#also re: the melody; i actually did make the rest on my own its just legit the first couple of bars that i copied bc i could not

[finex09]

decided to hop on beepbox and make a lil diddy except its in e minor bc im feeling a lil sad and down in the dumps

(i will say the melody isnt all mine, i literally couldnt think of anything for the first couple of bars so i yoinked it from this piano piece. the rest of melody is mine. idk felt the need to say that. hope yall enjoy)

[shealolz]

“I wanna be your favorite boy” - Zenitsu Agatsuma - PART ONE

Summary: moments with you and zenitsu <33 also him realizing he doesn’t love nezuko but he loves you

Warnings & Notes: some blood bc demon-slaying,

Genre: fluff, some bits of angst

Zenitsu Agatsuma x Tanjiro’s Agender Twin Reader

PART ONE!!

word count: 4,565

——

when Zenitsu first got a glance at you he was drawn to your eyes. those curious eyes with smile lines next to them. but he could tell by the furrow in your brow that you were just as angry as the boy next to you.

“you know this counts as harassment right?” you said, glancing at the other boy who was apologizing to the beautiful girl he’d been weakened in the knees by.

“harassment?!” Zenitsu stammered. “no, no, no! I’m just trying to find someone beautiful to marry before I die to demons!” he wailed, wiping at his running nose.

you knelt down to sit next to him and he caught sight of the sword tucked against your hip. were you and the other boy demon slayers too?

“Have I met you before?” you asked, tilting your head. Zenitsu shrugged. “I think I saw you at the final selection. it was hard not to miss, there weren’t very many left.”

Zenitsu shuddered. he survived purely out of luck. sure he had gruesome dreams about defeating the demons but it never actually happened, he was weak!

you stuck out your hand. “I’m (name) Kamado. a pleasure to meet you...uh...” you trailed off.

“Zenitsu Agatsuma.” he supplied, feeling a tiny smile creep at his lips. “a pleasure to meet you Zenitsu.”

he shook your hand. it was warm.

the boy you were with walked over, Zenitsu’s messenger buried in the mess of auburn locks. “(name),” he said. “I see you’ve made a new friend. Tanjiro Kamado.” the boy—Tanjiro—introduced himself, giving Zenitsu a strained smile.

so he was your brother. and he was also still upset over Zenitsu’s wailing. “let's get off the dirty ground shall we?” you prompted, pulling yourself up with ease. Zenitsu followed.

before you and your brother could leave, Tanjiro turned around. “would you like to join us Zenitsu? I see you a slayer after all.”

Zenitsu nodded frantically and walked into sync with you guys. he bets you guys are strong, he’s unlikely to die with you guys around.

digging around in his uniform he found a riceball. he split it into three pieces with his hands, handing you and Tanjiro a piece each. “a gesture of my gratitude.” he mumbled, holding the riceball to his mouth.

you gave him a smile and Tanjiro voiced his thank you as he nibbled on the rice.

silence quickly fell in between the three of you and Zenitsu tuned into your sounds to see if either of you had bad intentions. he didn’t want to hang out with the wrong crowd y’know!

but as soon as he did all he could hear was the soft matching melody of your twin-like hearts, beating with sincerity and kindness. you both had a sound so soft and gentle it made Zenitsu want to cry.

he was in good hands, he knew it.

——

“I dont like creepy houses!” Zenitsu wailed, his hand gripping your hoari. you didn’t tell him off for it but you did raise a teasing eyebrow at it.

“Please! you’ve got to save our big brother!” the tiny children pleaded, pointing wildly at the house.

before Tanjiro could speak to calm them down a body is thrown out the window and it’s very bloodied up. Zenitsu let out a shriek.

you and Tanjiro were obviously idiots because you ran towards the body! still, he tip-toed over in time to see the man let out his final breath.

you glanced over your shoulder to look at the terrified child. “is...is this your brother?”

they shook their head. “our brother has short hair. that can't possibly be him.”

Tanjiro nodded. “then we can still save him!” he smiled. you nodded, smiling equally as wide.

“c’mon let’s go.” you hummed, making your way for the door. “ARE YOU CRAZY?! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE IN THERE!” Zenitsu screamed, almost turning white with fear.

