IclicktheSongSpacedownload link in my email and watch the progress bar until the file drops into my downloads folder. When I click the file, it prompts me to enter a password.
It’s been a while since I’ve worked on a song I didn’t at least partially write myself, and I have to say, I’m not particularly excited about it. I’ve got Braden’s message open on my second monitor, explaining that the label wants me to record a demo for potential collaboration.
“We’d like you to do a romantic ballad with a female artist,” he writes. “We’re working on a list of who we’d like to approach, but in the meantime, you’ll record with one of our demo artists”—a placeholder, basically—“and then we’ll send the recording to everyone on the list to see if any of their managers think it’s a good fit vocally, stylistically, etc. Please look it over, memorize your part, and be ready to come in and rehearse it next week.”
I roll my eyes.
Honestly, I think they’re trying to distract me from writing more songs about Harmony. Even though the label has been happy with all the publicity, they’ve mentioned that these sortsof things can get out of hand. For now, Braden says, it’s still lighthearted enough, but if things “get too nasty” we might end up alienating the fans.
I don’t know about Harmony, but all I’m doing is matching her energy.
I type in the annoyingly complicated password.
When labels send music that they own the rights to, it’s all very secure—usually a password-protected file through a link, with the receiver’s name encoded in the metadata so if somehow the file gets leaked, it won’t be hard to figure out who did it.
The digital sheet music opens up and fills my screen. It’s called “Lip Sync.”
I skim the lyrics.
I know the music and the words,
It’s nothing that I haven’t heard,
But I can’t seem to make a sound,
I look at you and I guess I’m spellbound
Somehow I think you know it too,
Your lips are moving right on cue,
But you don’t say a single thing,
Mouthing lyrics even as you don’t sing
Now we’re so close and before I can blink,
It’s a whole different kind of lip sync,
I just act — I don’t think,
Your lips on mine like the missing link.
Grabbing my guitar, I pick out the notes of the melody, humming gently to get a feel for it. I have to admit, it’s not bad. Usually songs written by the label’s staff writers are pretty mediocre, but this …
The concept. The melody.
It’s simple, but it’s one of those that just … feels pleasant to sing.
Not sure how pleasant it will feel when I’m singing it in the studio with a complete stranger, or at best another singer I barely know, but … what can I do?
For the moment, I’ll have to abandon the half-written song I’ve scribbled in the notebook on my desk, in response to “Absolutely Stellar.”
“From what I’ve heard so far,If You Know, You Knowis absolutely stellar.”
I can’t believe she remembered me saying that and then turned it into a fucking lyric. That woman is savage.
And yet, I’ve never felt more alive than I do when I hear her voice on the radio singing, “You think your gravity can pull me down? Your voice in my space doesn’t make a sound. I’m high on stardust, diamonds in my hair, you think I’m drifting aimlessly, but I’m a solar flare.” That electropop synth beat haunts my dreams nightly—and when I can’t sleep because I’m just too amped up about the whole thing, I come up with phrases like “Won’t catch me callin’ you ‘down to earth.’ You’ve got that cosmic glitter, my boots are in the dirt. The sky’s my limit, I stand on solid ground. Flyin’ too close to the sun will melt your wings, you little bloodhound.”
