#polyana

(also on bandcamp & streaming services)

★ intro ★

Hey, it's mimi!! It's been two weeks since the release of my second album, Pollyanna. Thank you so much for the love; to all the people who've given me feedback on the album or have any thoughts on it at all... it's meant the world to even know ppl have given this thing the time of day.

I care about these songs on an abnormally large scale, as they've sort of soundtracked the last 2 years of my life, and I have so, so, so much to say about each and every song. There are so many details, pieces of writing, demos, and ideas that surround this album and go beyond a usual listen, and I felt like it would be very awesome to write about each one on an in-depth level.

i'll be showing demos, talking about my life, and am going from track 1 to 15 .... writing is hardddddddddddd. here's hypocrite!!

(polly looking at the 3ds that had just fallen out of the sky.)

★ hypocrite sessions (10/19/23-11/30/23) ★

Surprise surprise, this is the first song that I worked on after i finished 'open me' in 2023. As I was putting the final stretch of that album together around august-september of 2023, I kind of had an idea of where I wanted to go next. For LP2, I knew that I had three goals:

a. I wanted this album to be the 'light' to the darkness of open me. open me was an album designed to feel sort of like a descent into the ocean, and 'hues' was meant to feel like a sort of an escape from those dark depths, a glimpse of the light, so to speak.

b. I wanted to use this album to greatly expand my abilities as a producer. I was consistently finding myself making a lot of the same beats for years, and it didn't feel like the music that I wanted to make after a while. I was passing around the idea of LP2 being a 'sampler' of all the vibes and styles I could try out.

c. I very badly had been falling into the rungs of nostalgia for a lot of my childhood, rediscovering my old 3ds & plugging in my old consoles again, revisiting websites & videos i loved as a little kid, and reconnecting with my childhood just as I got close to graduation & officially became an adult. ironically, in the period of my life i had been the most scared about my future, I began to reminisce hard on my childhood. I wanted to make an album that utilized those polished to perfection aesthetics I loved (ex. nintendo menus, early 2010s vocaloid music, frutiger aero/metro graphic designs)

i think that third idea became something way bigger that encapsulated the actual story of the album, but for now, i'll just keep it short and say that alot of this album is about growing up & accepting/expressing every piece of yourself with total honesty, being unashamedly yourself. that's where 'hypocrite' comes in.

Despite what I had done on 'open me', after I had wrapped up 'hues', the last song on the album in october of 2023, I immediately felt extremely wrong. listening to the album back, it felt like the vision of it I had originally went in to achieve wasn't reciprocated in the sound of it all. I think I wanted to end on a note that felt more uncertain, but I put across the idea instead that things were definitively 'better', and 'ok'. I think even though I value that era of my life, I only had began to process the issues I wanted to say that I had defeated, and I felt like the entire album encapsulated a 'mask' of myself that I had fallen into time and time again. I had gotten so used to portraying versions of myself that felt wrong that I had made it almost impossible to be truly honest in my art. Every time I'd want to make something, the output wouldn't feel like it was authored by me, and for the first time, I wanted to take control and do that. (I wouldn't know the truth behind a good amount of this until a year after I started the song...)

I was browsing through splice for any source of inspiration and came across this gorgeous ass piano sample, so I threw it into FL, put some chorus on it, hit play, and began writing some ideas for lyrics.

At the time I started the song, I was considering starting therapy and had a lot of self-reflective thoughts on it. I realized that despite the fact that I seemed very loud about what I was going through when I made music, I could never really sit down and tell someone what the actual issues were. I was afraid of opening up to people, and it held me back from wanting to actually sit down and talk to a therapist. I wrote the first half of the song off of the idea that this fictionalized version of me (who became the very real representation of myself, 'Mimi') actually ends up having a session with her therapist, but always end up lying about details so that things seem better than they actually are. after all, it doesn't really matter what I would say, because they wouldn't know the real me hiding under all those lies.

I felt like a hypocritical person, someone hiding the true parts of themselves for the people around them (which you'll see is a running theme throughout these songs and stories), and in the end i was so repressed bcz of it all that i felt utterly clueless trying to start new songs.