“it’ll be fine. we can protect you.” Tanjiro said, slipping off the box on his back to lay it under a tree. “yeah, and here, you can hold my haori if you're so scared.” you stuck out the end of your haori for Zenitsu to grab onto.

slowly he grabbed it, bundling right up into your side, only a couple inches from your back as he peered over your shoulder.

the five of you only made it a couple of feet before the house began to rearrange itself. Zenitsu's knuckles turned white from gripping your haori so the two of you would stay together. just one kamado sibling! please!

once it stops you quickly depart, your haori ripping, a tiny piece of fabric in Zenitsu's palms as you bang your fists against the walls, screaming for your brother. "TANJIRO!"

"c-calm down! the demon will hear you!" he whimpered, biting his nails nervously.

you turned your angry gaze to him. "No! I will not calm down! my brother could die because I'm not with him!"

"do you really have such little faith in your brother?" the little boy, Shoichi, spoke up.

you sighed, the tenseness in your shoulders loosening. "no, that's not it. it's just he's one of the few family members I have left. I don't want to risk losing him."

Shoichi bit his lip. "then let's find your brother and my siblings!"

you gave the kid a smile and patted his head softly, Zenitsu kinda wished you'd do that to him too. just to ease his worries a bit.

"i- um. I ripped your haori." he stammered out, wanting your attention back on him. you clicked your tongue. "it's fine, I can just stitch it back later. or you can keep it, I don't mind."

he nodded, holding his hand to his chest.

"now let's search for an exit and then re-enter the building," you said, clapping your hands.

"aha! I found one!" he chirps pulling open the door he had found.

you sent him a warm smile. "good job, Zenitsu!"

he fumbled with his hands, his cheeks heating up greatly and he was about to stutter out a thank you when he saw a boar in the corner of his eye.

snapping his head to the side it turned out it wasn't a boar but a man with a boar's head. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" he screeched, running over to you to hide behind you.

but the boar-man hybrid paid them no attention and just ran down the hall, dual swords in its grip.

"I don't know," you muttered, hand resting atop your own sword.

the three of you walk in silence, suspense high as you crept through the house.

"Why are you being so cowardly. stop attaching yourself to (name), you got a sword for a reason don't you?" Shoichi insults and Zenitsu lets out a shriek, frightened by the sudden noise.

there's a deep rumbling laugh and loud footsteps before a large demon with a long tongue steps out, licking its sharp teeth that gleam under the yellow lights.

"fuck." you mutter under your breathing, pushing out your arm in front of Zenitsu and Shoichi.

"you're not gonna fight it are you?!" Zenitsu whisper-screams, trembling fingers gripping at his hair. you take in a breath. "as a demon slayer my job is to slay every threatening demon I come across, so yes, I will fight it."

"Zenitsu, bring Shoichi to the back wall, make sure nothing happens to him," you order and Zenitsu practically drags the boy to the back wall.

The demon chuckled. "this is going to be an easy fight." he muttered, cracking his knuckles.

you unsheathed your sword, holding it out to the side as the demon runs forward. Zenitsu's fingers stop shaking and both he and Shoichi wait in bated breath to see what you would do.

you don't move other than a slight shift in your feet and when the demon is about three feet away you gripped your sword harder.

"Water Breathing Seventh Form: Piercing Rain Drop."

before the demon could wrap his claws around you you step forward and stab your sword into its stomach before pulling out and doing it again while the demon stood in shock that you landed a hit on him.

your stab had stopped the demon from moving and before it could try again you pulled out your sword and jumped up, using the tall roof to your advantage.

"Water Breathing Second Form: Water Wheel."

your sword crashed down on the demon's arms that he had held up to shield himself and barely scraped his head. "Wow..." Shoichi breathed from next to Zenitsu and he couldn't help but think that it was an understatement.

but your minor victory was short-lived as the demon wrapped its huge hand around your calf and foot and squeezed.

Zenitsu could hear the loud crack over your scream.

you tumbled for the floor but still managed to tuck and roll before you hit your head, your sword plunging into the floorboard as you gripped at your ankle. it was probably broken.

the demon turned around but gave a quick glance to Zenitsu and Shoichi first. "you two look weak, I can have a quick snack first." the demon decided before picking you up.

the demon's tongue slithered out and licked against your cheek and Zenitsu promptly passed out.

a shocked gasp.

