But what made you think about “Duplicate?”
NickKnackPaddyWhack
Well, I was sitting in class today, listening to the girls behind me talk about this guy one of them is crushing on, and it honestly felt like the word-for-word script of a conversation I had with Teddie last month. And I couldn’t help thinking about those lyrics in “Duplicate.” You know the ones: “Everything I say, someone else has already said.” And I realized nothing I’ve ever said or felt is actually original. Every heartbreak, every crush, every thought—someone else has been there, done that, probably expressed it better than I ever could.
I grip my phone tighter. I’ve gotten thousands of messages over the years—fans telling me how much my songs mean to them, what they were going through when they heard a particular lyric. But this is different. Nick isn’t just telling me the song moved him. He’s describing exactly what I was trying to say, as if he’d been inside my head when I wrote it.
I exhale loudly before I reply.
AntD
I think that’s exactly what that song means to say.
But it is also supposed to make you feel less alone.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
Less alone?
AntD
Because we try to complicate things by labeling people and focusing on our differences. But when it boils down to it, people around the world want pretty much the same thing. They want the basics of enough to eat and somewhere safe to live. They want a job that is fulfilling. They want to love and be loved in return. Those lyrics in “Duplicate”—“It’s all been said before”—just remind us of that fact.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
I like that take on it.
AntD
Thanks.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
It’s so easy to get stuck in your own head, you know? To think that you’re the only one in the world going through a particular experience. I like thinking about humanity’s shared experiences. Like we’re all just walking around thinking we’re the main character in some unique story, but really, we’re all just extras in the same eternal romantic comedy/tragedy/whatever genre googling “am I normal?” at midnight counts as.
AntD
That’s why I write music. To remind people they’re not alone in whatever they’re feeling. Even if what they’re feeling is “Why did I eat pizza for breakfast three days in a row?”
NickKnackPaddyWhack
Lol. I’ve definitely felt the “why did I eat pizza” feeling.
Hang on a sec. You write music? Like, for real?
Fuck. The “for real” bit gets me. It’s such a simple question, but it lands somewhere soft. Because Nick doesn’t think he’s talking to Anthony Devine. He thinks I’m just some guy who writes songs in his bedroom, not someone with seventeen platinum records on my wall.
For a second, I don’t want to be Anthony Devine. I want to be the guy Nick thinks I am, just a random guy who writes songs because he can’t not write them. Who gets excited about a perfect lyric without immediately wondering how it’ll perform on Spotify.
AntD
For real. I’m constantly writing scraps of words down on paper.
That used to be true, anyway. Before the words stopped coming.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
What’s your process for writing a song? Like, do the words come first, or the music?