After aboutttt a week, I came back around to it and it sounded something like this. This part didn't really necessarily change that much, lol!! I had no idea how to continue it though, so I shot over a demo desperately to VJ (neodigitalnative of Ultraviolet), and he threw together a reaaally rough but SICK idea of where I could take the song. He was in his DnB bag with his album 'Photon' at the time so he did something a little similar.

I expanded on the section, reordered things, threw together another verse reflecting & expanding on what I talked about earlier, and it was done at the time (even if I internally didn't feel totally satisfied with it... grrrrr...), with the song sorta chilling out originally into a nice, brisk beat. This version had some absolutely gorgeous layers though, i'll admit!! (thank u to the homies Tomie & Xander for help on this version back then <3 needed y'all's work to see the light of day)

OK. OK. lets faaaaaaaaaaaaaaast forward like about A YEAR into the future. it is officially now August of 2024. we had met one of the most important people in our life (ellie), who became the co-producer for the entire album, and after finding a group of people that felt like a family to me & finding A LOT of things out about ourselves (particularly, that we were a system..) I wanted to go about the intro to this album way differently.

.. this album in the span of about a year changed from a collection of songs, to a concept album embodying the 3 traits I wanted in Pollyanna. Another new idea in this change was the fact that we wanted to actually identify and process our emotions explicitly through pieces of ourselves w/o hurting eachother (like how open me turned out). I took a story that originally started in that album, and began to write a concept around these songs.

★ brief story explanation/character dump ★

BEFORE we get into this section, I should really talk about the two characters represented in this song: POLLY and MIMI.

unlike other people in these songs such as 'Rika' or 'Leanne' who are actively pieces of my life IRL in a plural sense, Polly and Mimi are characters explicitly designed as sonas for myself (Abby :3), made to represent 2 different sides of myself and my own struggles.

-Polly-

Polly the Bunny is a red haired bunnygirl mascot, made for the fictional online music store mp3eez.com in 2002. She spent a good half decade using her synthesized voice on hyper dance tunes made for ringtones, put out to rake in quick cash for the company. She became one of the most popular ringtone cartoons at the time, but unfortunately, mp3eez.com became a victim of itunes' reign, and shut down in 2006.

Polly is then sent to The Backend. The Backend is a house far off in the world, somewhere between the internet, and reality. it's a place where all things forgotten, either digital or real, go to exist. You could physically enter The Backend, but it'd be impossible to navigate if you weren't a resident. The house is nearly endless, rooms upon rooms of worlds that people left behind. It's nowhere near a ghost town, but it's home to many horrors and beauties alike. This world will continue on and be further explored in Cryptid Synapse, a long-term project me and my friend Lyra are starting soon.

Polly, being stuck in one room of the backend by herself, has a world to herself, a world where the only items are peculiarly a laptop, earbuds, a phone, and a bed. Over the course of 17 long years, she watched the internet grow and change before her very eyes, meeting new people through a computer screen as they came and went, knowing she'd never be able to meet them in person (being that she's an internet avatar given human life.. an anomaly, essentially.) she's a victim of the 'this person was last online 10 years ago' curse. She fears that due to being stuck in digital code, she'll never experience a lasting relationship with anyone online, despite her most important people being there. So what does she do?

She tries to become real.

After 10 years, Polly tries her best to find ways to live the life of a real girl, begging people to help her. Despite everything she tries, she's only seen as an anomaly, being coined the 'Pollyanna virus' by computer users around the world for her intrusive behavior.

Her story throughout this album eventually became a way of putting my online life into metaphor, and as Polly's life changed, mine did too. We met these online friends in person, and I found my family... but that's for another day. Anyways...

-Mimi-

Out of any character represented, Mimi is possibly the most honest character I've written... especially seeing as I embodied her with my (Abby) preferred alternate nickname.