"zen---wake---you---save---(name)!"

a slicing sound along with the squirting of blood.

"Thunder Breathing First Form: Thunderclap And Flash."

a thud.

Zenitsu's eyes flutter open and stare into your own giddy ones. he sits up, rubbing at his head before his eyes snap open at the sight of the decapitated and decaying demon.

"did you and Shoichi do that?" he asks, tilting his head. you furrow your eyebrows and Zenitsu's even more confused.

"What no- never mind, sure, whatever. but I need you to carry me because of my leg," you babbled, laying a hand on his shoulder.

oh yeah, you had broken your leg. does that mean Shoichi killed the demon? his eyes flick down to your leg which was covered but he didn't doubt it looked horrendous underneath.

he stands up and kneels down for you to jump on his back and he rests his hands under your thigh. "Shoichi, could you grab my sword for me?" you ask the dark-haired boy and he nods, plucking your sword from the ground and helping you sheath it.

he hopes Tanjiro won't yell at him for not saving you before your leg broke but he was scared and passed out! besides Shoichi ended up killing the demon anyways.

the three of you walk around again, calling out for Tanjiro and Shoichi's siblings every once in a while and praying you don't run into a demon because one, Shoichi was just a kid. two, Zenitsu was a coward and ran away when he got scared. and three, you, the only skilled one here, had broken your leg protecting them.

suddenly the house shifts again and the three of you scream as your thrown out a window, freefalling for the ground.

in a moment of quick-thinking Zenitsu turned mid-air and wrapped himself around you and Shoichi so he would take most of the damage. he could at least do this one thing to try and keep his saviors safe.

all he remembers is a sharp pain in his head before he conked out again.

----

when he comes to it the boar-man hybrid is back and is storming for the box that you sit in front of, glaring at the half-naked hybrid.

"touch it and you’ll be asking for a fight," you say lowly, the threat was empty of course but the hybrid man didn't have to know that!

Zenitsu recalls back to Tanjiro's words when they had been walking.

"This box is more important to me and (name) than our lives, we'd give anything to keep it safe."

Zenitsu knew there was a demon in the box, it wasn't hard to tell with its irregular heartbeat but if you and Tanjiro cared for it that much he had to keep it safe.

"Shoichi! get (name) away from the box!" he yelled before curling around the box's entrance.

"huh," you mumbled as Shoichi began to drag you away. you couldn't put up much of a fight other than scratch at the boy's hands as you shouted profanities.

he took kicks and punches to the side but he had to keep the demon in the box safe, for you. ahh--um for you and Tanjiro he means.

the boar-man hybrid raised its sword, the metal glistening in the light, and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain.

except it never came.

"WAIT!" was that Tanjiro?

slowly he peels his eyes open to see the boar-headed man's attention on Tanjiro who had his sword at the ready.

before Zenitsu can process what's happening Tanjiro punches the boar-man (which now that he thinks about it he swears he's seen him before, maybe at final selection) in the ribs and Zenitsu can hear the crack.

"so we're gonna fight bare-handed? fine with me!" the shirtless dude shouts, throwing his swords to the floor. "what? no!" Tanjiro stammers.

the man charges Tanjiro and in a moment of quick reflexes Tanjiro smacks his head against the guy's and he sways a bit.

slowly, almost painfully slow, the mask slips off and a very girlish and beautiful face is revealed as blood drips down the guy's forehead and nose.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" he groaned. "PRETTY YET SO BRUTAL!”

the guy chuckled. "what did ya say 'bout my face? I'll punch your lights out for that!"

but before he could go through with it (Zenitsu is sure the boy would) he collapses, probably due to a head injury.

"wow. I knew you were hard-headed but not that hard-headed," you comment dryly from a couple of feet away, still limp in Shoichi's arms. "my arms are starting to feel numb." Shoichi complains.

Tanjiro walks over to you. "what happened? why can't you stand?"

"broke my ankle trying to defeat a demon. I did some damage though, so good for me." you cheer weakly as Tanjiro helps you stand without putting pressure on your foot.

"Shoichi your siblings are over there," Tanjiro says softly with a jerk of his chin. Shoichi grins and runs over to his sibling's waiting arms, crying with joy. damn, Kaigaku never greeted him with tears or hugs.

then again Kaigaku would probably skin Zenitsu alive if given the choice.

