SAME OLD SONGS - JOURNAL ENTRY

I wrote Same Old Songs in March 2020. That time was so bizarre. For me, days were really blending into one another, only really being punctuated by morning coffees and my weekly songwriting practice. I’d joined an online club which kept me consistent to at least a weekly writing session which really helped me get into a creative flow for that time and really contributed to this whole album. (If you’re a writer check out ‘I heart songwriting club’)

I had also recently bought myself a Yamaha keyboard, which to this day I can’t play too well, but it’s fun to use for songwriting to coax out different lyrics and melodies than what I would default to on guitar, I wrote this whole song over badly played piano chords - see voice memo below for proof haha!
To be able to play it out live, I switched it over to guitar as soon as it was written, but we did make sure to bring some keys back in the production (played by my producer Josh Barber) which I absolutely love.

I’m a little technology challenged and have a terrible habit of never backing up my phones, and then losing song ideas/memos etc. but I’ve managed to dig up a few things from making the album - this one is a voice memo that had saved itself to my laptop somehow - warning, it doesn’t sound good! This is what the stage of just singing and trying to find where the song is going sounds like (which is my usual writing process in a nutshell) This bit, by the sounds is where I started, and ended up turning into the second verse.

I chose this song for the opening track because the feelings captured in it, of being stuck and indecisive, are a reoccurring theme throughout the album (and my life lol) so it felt very on theme for it to set the scene. I also chose it intentional to the message that this stuck feeling is never where we end. Hitting a bit of a low and realising that you’re really struggling is actually telling of a new beginning, that moving forward/upward motion will happen soon! It’s just part of the human experience to find ourselves stuck in a loop for a while. This song ends with these feelings unresolved, being unable to find a thread to start untangling it all just yet. The rest of the album from here explores that journey of starting to untie these knots, opening up, questioning, facing your fears and starting to slowly but surely get to a better state of mind.

If you’ve made it this far…thank you for caring enough to read my ramblings. Catch you tomorrow for track two!