Mimi was born an alien, forced to grow up in a human world without any knowledge of her roots, past or family. She grows up not wanting to be an alien, but not wanting to be human either. She doesn't want to conform, but she also doesn't want to be the person she was 'born as'. She has antennae! but she tends to cover them in public by pulling them to their sides, and covering them with hair while they are laid down, covered by heart shaped earmuffs that help her feel more comfortable. (this is an excuse she tends to use for why she has dog-shaped ear extensions on 24/7. she secretly enjoys it!)

Over the course of her life growing up, she encounters many pitfalls and meet a lot of people who hurt her, and her story in these songs is one of overcoming her trauma & morphing into who she wants to, deep down, be. A dog!

SO. in the story of Pollyanna, with nobody to understand Polly's plight for freedom from behind the screen, she gives up. Until one day, when a pink & yellow Nintendo 3DS arrives in the Backend, plummeting into her world from a giant colorful beam in the sky (that's the delivery system, it seems.)

Meanwhile, 4 months after coming out to her parents and opening up about her issues in 'open me', mimi (the dog) has that therapy session we wrote about earlier, questioning if it's even worth opening up to them about issues she's kept personal for so long. When she comes home, she spots her old 3DS glowing... as she peers into it, she meets Polly for the first time.

★ hypocrite sessions (8/19/24-11/21/24) ★

And so, after my summer trip to New Jersey, I met Elkie (elliestation, who co-produced this whole album with me, and is my sibling 4 life) & the entire course of this album (and our life) changed irreversibly (but i'll talk way more in-depth about all of the sappy stuff during another song, dw.)

One of the first songs we had ever revisited together with the new direction of the album in mind was Hypocrite. I was at the time listening to an absurd amount of Sonic Coaster Pop's 'SUPER MIRACLE CIRCUIT', an album full of fast paced songs that feel straight out of a Mario Kart Wii Wi-Fi connection screen (part of a really amazing early 2000's music scene that I WILL get back to), and I showed Elkie the intro track 'Spiral Neo Wave'. One of my main problems with the original hypocrite was how abruptly it began, and we had a vision to change that.

In the span of 2 days, me and Elkie then had a session that added an entirely new intro section to the song, which eventually evolved into "a world i'll never know". here's the original cut that they cooked up in that night!

the second part in the original version of 'hypocrite' that felt extremely off was the "IT DOESNT REALLY MATTER WHAT I SAY!!" part. I loved the vision, but I took VJ's stems he sent me and kind of messed it up in the final mixdown. When Elkie took it in, we workshopped a lot of ideas for the new, until they stripped it down heavily & filled what was missing with a fantastic guitar solo that assisted the strongest parts of VJ's pass. It's the best of both worlds!

I then provided lots of screaming and harmonizing... and this was the result.

FINALLY, the 3rd section of the song was entirely reworked by Elkie to match where the story went (and also because I just didn't like the original outro w/ the more ambient direction). Before I knew that this moment where Polly and Mimi met was going to be reworked for hypocrite, I originally wrote a small prose-y thing expressing the feelings I wanted in that moment one night. I wanted to explain that out of body feeling of seeing a different self for the first time. Maybe it's a younger piece of you that you missed for so long; or it could be a version of yourself that you want to be, but that feeling of witnessing yourself from the 3rd person is so potent, and I wanted that moment to feel that way.

"Ideal is a TV screen Myself ripped outside of me Stuck inside my escapism dream The plastic flowers around here help me feel complete I say these terribly outlandish things To explain feelings that I can't say It's too hard to just articulate (I know I'm wrong) But I feel like I'm a pipe dream  hypocrite, I'm stuck inside my body"

When I reused the 'hypocrite' motif of self-description, I did NOT initially intend it for the song, but I felt eventually that the feelings in this song tied really well to the sort of confused, repressed fog that the first half represented. The arc of the song now started so uncertain, and ended with hope, a glimmer of who you **could** be. Polly, in this circumstance, from Mimi's angle, feels like a superstar. The idol that she wants to be.