"Zenitsu I know your hurt but could you use your haori as a pillow for the guy on the ground?" Tanjiro wonders. "I need to find something to splint (name's) leg."

Zenitsu nods and shrugs off his haori, shoving it beneath the shirtless guy's head. he really needs to figure out this guy's name.

he takes a moment to listen to the guy's sound and instantly want's to tune out. it's loud and annoying and wild like the guy was always hyped up with energy. it was surely something.

he much rathered you and Tanjiro's shared sound.

Tanjiro managed to find a stick to split your leg and had you watch the box that held the demon.

"c'mon. let's bury this guy's body then find some ice for your bruises, eh?" Tanjiro suggested, hoisting up the long-haired dead guy from earlier. Zenitsu nodded and began to dig a hole for the boy.

----

it's night and honestly, Zenitsu was tired but the crow said they'd bring them somewhere to rest up and who was he to deny that?

Inosuke, the shirtless guy (they figured out his name), kept trying to coax Tanjiro into fighting him but the auburn-haired slayer just wasn't having it. he was too busy fussing over your ankle.

the group ends up at a mansion with a wisteria crest on it and Zenitsu relishes in the calming and safe vibe it gives off.

the crickets chirp in his ears and he lets a smile coat his lips. a warm hand wraps around his own and he turns his head to face yours.

your smile isn’t wide and cheerful but instead fond and small. Zenitsu couldn’t help but think you looked stunning even with the grime coating your arms and cheeks.

his tongue felt dry and his heart seemed to pause and in the corner of his eye, he focused on the confused look of Tanjiro as the red-haired boy’s nose twitched.

“I just wanted to say…thank you for saving me back there. you barely know me yet you still helped and I couldn’t thank you enough,” you said softly, averting your eyes to the cracked ground.

Zenitsu rubbed at the back of his neck. “I didn’t even save you… I just passed out. I’m too cowardly to save someone as cool as you.” he didn’t understand your praise, Shoichi killed the demon, hadn’t he?

you shook your head. “you need to learn to take credit for your feats Zenitsu, even if you don’t remember them.” you clicked your tongue before gesturing for Tanjiro to continue walking.

Zenitsu was thoroughly confused, what had you meant by that?

brushing it off he walked after you, listening to your and Tanjiro’s heartbeats. the beautiful melodies you had seemed to overpower Inosuke’s wild and crazed one but he couldn’t help but think that Inosuke’s sound fit right in with the rest of them.

something creeps out of the house and it was obviously a smiling old lady but he couldn’t help his yell of, “MONSTER!” that really did a strain on his probably broken ribs.

you lightly slapped the back of his head. “be polite!” you scolded, not unlike how his Gramps would whenever they went to town.

he muttered an apology to the lady who just laughed wholeheartedly and beckoned them inside.

“Not that I don’t like your kindness ma’am but why are you doing this?” Tanjiro asked as the woman clattered around to prepare food.

“a while back a couple of demon slayers like you four saved my family from some demons and now we tend to injured slayers to thank them, even if they are long gone.” the woman explained, serving them bowls of steaming udon noodles.

“once you finish your dinner I have some clothes for you to change into and then I’m going to have to wrap your ribs and leg.” the woman said, pulling out clothing for them to wear.

“thank you!” you and Tanjiro say simultaneously, picking up your chopsticks. Inosuke, like the menace he is, eats with his hands, shoving the noodles in his mouth messily.

you grimace but pat his back lightly when he almost chokes. Inosuke squints at you. “you tryna fight or something?”

“no, I just don’t want you to die due to noodles.”

Inosuke huffs and continues to devour the noodles, not caring about the mess he made.

after food and changing a family doctor came to wrap their ribs and your leg along with giving you a crutch to use till your leg is healed.

the four of you head to the bedroom you were gifted, Inosuke plopping down on a futon and claiming it as his.

you sat down on your own, fiddling with the sheets. you were probably bored.

“hey Inosuke, why’d you become a demon slayer?” you asked, kicking your good leg back and forth.

“well, I joined after I beat up a member who came to my mountain! then I heard about demons and final selection from the guy and decided to join to beat up demons!” Inosuke grinned, resting his head in his arm as he stared at you.

you snickered behind your hand. “amazing story, bravo.”

“I know.” Inosuke shot back. Zenitsu almost face-palmed.

