I was thinking of how our common cultural points of reference are related to popular culture, and specifically how fame plays into that. Becoming well-known for anything is difficult, and the vast majority of us are only known to the people we directly meet. And in the entertainment field, there’s also a component of luck: were you in the right place at the right time? Played a show the day before that A&R man stopped by the club? Better luck next time…

The other factor that influenced the lyrics was just how social media provides this distorted fun-house mirror view. There’s this bias because we try to present our best image on social media, and if you spend a lot of time comparing yourself to others — always a bad idea — it can feel like your real life is second-rate compared to the best of the best that your friends (or parasocial relationships) share online. And all that stuff doesn’t really matter. Just do what you want. Have fun with it. Be creative, make stuff and share it, even if nobody else in the whole world cares. You probably will never be famous for the creative things you do, but is that really so bad?

This one benefits from “weekend time.” I recorded the instruments using a combination of my Zoom recorder (I used the XY condenser mics to record the acoustic guitar, and I supplemented that with the direct feed from the guitar’s pickup, as the Zoom’s mikes are fairly trebly) and the Boss amp simulator for the electric guitar parts and bass. The drums, per usual, are synthesized and from the Blasting Room Kontakt library. The vocals were recorded using an SM-58 into the Zoom Recorder. They were a pain because the Zoom recorder really doesn’t have a wide tolerance — signals were too hot or too cold unless I positioned myself just right. The organ was done using my little MIDI keyboard, which was pretty fun. I also drove myself insane trying to play the arpeggiated clean line in the bridge, as I was miscounting the picking pattern and trying to squeeze an extra eighth note in there. It took me about an hour of stubborn trying to finally stop and think through what I was trying to play, before I realized it had one note too many.

Lyrics

Hey, I know you’re feeling quite down
Like you’ve got nothing to say
Gone, like a sieve, leaking the years
‘Till all your time’s melted away
If it hasn’t happened after so long
Then you wonder why you even try
Do you worry you’ll leave a mark of nothing
When you finally kiss this world goodbye?

We all want to be the exception
But logic dictates that we can’t
We’d love to be royalty, but
Most of us are just worker ants
But we all can leave a mark
Among family and friends
Being yourself for the ones you love
Is how your life never ends
It never ends

So, go and do something you love
Bid your reservations a fond farewell
Just have fun and keep on trying
And who cares if you suck or excel?
So why would you waste your time
Worrying about fortune or fame?
All that time worrying is time not living
With only your aspirations to blame