Initially, when I was pitching ideas to Elkie for the new section of the song, I was trying to figure out lyrics and ways to make the finale of hypocrite feel wayyyyyy more grand than it was. I didn't like how that original version just kind of fizzled out, I wanted make hypocrite build up to a cacophony of noise by the end of it's runtime, assaulting the listener with intense feeling that'll ride into the next song (which was always going to be Superpower). This was a really crappy voice memo I sent in the beginning... lol... but you get the point.

About a week later, me and Elkie got into a call to work on the section, and we wrote down actual lyrics for this part.

"forgive me for what i say i don't mean anything these lost abstractions i create melt away i know can help you through this pain but i'm scared i'll hear the words i'll say the answers right in front of my face i can't be replaced"

Elkie put down a version of themself singing these lyrics in the beginning of the new section, which we thought was so sick that we kept! Later on, they also did the spoken word for the section as well, which recited the earlier prose I wrote up.

When it came time to actually work on the session, we intended to work closely to the original vision, but I learned through this song the first of MANY lessons to come from Elkie: nothing needs to be accurate to the vision in your head. It's ok if a song turns out differently, sometimes you embark upon something WAY cooler if you just let the process do it's thing.

and that exact thing happened. in the span of around an hour, that ENTIRE final minute of the song was produced by Elkie. I'll always remember the call where they went dead silent, I was sending vocal layers I thought were cool, they were throwing stuff in, and that final section naturally built itself up within barely 55 minutes. That was genuinely one of the most magical musical moments of this album that I'll always remember, lol.

There's another cool thing about this section of the song, but I think I'll save that one for another song *wink* *wink*

Ben seni görüyorum sense..

(also on bandcamp & streaming services)

★ intro ★

Welcome back, weary traveler, to the 'pollyanna' behind the scenes blog! By now we have covered both 'hypocrite' and 'superpower', which served as the proper start to the album, illustrating the first meeting Mimi and Polly have, as well as Polly's backstory! And some of our own personal ventings, of course.

This time around, we're talking about 'throwback'. This song is possibly the most important to me thus far, and so is the story that comes with it, both in the context of the album, and my own life. This is gonna be a hefty one, lol.

art by the lovely Vessel3! check out their art @/ribcageroom.monster

★ story ★

I feel like the best place to start this song is the context in the 'story' of the album that surrounds the song!

A week after the fateful day where Mimi and Polly first meet in the beginning of the album, Mimi goes about her life as usual. A bit of a reminder, or a recap if we may: Mimi is an alien! Unknowing of her origins, she's had to grow up as a human her whole life. She doesn't necessarily want to embrace her roots though, either. Every single day she goes out, she puts on earmuffs that hide her antennae (the heart shaped ears you see in all the art pieces!) that give her a look almost akin to a dog (as much as she denies it, she really enjoys it). I wonder if that plot thread will go anywhere...

Anyways! Mimi is a character that is very hurt. Along her childhood, she's been messed with by a lot of awful people in her life, and as a result, she's very distrusting and scared of most new people who offer to enter her life. This doesn't fare well when she meets a girl going by the name 'Dia' while clubbing one night, who takes a great interest in Mimi, as the two decide soon to date months later. This happens before the events of the album, by the way.

(Slight note! Mimi doesn't necessarily make music, as she paints in her free-time when she's not running shifts at her job, or messing around online. When she has time off though, she goes clubbing frequently!)

Pretty frequently, over the course of the next two months, Mimi would keep seeing this girl, as the two dressed in poppy, loud, outfits, and headed to locations in the city they both lived in nearly daily after the sun set. I'd like to think that eventually, Mimi reveals to Dia her alien origins, as she starts to take off her muffs around her, Dia learning about Mimi's secret affinity to being a dog.

One night, as the two begin to get more romantic and intimate than usual, Mimi asks if she could step outside for a bit to think. She realizes, in the heat of the moment, that she's still affected by her upbringing, having an immediate PTSD/trauma reaction to the way she was confronted about getting more romantic.

