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[susanreby]

acne

You’ve been sick on your hand

This track is about being the best whilst being drunk.

This song was one of the last tracks created, I did have another intro for this EP that just didn’t cut it, the theme was off and I couldn’t change it to fit the ‘flow’ of this project. I needed a song that would set a tone for where this EP was heading.

For this track, I started to push my own boundaries in the sense of non drum instrumentals, by doing this I wanted not to use average drum machine sounds, but take random noises and try to move them into this piece. For example, there is a reversed breath sound throughout the start beat, which I feel benefited the track rather than a normal drum.

Lyrically, I feel this song could possibly be one of my faves, it’s about a night where I got drunk on a field and was just absolutely wasted ahahah, and was in fact sick on my hand. My friend Fran was filming me dying and she is the modulated voice that you hear at the start, as I felt that I needed to include something real and legit and messy in this song.

My fave lyrics from this piece are ‘Are you a Dolly or are you Jolene’. These words resemble, for me, what life is like for young people. Whether it be in education or online, if you’re a Dolly, you let things slide and people walk all over you, equalling being lower on the ‘popularity’ scale. Whereas being Jolene, you are a person who will take a girl’s man etc etc hahaahha.

Popularity does matter to everyone, whether people think it or not. It just happens, society is laughable and I hope you got that from this song.

What’s the time mr wolf

This song is also about getting trashed.

This is about how I got absolutely fooookkedddd at my friends Birthday and when drunk, everything was elevated, so feelings towards people felt stronger, eye rolls were harder, laughing was louder etcccccc. It really focuses on being bitter and doesn’t shy away from the fact that you can dislike someone, no matter how long you’ve liked them. It’s truly looking at the people around you and realising you have no fucking idea to why you even still speak to them.

I created the instrumental for this track before lyrics were even about, I wanted to do this to ensure that I could think thoroughly about what I was going to write. The lyrics, for me, are the main focus of this piece as they are all things that were said on this particular night. Whenever someone said something relatively ‘poetic’ haha, I would write it down in hope to string some stuff together.

My fave lyric from this is possibly ‘I bet she can’t burn herself without blinking’ the reason for this was because I was talking to someone as we walked home, about their past relationship with their ex. And we got onto the topic of how great their ex was academically, this person’s only response was to whip a lighter out of their pocket, say ‘I bet she can’t burn herself without blinking’ and actually then burn them self without blinking ahahahah. It was strange and I just felt as though it definitely needed to be on this song.

Kinda

This is my Taylor Swift song, Nice and bitter.

I wrote this song in like 20 minutes. Again, like ‘whats the time’ the instrumental was done, so it was just messing with lyrics and melodies. After a few days of different lyrical ideas, I stopped listening to it, to then come back later on in the process. During this time, I had a petty fall out with the people I love the most, and I feel when emotions are elevated, writing is so much easier. Thus me returning to this instrumental with a vast collection of petty things to sing. ‘Kinda sick of that, kinda sick of this’ was a lyric that I was doubting for the longest time due to its simplicity and child like manor, however I felt somewhat drawn to it and couldn’t find anything that would replicate the same feelings, so I had to keep it in.

The instrumental for this track was really fun to make, as it was brighter than the usual stuff that I was creating, it was almost silly. For this reason, it felt like a whole different recording process, it was almost like seeing sunlight after being inside a dark place all day. It was light and it felt less intense than any of the other tracks and I think if you listen to this EP, it shows as well.

Chewing cheeks

I’ve been in love once in my life, and the love wasn’t reciprocated. It was possibly the best and worst experience I have ever faced. This song is me accepting the ache.

At this point in the writing process I had been messing around with the repeating three chords in which the song is based on, I tried to add melody, and nothing seemed to work with it. At this time, I was really getting into spoken word and slam poetry, this began me writing poems, rather than lyrics. Chewing cheeks is a poem I wrote accepting heart break and finally allowing myself to move on. It focuses not just on love and bitterness and aching, but also mentions religion.

For me, the biggest confusion I have ever faced is with my religious identity and my relationship to whatever is actually out there. I wish deeply that I was brought up with a religion, however am also so happy that I wasn’t. It’s an on going battle in which I am never going to answer and that’s really ok, I know that now xxx

I thought with the message of moving on, ‘chewing cheeks’ would be the perfect way to end this EP, I hope you enjoyed this lil write up and ‘acne’ itself. It really does mean that world that someone is listening, thank you x