He shrugs. “Your last two hits were upbeat, so maybe it’s time to slow it down. After your public relationship with Harmony, people are probably ready for something more serious and emotional from you.”
I gnaw on another one of my fries, which are getting cold, and consider this. “How about ‘That Syncing Feeling’?”
It’s the most serious song on the album—the only one that’s a hundred percent honest. It’s recent, since Harmony took me to the Soundmill. A day later, the words just poured out of me like someone had turned on a tap. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it on the album, but Charles loved it and said we could add it last minute. I’m counting on Harmony to be too distracted by her own album and our EP to listen closely, if she gets the chance to hear it.
Should I tell her what’s been on my mind? Sure, I’ve considered that. That would be the mature thing to do, to lay it all out there. She’s so volatile sometimes, though, I can’t begin to guess how she’d take it. It doesn’t help that we’ve spent months building up walls against each other, even to be friends let alone anything more.
“I don’t know.” Braden scratches his chin. “That one isveryserious and emotional. We don’t want to overdo it. I’m frankly surprised they’re letting you put that on the album.”
“Because it’s good. It’s vulnerable. Kehlani says you can’t listen to it without getting—and I quote—‘all the feels.’ I’m tired of everyone thinking I’m some hookup party guy. Maybe I can’t ever be my normal self in this business, but I can at least be more relatable.”
He wipes his lips with a napkin, frowns at me, then types the song onto the list.
We discuss some more, narrow our list to four songs to present to Charles, and I wave Liza over to settle our bill.
“Oh,” I say to Braden once Liza has taken my card for processing, “by the way, when do Harmony and I need to be at the studio to demo ‘Hate to Love’?”
“Right. About that. So, one of the bathrooms flooded and it spread to a few of the studios and a bunch of the isolation booths. Maintenance has to deal with the carpets and potential water damage to the walls, so those are going to be out of commission for a while. Everyone scheduled for recording this week has to shorten their sessions or get bumped, based on priority.”
“Harmony and I aren’t priority?”
“Except for your final recording of ‘That Syncing Feeling’—and I think Harmony just recorded her album’s last song—you guys are both pretty much good to go, and you don’t release for several more weeks. Even your mutual EP only needs ‘Hate to Love,’ and if you’re ready to demo, then Glambam has to prioritize artists who have tighter deadlines and more work to do than you.”
“Should we still do the demo, then?”
“Well yeah. Just do it at one of your home studios.”
“I thought Kehlani might want to be involved at this stage,” I say.
“She’s got her hands full right now,” Braden insists. “She’ll appreciate you laying down the tracks so she can critique them later.”
I sigh. “Alright. I’ll see what Harmony wants to do.”
Each Broken Heart Will Eventually Mend
HARMONY
Forthesecondtimein a fortnight, I enter Riff’s foyer.
“Welcome back,” he says.
He’s wearing lightweight joggers and an army-green tee, which puts me at ease since I’ve shown up in leggings and a loose denim button-up top. He said it would be “chill” but I wasn’t sure how relaxed this recording session was actually going to be—and I want to say I don’t care how I look when I’m around him, but I (ironically) spent a good half hour picking out something that would convey that idea while also still looking nice. Not sure I struck the balance, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
Since we have the time today, he gives me that tour he mentioned before. It’s a beautiful modern (modernized) house with lots of light and open space. He has too many bedrooms, but most celebrities do I guess. The big decks show off the canyon views as the sun starts to set for the evening, making me yearn to stay outside instead of go in to record myself singing lyrics that are too honest for my liking.
Unfortunately, that’s the only reason I’m here, and thus it is inevitable.
Riff takes me to his home studio, which has an eclectic style with a woven rug, several potted plants, a row of vintage guitars racked along one wall, a couple of wood-backed swivel chairs, an abstract painting, and some animal figurines with patterns carved into them. The whole thing is soundproofed with panels that look like wooden slats but are actually foam—I verify by touching them. And of course he has a huge desk with recording equipment and monitors.
He pulls out one of the chairs for me so I can sit next to one of the little mic stands propped up on the desk, then hands me a pair of headphones and the sheet music with the words we finalized the other night. We ended up combining his ideas and mine and, even though it’s going to be tough to sing this whole thing with him, I think we nailed it.
We do some vocal warmups before he opens the accompaniment file in Logic Pro, with all the instrumental tracks stacked in a rainbow of colors. From what’s open on his monitors, it looks like he’s been demoing other stuff too, although I can’t imagine what; from what I know, his album is done, and I wouldn’t think he had time for anything else right now.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yep,” I lie.
Once he clicks the play button, layers of sound trickle into my ears. First an ethereal synth hum, then the slow strum of an electric guitar, followed by individual strings plucked in sequence, then gentle percussion—mostly hi-hat. Riff recorded all of this on his own beforehand, playing the guitars live and then adding synth keys and digital drums in the software. The country elements are almost nonexistent except for a slight tremolo on the lead guitar, and I guess he can get away with toning it down since it’s a collab.