Mimi, just like to her therapist in 'hypocrite', is terrified to open up, opting instead to distance herself from Dia in fear of worse moments occuring in their relationship. **Without yet breaking things off**, Mimi ends up subconsciously avoiding the situation in a desperate attempt to run away from her own issues that the world is YELLING at her to confront. She opts to only text with Dia for a while, eventually by the next time she visits, telling her that it might not be a good idea if they date, calling herself a mess that can't be fixed, and denying the ability to grow and change.

Mimi feels almost eternally cursed to keep tripping over her trauma, not realizing that the solution is to finally open herself up. The notion is terrifying however, as it requires the brave step of self-acceptance and kindness.

The night after she breaks up, she decides to write a poem that she wants to turn into a painting, frequently running it by Polly, as through the Backend, she reads Mimi's notes.

that poem becomes throwback.

the night Mimi and Dia broke up.

★ background ★

The real context of this song acts as an unintentional response, once more, to the lyrical content of 'open me'. I wrote this song after breaking up with my own ex-partner, somebody I was dating for a bit at the end of 2023 before realizing that I had not still healed from my relationship from a few years before, the same relationship that had highly influenced our thoughts, feelings, and writings on the last album. Once again, I had pretended that I had recovered from issues plaguing my past, but instead ended up realizing I had yet to fix anything.

Throwback was written as I felt like despite nearly everything I said to him about my true feelings, I couldn't equivalently express the complicated feelings of self-loathing I had felt in the time since, mixed with the feelings of love I still had for the person, despite the fact I was scared of the feelings I had when we were together, feeling like my ability to be a good partner was tainted by the person who hurt me in the past.

I, in my real life, also ran away at first, wanting to hide away from the rest of the world, and metaphorically cover myself in grass and rosy colors.

"Oh, it hurts, if I locked myself away a little longer Taking in nature's embrace makes it much harder If I wrapped myself in grass and bright sun glare Would you even see me anywhere"

I think a strong theme, and feeling I've had at least since the end of middle school/start of my high school years (2020) was that I felt like I'd give anything to 'become unimportant'. I feel partly like the therianism that persists in our system, and by extension, POLYANA as a project, stems from the very real feeling that comes with wanting to become an animal.. wanting to escape from daily issues by becoming a helpless bunny or dog, or whatever can go escape and frolick through the fields endlessly, not caring about what's happening in the world at any given moment.

It's not even necessarily an accurate descriptor of what these animals go through, but it's a lovely sounding pipe-dream in the moment.

I think for Mimi (the character), that same sensation exists. In a situation so intense and scary, and full of pain, she wishes she could lock herself in her room, or fall asleep in a wide field of flowers, essentially devolving into the animal she's always wanted to be.. in some sense of the word.

I liked the idea that perhaps the animal Mimi initially wanted to metaphorically be is a bunny (a small prey animal)... later finally blooming as a dog, an animal that is as self sufficient as dependent it can be for it's partners. The sensation of being 'smaller' stays, though. It's just about how healthy the 'smallness' is felt, and enacted.

I think the only other thing I haven't mentioned so far is that the "throwback" is very hugely those PTSD moments where I'd be in an unfamiliar situation, and immediately jump to fear of the worst, feeling like everything happening was a cycle (right back to the whole theme of cycles).

'Will we still be friends?' I genuinely had no clue at the time.

★ throwback sessions ★

Did you know throwback was nearly scrapped from pollyanna? yeah! it was! I had made this demo, actually BEFORE I had even started on hypocrite, and this was the first try & attempt at the sound of 'pollyanna'. It's a suuuuper scuffed version of throwback, but the entire song is, in fact, there.

About a month this was in the tracklist of the album, until I decided initially on removing it (superpower was initially going to transition into money song for a few months! wow!) until one morning in April of 2024, when I got bored and decided that I'd try and give this song one more shot.

That 1 hour session changed the entire song, as the beat felt much more 'complete'.

Over the next week, I wrote the lyrics for the song, put down a rough take, and the song, while super rough, existed as a finished demo that i let be for a while! It just felt right, even if some refinements had to be made, obviously.