“uh.” Zenitsu started, not really knowing if now was a good time. “Tanjiro, (name), w-why do you have a demon in the box you carry around?”

and with stupidly good timing the demon scratched at the box’s door, the thing swinging open.

a clawed palm sticks out and Zenitsu backs into the closet, trying to climb into it.

but when it crawls out his eyes widen. long black longs of hair that lighten at the tips, bright pink eyes, and smooth skin.

the demon was a beauty, that’s for sure.

but comparing it to you its eyes seemed dull, its hair didn’t shine, and no matter how cute it looked it couldn’t compare to the flush on your cheeks when you thanked him earlier.

though the demon was still pretty, and Zenitsu tended to gravitate to pretty people.

wait…was Tanjiro carrying her around to have a cute demon girlfriend?! Zenitsu refused to allow this! even if you were in on it!

“TANJIRO I WILL SET YOUR EXECUTION DATE! YOU CANNOT CARRY AROUND SUCH A BEAUTY AND NOT TELL ME!” he screeched, beginning to chase the boy around as he tried to stutter out a response.

sighing, you crawled over to the demon and let it hug you, thin arms wrapping around your shoulders before tiny hands patted your head.

“did you have a good sleep, Nezuko?” you asked kindly. the demon, Nezuko, let out a happy hum and began to incoherently babble around the bamboo gag.

adorable, his mind supplied, yet his eyes were on you.

“you all talk too much. it takes up thinking capacity.” Inosuke says dryly before promptly passing out.

“Zenitsu!” Tanjiro squeaks, trying to be quiet. “Nezuko’s my sister! not my girlfriend! calm down!”

Zenitsu blinks once. twice. before shrugging and responding with a simple “okay.”

after that fiasco, Tanjiro ‘talks’ with his younger sister before stating he was heading to bed, leaving just you, him, and the demon who perched herself on the end of your futon.

silently he climbed from his futon and crawls to yours, trying to ignore the eyes of the demon.

the grime was still on your cheeks from earlier and absentmindedly Zenitsu reaches out and scrubs at your cheek with his sleeve.

you flush again and look down at your lap. “what was that for?” you mumble.

“there was dirt on you, didn’t want you to go to be coated in dirt y’know?” he laughs but it’s obviously a nervous one.

“Oh. well uh, goodnight Zenitsu, have good dreams,” you say, patting his arm before lifting your blanket over yourself.

Zenitsu retreats to his own futon calmly but his mind was going a hundred miles a minute.

oh god- why did he do that? he was so stupid. what if you think he has a crush on you? no, no, no, he has a crush on your beautiful sister Nezuko, doesn’t he? he has to! he loves pretty people! but he also finds you pretty…does that me he likes you too? no that can’t be possible your just a friend!

and he falls asleep like that, internally anxious.

——

the next day the group is eating breakfast when a kasugai crow appears, annoyingly screaming in their ears.

“TANJIRO MAKE IT SHUT UP!” he yells, resisting the urge to smack the boy with the bowl of food in front of him.

“Zenitsu calm down! I can’t talk to it if you keep screaming!” Tanjiro yells back.

you are glaring at both of them from the rim of your bowl as Inosuke runs around having successfully stolen as much food as he could.

“could you both shut up?” you groan, putting down your chopsticks.

the crow lands on your arm when you stick it out and tweets into your ear, telling you about whatever mission they had to do now.

you nod and pat the crow's head before it flies off. “Inosuke sits down,” you order, pointing at the seat next to you.

He hesitantly does and Zenitsu silently thanks whatever god that’s out there that he does. he really doesn’t want to face your wrath.

“were supposed to go to Mt. Natagumo. apparently, there are multiple demons, seemingly in a group, roaming around and killing whoever comes to the mountain,” you explain.

Zenitsu pales. that sounds scary. he really doesn’t want to die, especially alone.

"We'll do it!" Tanjiro hums. Inosuke gives a boyish grin. "let's kick some demon ass!"

the kind lady walks up to them, taking their bowls of food. "the doctor says your injuries are healed so you're free to go." she smiles. "come back if needed."

"thank you for the kindness ma'am!" Tanjiro bows his head. she waves it off with a laugh. "no need to thank me, deary."

"well," you announced. "let's get changed and head to Mt. Natagumo!"

