative about what you want the song to say as I was afraid of...it's still scary 😅 but it's easier knowing that it is absolutely a collaboration - so if you've chosen a particular topic, you've chosen it because you can both relate. And while it is scary to talk openly about your feelings and experiences, you know that there's no judgement. And I learned that communicating exactly what you want each part of the song to say, giving context (e.g. stories) for full clarity is ultimately what will set you up for a) writing a better song, and b) making sure you're both happy with the final product.

I learned that it's okay to suggest changes to someone else's lines and to accept changes to yours. And that it's really good to say or write the words or thoughts that you're stuck on because someone else might be able to make them make sense / make them fit.

And I learned that it's okay to share the dumb, silly lines and ideas that make no sense. 😂 And that's what I wanted you to see in this. At some point in writing the chorus, Tom sung "I'm restless" and immediately after, said "I don't know why, but my brain says the rhyme is 'breakfast'". AND THEN WE COULDN'T GET IT OUT OF OUR BRAINS 😂 We fully started writing dumb lines that ended with "breakfast". And then when deciding it didn't fit, we started typing out other words that would fit...and included "breakfast" anyway 😅

Fun fact: "I'm restless", the line that inspired our breakfast fixation, is in fact not in the chorus at all anymore.

I will say, after my first co-writing experience, I do think I'll be more open to co-writes moving forward, but I also do still think that writing on my own is my preference. Primarily because I feel like it's harder for me to sort my thoughts and really sit with them to fully process what's important to me and what I want to make sure gets into the song when there's another person influencing it. I get stuck on things a lot more on my own, but I also really do process my thoughts a lot better that way overall.