I was actually quite stuck on the hook for this one, too. After about a week of not knowing where to go melodically with the hook of the song, I threw throwback over to Lizzy! (lizzy's personal army). She came back mere hours later with an almost identical version of the hook that made it onto the album. Her advice and motivation helped this album reach the finish line, for real. One of the sweetest people I've ever had the chance to meet and work with, always.

I remember in the first night I attempted to work on the song, I was scrolling through Splice, when I found a peculiar Moment pack that had a really, really pretty melody (if you want to find it, the sample is 'MO_PHR_160_synth_loop_analog_brass_Amaj.wav' from the phritz pack.), and I thought it'd be a really fantastic backing melody for the song.

A few months later, when I reworked the instrumental of the song, I decided to simplify this loop into a very, very simplistic chiptune rendition of the melody.. after hearing it, I felt like something clicked and felt perfect. That melody became the melodic motif for nearly the entire Pollyanna album.

(fun fact!: the yap in the beginning of throwback is from the homie miramira! This was an excerpt from some voice messages where she was trying to remember lyrics from the song “Subaru” from Open Me. I thought it was fun so I put it in the intro of the song)

Finally, throwback became the song it is now, as per usual, when Ellie became a part of the album. One of my fondest moments from the sessions for this album were the nights when Ellie was mixing throwback. Nights spent just trying to get the sound of the song right, paying off when we both heard that lovely final mix that you hear on the album. It was the most important learning experience for both me and Ellie, I think.

I was so scared to record the final take for this song, specifically. This song felt so important to me as an artist, and it was a moment where I was scared of declaring a vocal take as 'final'. I let that perfectionist mindset control me, to the point where I couldn't even let myself record the song! At first, I was nearly going to include that shitty vocal take from the original demo on the final mix! But I remember Ellie motivating me to not overthink the process, open up the DAW, and record the vocals. They knew that I had it in me to record the perfect take. The next morning, I opened my laptop, thought "fuck it, let's give it a try", and within the timeframe of exactly 40 minutes, I knocked out the vocals for the entire song. The euphoria and relief I felt recording that final take welled up to the point I spent the end of the final take yelling incoherently, lol. A bit of that take was kept in, becoming the outro of the song ('let's fucking go! yeah!')

(also on bandcamp & streaming services)

★ intro ★

"What are ya waitin' for, ya fuckin' idiot? Just start the song already!"

Aaaand we're back! This time, we're covering track 2 on the album, 'superpower'. This song is probably the one on the album with the most *history* to dive into, as well as some more awesome funny character lore, art and such. Lets just jump right in :3

Ok, before we talk about the creation of the song itself, I want to talk a bit about the meaning of the song, and what it means in both the story of the album, and my own personal life.

This song happens *immediately* after the events of 'hypocrite'.

The very same night that Polly and Mimi meet through a 3ds' hacked video chat, Polly feels compelled to catch Mimi up to speed with her entire life up to the present, from a ringtone mascot to the Backend. By the end of it all, she asks Mimi if she'd be willing to be her friend.

I'd like to think of 'hypocrite' as Polly's perspective of the day they met, with this song being Mimi's perspective, whiiiiile ultimately still being a song about Polly (don't worry, we're not too far from a Mimi-centric song!)

A lotttttt of this song lyrically is about the feeling of wanting to be heard, feeling like you're being tuned out, or feeling like the people who consume what you make don't understand the full picture. I tend to think a lot of artists make things to be understood, or to find a group of people who are on the same page as them. There's this aching feeling pushing you to keep making more because they "don't understand" enough. When I was done with the last album, that was one of the biggest feelings aching at me.

I felt like friends & peers who heard that album came out of it focusing more on the Sound of the record, than the meaning of the work, and it demotivated me a ton. I felt like a lot more of the experience was in what was written in the songs, and although I've absolutely grown a lot more from this way of thinking, I felt like in my next work, I had to try my best to get people to hear me. It caused a huge amount of issues early on into the creation of this record (i bet this album wouldn't have taken as long as it had if it weren't for the 5 month break I made), I felt like there wasn't a point because all the things I made didn't feel punchy enough.