----

"we've been walking for hours. how tall is the mountain?" Zenitsu whined, dragging a hand down his sweaty face.

"hold on- I smell something!" Tanjiro shouted, holding a hand out. "it smells like blood."

and of course, Tanjiro runs towards the danger. "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" he bellowed after Tanjiro who had been followed by not only you but Inosuke as well.

"To fight some demons!" you chirped, hands cupping your mouth. "you can stay here if you want. we'll be back in no time."

"what (bad take on your name) said!" Inosuke grinned.

Zenitsu huffed and brought his knees to his chest. "HAVE FUN DYING!" he snarled.

----

how stupid could they be? who the hell runs towards the danger? what in the...

he will not go, he refuses to go into that hell hole.

they're all gonna die.

wait... they're all gonna die!

he scrambled up. you and the idiots took Nezuko!

when he looked at the sky he realized the sun had been begging to set and he'd sat there mumbling to himself like a mad man.

he has to keep you safe! and Nezuko of course.

Zenitsu runs for the mountain, calling out you and Nezuko's names, hoping one of you would hear him. and for the second time, he wished there was at least one kamado sibling with him.

as he's pushing his way through the forest on the mountain he hears little clapping of spikes hitting the ground and a shiver goes down his spine.

"oh god, I'm an idiot. why did I come here?" he mumbled to himself, turning his head in all directions.

though he froze when he saw it.

a tiny spider with a bald human head.

what the actual fuck.

screaming, he scrambles to get away, getting slapped and scraped by multiple tree branches whilst doing so.

but then he comes across an even bigger spider with a human head. Zenitsu wants to cry. he wishes you were here, you'd be able to slay the demon and protect him.

"I see you've met my creation." the spider demon laughed, a cruel grin growing on its lips. "as the eldest son, I have a powerful ability. I can turn humans into little spiders that must obey my orders. and I want you to be next."

Zenitsu babbles nonsense as he fearfully climbed up a tree, hugging its trunk.

"I'm sorry!" he cries. "I'm sorry I couldn't become the demon slayer gramps wanted me to be! I'm sorry I'm a pathetic and sniveling coward, I don't want to be one! I'm sorry I couldn't protect you, (name)!"

his hands come to cover his head and Zenitsu realizes chunks of hair are starting to fall out as his eyes focus on the bite in his palm.

he bangs his head against the tree lightly.

why couldn't he do anything?

----

it was getting too long so ima have to split this into parts but here's part one!!

@ilyimagines @mychemicalangel @songbird-writer

[dailytomlinson]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[stylesnews]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[bananaofswifts]

Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’: Album Review

It’s hard to remember any contemporary pop superstar that has indulged in a more serious, or successful, act of sonic palette cleansing than Swift has with her eighth album, a highly subdued but rich affair written and recorded in quarantine conditions.

While most of us spent the last four months putting on some variation of “the quarantine 15,” Taylor Swift has been secretly working on the “Folklore” 16. Sprung Thursday night with less than a day’s notice, her eighth album is a fully rounded collection of songs that sounds like it was years in the interactive making, not the product of a quarter-year’s worth of file-sharing from splendid isolation. Mind you, the words “pandemic hero” should probably be reserved for actual frontline workers and not topline artistes. But there’s a bit of Rosie the Riveter spirit in how Swift has become the first major pop artist to deliver a first-rank album that went from germination to being completely locked down in the midst of a national lockdown.

The themes and tone of “Folklore,” though, are a little less “We can do it!” and a little more “Can we do it?” Because this new collection is Swift’s most overtly contemplative — as opposed to covertly reflective — album since the fan favorite “Red.” Actually, that’s an understatement. “Red” seems like a Chainsmokers album compared to the wholly banger-free “Folklore,” which lives up to the first half of its title by divesting itself of any lingering traces of Max Martin-ized dance-pop and presenting Swift, afresh, as your favorite new indie-electro-folk/chamber-pop balladeer. For fans that relished these undertones of Swift’s in the past, it will come as a side of her they know and love all too well. For anyone who still has last year’s “You Need to Calm Down” primarily in mind, it will come as a jolting act of manual downshifting into actually calming down. At least this one won’t require an album-length Ryan Adams remake to convince anyone that there’s songwriting there. The best comparison might be to take “Clean,” the unrepresentative denouement of “1989,” and… imagine a whole album of that. Really, it’s hard to remember any pop star in our lifetimes that has indulged in a more serious act of sonic palette cleansing.

