Welcome back to OH CRUMBS!
This week, I’ll be diving into my song Trying To Try, the third single off my second EP II.
Behind The Song 🎙️
Vulnerability is a strange thing. It’s what we’re all afraid to be but we know it would make the world a much better place if we were a little less ego and a little more vulnerable. In truth, for me to do my best as a songwriter, I need the artist to be their best vulnerable self - to spill their heart out, throw their guts on the floor, their pride completely out the window so that we can get to the core of their being, write it down and record it in 3 minutes or less.
I started to think about what stops us from being vulnerable, from being open and honest with ourselves and others. And from my musings, I think it’s to do with pride. We’re constantly bombarded with reminders to “be our best selves”, “just be happy”, “fake it till you make it” (that one really grinds my gears!) and I think if we’re anything other than those things, we feel like we’re a Debbie Downer, or doing life wrong, or failing.
The amount of times I lied to people (mainly in the music industry) about how everything was going in my career (“Oh my gosh, yes everything’s going great, all such fun, everything is good, I’m fine!” - side note, my dad always reminds me when I say I’m “fine”, that fine is an acronym for Fucked up Insecure Neurotic and Emotional). I’d do it to save face, worried that I’d be judged and that people wouldn’t want to work with me if I said “you know what, this week has been tough, I really thought I’d landed that sync but they went with another song.” The fear I had about always needing to look like I was doing enough ended up in burnout, and my endless worry about needing to look like I was on top, ended up in me hitting rock bottom.
But as J.K.Rowling said
“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
If you’d asked me how I was on the day I wrote Trying To Try, I’d have probably said I was fine. But I wasn’t. I’d just had a call with the team I’d been working with for several years - and one I thought I was going to be working with for many years to come - and they said that as a result of the changes in the industry due to Covid, they had to let me go. Thank god Ben Parker Jnr was there to catch me and my vulnerability as we fell, hard.
Ben gave me the space to be the most honest version of myself and listened as I threw my hurt on the table and at his beautiful Wurlitzer (side note: no instruments were harmed in the making of this song). The feelings of rejection, of not feeling like I’m good enough, the endless thought cycle of ‘what more could I have done’ and the fearful question that no one likes to say out loud: ‘maybe I should quit’.
Perhaps my honesty made Ben feel more at ease to share the low moments of his career with me, but when he did we really connected and I felt a weight being lifted from my shoulders, as I realised I wasn’t the only one who’d felt like this. We spoke about the complex sensation of feeling simultaneously happy yet sad when seeing our peers in rooms we wanted to be in, on stages we were once promised. I used to think these emotions were jealousy, but after listening to Glennon Doyle on Elizabeth Day’s podcast How To Fail, I realised it wasn’t jealousy I was feeling when those around me were succeeding, it was fear - fear that there wouldn’t be enough left for me.
I hope the vulnerability in this song can be helpful for anyone who’s going through a low moment, who’s questioning whether they should carry on and may it be a reminder that we’re all allowed to feel these feelings but that they will pass. And that sometimes, rock bottom can lead to something beautiful. And that everyone has felt like this in the industry at one point or another, despite what their Instagram says. Had I not shared my insecurities and been vulnerable with Ben, I wouldn’t have gotten those feelings out of my system and onto paper and into this song - like Anna Nalick so eloquently put it, now ‘it’s no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to’.
Final point on this - after I’d written the song, gotten home, cried a little more, I then sent a little prayer up to the universe asking for a sign if I should stay in music, if I should keep on going, keep on trying. About half an hour later, I got an email saying Like It (A Lot) was played on BBC radio and would continue to be for the next 4 weeks. I took that as a yes.
Quote For It 📜
This quote inspired the bridge of Trying To Try. It was one my mum sent me during a particularly tricky moment I was going through when I was living in my ‘if only’ phase. But this one is a good one to have to hand because it’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given.
“I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Watch It 🎬
Whilst we’re on the subject of alternative lives and what might have been, the film I want to recommend this week is Sliding Doors. It’s a good old dose of the ‘90s and early Gwyneth Paltrow (plus I used to live really near where they filmed it in London!)
If you haven’t seen Sliding Doors, I’d highly recommend it, and if you have, do you fall into an existential crisis every time you miss a train?!
From The Poet Tree 📚
This week’s poem is by William Stafford. There are so many times when we could give up, when we could quit trying and fall into the shadowlands of where we are and where we want to be. But if you hold on to your thread, if you keep following the crumbs, you’ll never get lost.
The Way It Is by William Stafford
There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen: people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread.
Peach Picks 🍑
This is where I share my Spotify playlist of “Songs My Friends Wrote”. The artists this week that always remind me to always keep on trying are Hadley Kennary, Elise Hayes and Sarah Darling.
The artwork for the playlist is by the incredible Austin Kleon
Thanks so much for following the crumbs with me, can’t wait to share more next week!
Love,
Loved it 🫶