By the time I got to the final version of the song, even as I had felt like I overcame those insecurities, I wanted to still portray those emotions in a song on the album, because it felt right as a portrait of some of the struggles I dealt with early on with LP2.

one excerpt I'd like to point out, the bridge, is a reflection of a real-life moment where I felt like I was reaching out to be understood.

In elementary school, there was a teacher who was local enough where he became sort of a replacement 'father figure' in my head, and because he was an elementary school teacher, unfortunately, i had to leave to the next grade (which was in another building) the very next year despite the fact his influence absolutely left a huge mark on me.

One day 2 years later, at lunch, the friend group I was around back in middle school were gossiping at the lunch table about the fact that very same teacher visited earlier in the day, likely to drop something off, or talk to another teacher or whatever. Hearing this, it felt like something took a hold of me. What I now know was fronting occurred, a situation where a seemingly younger version of myself took a hold of the controls.

The entire day was this nonstop feeling throughout our whole system of longingness, looking through hallways, classrooms, praying that maybe that person we missed who felt like family would turn up, but obviously & eventually, we had to understand that what's gone is gone.

That feeling I had, however, still felt important to this record. There's this distinct gut feeling I've only gotten maybe 3 times in my life, that moment being one of them, in which I felt a strong pain, slightly tinged with sweetness within the melancholy. The type of pain you get when you happy cry. A lot of healing was paired with that feeling... that moment being the exception. It just really stood out to me when I was writing the song.

★ superpower version one... (2020) ★

OK, some extremely fun lore that i'm putting out there, but briefly, is that there's one polyana album that will never see the light of day... it was released on the internet and promptly deleted, and I made it in 2019-2020 when I was but a tiny teenager having her first cracks at Garageband.

When I was making that album, I put together a quick demo using a Bandlab loop that I thought was cute... and after eventually putting the album out, it became the most popular one of the bunch! I deleted the album the next week (lol)

★ superpower version two (2023-2024) ★

after working on hypocrite, I was going down demos and came across that old snippet.. I had a really cool idea of taking that lead down a direction that's a lot harsher & a lot punkier, and after about 4 months ago, I cooked up an entirely finished version of Superpower, with entirely different vocals and a slower tempo. This marks the first time I every hit up my awesome friend Wes (Refraktionz) for adds! In terms of added features, a GOOD amount of my favorite moments came from collaborative sessions passing over demos to Wes, where they'd come back over with a really fantastic direction that I'd have never thought of!

This time, they provided fantastic guitars and the sickest solo imaginable for an outro. That solo to this day is genuinely the best part of both songs to me holy shit.... it rings the song out with a huge BANG! (with added reverb on the album)

I put the whole thing together and it felt so right.. at least for a while (lol). This version was finished in April of 2024!

★ superpower, final version (2024-2025) ★

and finally, just as had happened with 'hypocrite', when ellie became a part of the album's process, the entire song was given an overhaul! we sped/pitched up the original instrumental and ellie added some a reworked bridge, new drums, and some sweet new synthlines. Pretty shortly after the instrumental was finished, I took a lot of the reworked ideas and thoughts behind both the story and the song's meaning, and redid the hooks and verses ENTIRELY from scratch, fitting the sound and feeling of the album a little better (I still adore the original version of this track just as much as the final! The album version just felt right). Thank Kros (who appears on good/another regret) for their help figuring out what melodic structure to go with for the new vocals :'3

I wanted 'superpower', within the context of the entire album, to feel like a grand "real" introduction to the other side of the album, mostly abandoning the sugary beauty of 'hypocrite' for an abrupt shift into sheer noise, only slightly broken by the light of it's bridge. I feel like those are the real two sides of the album, split between songs like 'throwback' & 'bunnies', and harsher, louder emotional expressions like 'money song' and '90 degree angel'. it's not gonna be a perfectly pretty transition into that emotional clarity, & stuff <33

This has been one of my favorites on the album for a long time, I'm happy to hear people enjoying it as much as I do :3 thank you all for listening! onto the next- <3