The tone of this release won’t come as a midnight shock to anyone who took spoilers from the announcement earlier in the day that a majority of the tracks were co-written with and produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, or that the man replacing Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie as this album’s lone duet partner is Bon Iver. No matter how much credit you may have given Swift in the past for thinking and working outside of her box, a startled laugh may have been in order for just how unexpected these names felt on the bingo card of musical dignitaries you expected to find the woman who just put out “Me!” working with next. But her creative intuition hasn’t led her into an oil-and-water collaboration yet. Dessner turns out to be an ideal partner, with as much virtuosic, multi-instrumental know-how (particularly useful in a pandemic) as the most favored writer-producer on last year’s “Lover” album, Jack Antonoff.

He, too, is present and accounted for on “Folklore,” to a slightly lesser extent, and together Antonoff and Dessner make for a surprisingly well-matched support-staff tag team. Swift’s collabs with the National’s MVP clearly set the tone for the project, with a lot of fingerpicking, real strings, mellow drum programming and Mellotrons. You can sense Antonoff, in the songs he did with Swift, working to meet the mood and style of what Dessner had done or would be doing with her, and bringing out his own lesser-known acoustic and lightly orchestrated side. As good of a mesh as the album is, though, it’s usually not too hard to figure out who worked on which song — Dessner’s contributions often feel like nearly neo-classical piano or guitar riffs that Swift toplined over, while Antonoff works a little more toward buttressing slightly more familiar sounding pop melodies of Swift’s, dressed up or down to meet the more somber-sounding occasion.

For some fans, it might take a couple of spins around the block with this very different model to become re-accustomed to how there’s still the same power under the hood here. And that’s really all Swift, whose genius for conversational melodies and knack for giving every chorus a telling new twist every time around remain unmistakable trademarks. Thematically, it’s a bit more of a hodgepodge than more clearly autobiographical albums like “Lover” and “Reputation” before it have been. Swift has always described her albums as being like diaries of a certain period of time, and a few songs here obviously fit that bill, as continuations of the newfound contentment she explored in the last album and a half. But there’s also a higher degree of fictionalization than perhaps she’s gone for in the past, including what she’s described as a trilogy of songs revolving around a high school love triangle. The fact that she refers to herself, by name, as “James” in the song “Betty” is a good indicator that not everything here is ripped from today’s headlines or diary entries.

But, hell, some of it sure is. Anyone looking for lyrical Easter eggs to confirm that Swift still draws from her own life will be particularly pleased by the song “Invisible String,” a sort of “bless the broken roads that led me to you” type song that finds fulfillment in a current partner who once wore a teal shirt while working as a young man in a yogurt shop, even as Swift was dreaming of the perfect romance hanging out in Nashville’s Centennial Park. (A quick Google search reveals that, yes, Joe Alwyn was once an essential worker in London’s fro-yo industry.) There’s also a sly bit of self-referencing as Swift follows this golden thread that fatefully linked them: “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to L.A.,” she sings. The “dive bar” that was first established as the scene of a meet-cute two albums ago makes a reappearance in this song, too.

As for actual bad blood? It barely features into “Folklore,” in any substantial, true-life-details way, counter to her reputation for writing lyrics that are better than revenge. But when it does, woe unto he who has crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s on a contract that Swift feels was a double-cross. At least, we can strongly suspect what or who the actual subject is of “Mad Woman,” this album’s one real moment of vituperation. “What did you think I’d say to that?” Swift sings in the opening lines. “Does a scorpion sting when fighting back? / They strike to kill / And you know I will.” Soon, she’s adding gas to the fire: “Now I breathe flames each time I talk / My cannons all firing at your yacht / They say ‘move on’ / But you know I won’t / … women like hunting witches, too.” A coup de gras is delivered: “It’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together.” It’s a message song, and the message is: Swift still really wants her masters back, in 2020. And is really still going to want them back in 2021, 2022 and 2023, too. Whether or not the neighbors of the exec or execs she is imagining really mouth the words “f— you” when these nemeses pull up in their respective driveways may be a matter of projection, but if Swift has a good time imagining it, many of her fans will too.

