art is a lie! (on the internet) (Patreon)

hey gang, hope everyone’s having a great feb so far. a huge thank you for your beautiful response to the january demo, ‘SOUND OF LETTING GO’ - I can’t quite figure out what that song is but I love it. it’s intriguing to me! have a listen if you haven’t already & let me know what you think in the comments on that post.

as you may have seen if you follow me on insta, tiktok etc since last week I’ve been uploading vids w the message that I've began writing/making album 2. however - as you lot specifically know I’ve really been writing with album 2 in mind since maybe august/sept of last year.. I've got a loooong time still to go but I also haven't just started. in fact it's possible some of the demos I uploaded here last year will actually make the second record. so why fudge the dates and imply to the rest of the internet that I’m starting from scratch at this point?

for someone who started on youtube, i’ve had a turbulent relationship with the internet & self promotion.. particularly when it comes to the creative processes I love most: writing & recording songs. the conflict I have starts here; the only content I really want to put out in the world surrounds the music I make - it’s never been my style to talk & post about much else. but when I’m in a genuinely great flow making music alone or with someone else, the last thing I want to do is take out my phone and film. great creative moments are so rare & special.. and trying desperately to capture the magic moment can so often kill the magic moment on the spot.

that said- going through the entire process of writing and recording a bunch of music and then worrying about the self promotion of it all after the music’s done & delivered (like I did for woman on the internet) is tricky in a different way. tiktok is faaar from my favourite place on the internet but it’s undeniably powerful and as an independent artist lacking record label-style marketing money, I see the benefit of making vids on there. (*my personal rule regarding tiktok is that I’m only comfortable having a presence on there if it is authentically ME - me hopping on trends and pandering to the platform would be a hellish and truly off-brand experience for both me & u). the various styles & tropes of promoting music on tiktok close to its release are pretty awful to me: I don’t want to dance around to my songs.. I don’t want to get my dad in the car and make him react to my songs.. I don’t want to pull public stunts and sing my song at people in a shopping mall. however I DO want to use these tools to engage my existing audience and even grow that audience. so where does that leave me?

there are a few artists I follow on tiktok who manage to capture (or effectively re-enact) their fly-on-the-wall moments of making music; the moment they come up with the perfect lyric, the moment they listen back to a rly special vocal take, etc. I like this way of doing things. artists like Sarah Kinsley or although a super pop/ chaotic example, even Charlie Puth. watching these kind of vids of artists mid-writing process make me feel like I’ve got a window into their process.. it draws me in and makes me feel a part of their world. I like seeing how a song they’re working on develops over several different videos, with different sounds and sections added each time. these kinds of vids also show me how involved they are with the production of their music - in other words - they’re not handing their vocal take over to a team of producers and letting other people do all of the work.. it’s coming from them. so when I got thinking about how I wanted to approach the internet myself this time around, I wanted to try and give my own episodic version of a window into my world and to show snippets of the process as I go. I'll show snippets of the good bad and ugly.. clips of many songs that don't make the record, some of the struggle along the way. my gut tells me that this may work better than going totally silent online for months then rushing back with ALL MY SONGS ARE FINISHED & ON SPOTIFY NOW, HERE IS A RANDOM VISUALISER TO GO WITH THE MUSIC. GO LISTEN !

so last week begins my attempt at documenting my process and finding my place in this new internet. I wanted a few months of totally offline writing & demo’ing before I actually jumped in to try and film myself as I go.. and look, some of it will be genuinely in the moment and some of it will be re-enacted moments / feature oscar-worthy acting from me. the timings will seem confusing to anyone in the secret demo club; you may see vids of me recording parts of a song I ‘just wrote today’ that you know well was actually a demo written in october last year. I urge u to take it all with a pinch of salt and plz excuse the white lies regarding the timeline of it all! I welcome feedback via patreon message as I go - what content of mine you’re enjoying or not enjoying, suggestions or ideas for other things I could try. for that is all this really is right now; trying! a creatively private artist trying to show the process more.. an overthinker (me) trying not to overthink it. I’ll likely stumble and fall and finesse it all as I go, but I figured I had to start somewhere.

a question for YOU, if you’ve made it this far: who are some artists that you think do a great job on the internet? I’d love to be inspired by more examples of artists promoting themselves in authentic (and non-cringe) ways.

love og xx