Hey, what’s happenin’? This is Nick Rosen, or SLOANE, and I’m just gonna give you a play-by-play of all the tracks of my upcoming EP, Too Young To Be Lonely.
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So this is my EP: I think a lot of the lyrics are just very channeling emo-punk, but then also lyrically Smashing Pumpkins, a lot of the early-90s rock, but then also really kind of channeling – I was listening to a lot of 1975, LANY – so I think that shows in the production, and yeah!
Just trying to make honestly the theme for this was make the most honest body of work I could that was telling stories about what I was going through – depression, heartbreak, insecurities – and that’s where I’m at with it. I couldn’t be more pleased or excited about this EP.
“Too Young To Be Lonely,” originally sounded kind of like Ed Sheeran, the “A-Team” vibe – really acoustic, singer-songwriter. My buddy Ian got Perry Bancs who I wrote 5 of the 6 songs on this EP with, were writing, and just kind of talking about the idea that he had this person that he had been seeing and the breakup really just tore him apart, but just the idea that it’s just.. we’re too young to be this lonely and fucked up and messed up over one person or situation. So we just wrote that, and then I started singing it to myself and finished it, and I asked him if it was cool if I just took it and finished it and to me it was more anthemic; this really big, fun song that you could dance to, so kinda re-did the production, made it really what I thought was more fun just to remind myself, I’m too young to be lonely, and to just dance through these hard times. And then my buddy Juan Ariza, a great artist, helped me put the finishing touches on the production, some of that bass stuff, and really made it speak, and come to life, and I just love it. That song was the first song out of this batch that I sang and really wrote for myself, and this has been a new turning point for me – writing all the songs, and singing them for myself. This EP is a big deal because of that. So that’s partly why I wanted to call it Too Young To Be Lonely, also just once again, I love the idea, that we’re just too young to be lonely right now, especially during these times that can be really hard.
“In My Head” is really just about making up all these situations in my head. I do a lot for people – when I’m in relationships, I’ll get them all this stuff, go out of my way to do anything that I can to help them, whatever, and just kind of making believe that they’re doing stuff. So anything that they do I’ll be like, “Oh my god! They really do love me!” or just making up all these situations when they’re giving me 10% and I’m pretending it’s 100% because I want it to be love so bad, or I want it to work so bad. So my buddy Ian, when we were writing, was just like, “Dude, I think you just heard her say ‘I love you’ in your head,” and we wrote this song. And to me, the beat and everything just kinda came out fun, and once again just kind of driving that point, “Maybe I just heard you say ‘I love you’ in my head,” just driving it, and that’s kind of the energy of the song.
“Down From Here” I wrote when I got back from Burning Man, I did a Burning Man – Puff Daddy flew me out to kind of help, I guess, music direct his camp that he was doing at Burning Man. He wanted to kind of have me set up some stuff, do some jam sessions, and help him and Dallas Austin do some cool music there. So I was there, having all of these, I guess what could be considered “cool experiences,” but I just felt really down and depressed, and when I got home I remember thinking, “shit, if I’m this depressed, in I guess this seemingly cool situation, I’m at the top and I can only come down from here.” So I started writing this song and I had these chords in the guitar I was messing with, and it all just kind of wrote itself. The pre-chorus, “The south of France could be Mojave, looks the same in Abu Dhabi,” I’m really talking about how, if you’re depressed, anywhere in the world is going to be depressing. It doesn’t matter where you are. I remember being in Italy and on vacation a year or two ago, and having basically a nervous breakdown in Sicily, and I remember thinking to myself, “It doesn’t matter where I am, I could be anywhere, but these issues are coming with me.” And it’s like, you could be at the top but you’re only going down from there if you haven’t dealt with this darkness. Just for so much of my life, I feel like I have this inherent darkness in me; something so fucked up at the core of me and I’ve been battling it, and that’s really what “Down From Here” is, is me dealing with this innate darkness that I feel like I have. Most people consider me “top” of some things, or having this cool life, or making money or gigs or whatever but just feeling like I can only go down from here because this darkness is gonna eat me. So it’s a really personal song for me, and the music, everything, just came very naturally, but it’s a hard song because of that and it’s even hard to sing because of that, but I love it. That’s “Down From Here.”
“Easier” I also wrote when I got back from Burning Man but it’s an upbeat song. I was talking to this girl, and just the idea of talking to her and having her in my life – we hadn’t even been romantic yet at this point – but she just made everything easier. So when I’m feeling all of these other things, she made it easier to wake up, easier to be me, and that’s really what the song’s about. And I kind of put this, what I thought, was a fun drum beat/drum machine/90s-almost vibe to it, and I just thought that it was kind of fun, almost in my emo/indie/fucked-up/sad-boy way, it was like a 90s love song. Might not sound like that to you, but that’s what I was dealing with. And the verses, what I was thinking about when I wrote it, and with the production, the verses are very sad-boy, kind of depressing, but the chorus is really uplifting because I guess it’s me trying to process how to write a positive, upbeat, love song, because I just normally don’t do that, but this person inspired that so much. So the verses are me trying to be really honest about myself – about eating disorder, about insecurity, and then the chorus is this uplifting thing saying “it’s okay, you make it easier to be me, even with all this stuff.”
“Put Down Your Weapons” was written really fast. My buddy Tammy Infusino, great artist, we sang this song together, and we wrote it really fast, and it’s just about talking to my own demons; talking to my own innate darkness. I practice Buddhism and in Buddhism there’s a concept of the 10 worlds, and how any moment, you can be in hell or heaven, but just kind of the simultaneity of that. So in my life, I can be in hell or in heaven, depending on where I’m at with what’s going on, different things, and you know it’s like feeling like I have this demon in me all the time, or this innate darkness, but being okay with just telling it, “it’s okay, let’s not fight each other. The light and the dark doesn’t have to fight.” So that song “Put Down Your Weapons” is me telling myself, “Put down your weapons, you know, you don’t have to fight anymore.” The first verse is from the perspective of me and the second verse is from the perspective of my darkness. And that’s why Tammy and I sang it together, felt like it would be cool to have one duet on the album, but also just because of what we’re singing about. The song really was written as, I started playing these piano chords, we had the idea, we wrote it very very quick, with very minimal production because I just wanted it to be about that story, about what we’re saying… “Put down your weapons.”
“Good At Pretending” is really just kind of a fun song about, you know, I’m just so good at pretending, I’m good at making believe that people are something that they’re not. That can be romantic, or it can be work, or anything! We’re just so good at pretending. It’s the only song that my buddy Ian sang on on the EP, but I love the message, I love what we said on it, and I produced the song with my buddy Juan Ariza, and we just wanted to make it as fun as we could. Anthemic, danceable, but like, still saying something really serious. The verses have some really deep stuff in them, but at the same time, it’s this light, fun song – it’s the same idea that you can cry while you’re smiling, and it’s like, how can we look back on these maybe depressing moments when we’re pretending that things were something they weren’t, but kinda dance through it. I just love the production, there’s a couple little throwback rock moments in it, of some drums, and really kind of rock and guitars and for me in my head paying homage to some Smashing Pumpkins type stuff that I love, ‘cause I’m an indie kid at heart, but also love 90s rock, and just the writing on all that stuff.
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