(A second such reference may be found in the bonus track, “The Lakes,” which will only be found on deluxe CD and vinyl editions not set to arrive for several weeks. There, she sings, “What should be over burrowed under my skin / In heart-stopping waves of hurt / I’ve come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze / Tell me what are my words worth.” The rest of “The Lakes” is a fantasy of a halcyon semi-retirement in the mountains — in which “I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet / Because I haven’t moved in years” — “and not without my muse.” She even imagines red roses growing out of a tundra, “with no one around to tweet it”; fantasies of a social media-free utopia are really pandemic-rampant.)

The other most overtly “confessional” song here is also the most third-person one, up to a telling point. In “The Last Great American Dynasty,” Swift explores the rich history of her seaside manse in Rhode Island, once famous for being home to the heir to the Standard Oil fortune and, after he died, his eccentric widow. Swift has a grand old time identifying with the women who decades before her made fellow coast-dwellers go “there goes the neighborhood”: “There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvelous time ruining everything,” she sings of the long-gone widow, Rebekah. “Fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / Then it was bought by me… the loudest woman this town has ever seen.” (A fine madness among proud women is another recurring theme.)

But, these examples aside, the album is ultimately less obviously self-referential than most of Swift’s. The single “Cardigan,” which has a bit of a Lana Del Rey feel (even though it’s produced by Dessner, not Del Rey’s partner Antonoff) is part of Swift’s fictional high school trilogy, along with “August” and “Betty.” That sweater shows up again in the latter song, in which Swift takes on the role of a 17-year boy publicly apologizing for doing a girl wrong — and which kicks into a triumphant key change at the end that’s right out of “Love Story,” in case anyone imagines Swift has completely moved on from the spirit of early triumphs.

“Exile,” the duet with Bon Iver, recalls another early Swift song, “The Last Time,” which had her trading verses with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. Then, as now, she gives the guy the first word, and verse, if not the last; it has her agreeing with her partner on some aspects of their dissolution (“I couldn’t turn things around”/”You never turned things around”) and not completely on others (“Cause you never gave a warning sign,” he sings; “I gave so many signs,” she protests).

Picking two standouts — one from the contented pile, one from the tormented — leads to two choices: “Illicit Affairs” is the best cheating song since, well, “Reputation’s” hard-to-top “Getaway Car.” There’s less catharsis in this one, but just as much pungent wisdom, as Swift describes the more mundane details of maintaining an affair (“Tell your friends you’re out for a run / You’ll be flushed when you return”) with the soul-destroying ones of how “what started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots,” as “a drug that only worked the first few hundred times” wears off in clandestine bitterness.

But does Swift have a corker of a love song to tip the scales of the album back toward sweetness. It’s not “Invisible String,” though that’s a contender. The champion romance song here is “Peace,” the title of which is slightly deceptive, as Swift promises her beau, or life partner, that that quality of tranquility is the only thing she can’t promise him. If you like your love ballads realistic, it’s a bit of candor that renders all the compensatory vows of fidelity and courage all the more credible and deeply lovely. “All these people think love’s for show / But I would die for you in secret.”

That promise of privacy to her intended is a reminder that Swift is actually quite good at keeping things close to the vest, when she’s not spilling all — qualities that she seems to value and uphold in about ironically equal measure. Perhaps it’s in deference to the sanctity of whatever she’s holding dear right now that there are more outside narratives than before in this album — including a song referring to her grandfather storming the beaches in World War II — even as she goes outside for fresh collaborators and sounds, too. But what keeps you locked in, as always, is the notion of Swift as truth-teller, barred or unbarred, in a world of pop spin. She’s celebrating the masked era by taking hers off again.

Taylor Swift “Folklore” Republic Records

[hlupdate]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.” 

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[discotreque]

Disco 3.08: The Sanctuary

This week IRL was a real mixed bag for me: a lot of messy and barely-manageable anxiety about my health, my day job, and uhhhh *gestures outside*—but also I’ve recently fallen in love (from a responsible social distance)—so it’s been equal parts re-writing professional emails to edit the panic attack out of my tone and gazing dreamily at Discord notifications with cartoon hearts in my eyes. It feels like my life is going to hell in the cutest, coziest handbasket—which is to say that Michael Burnham could not possibly feel like a more relatable character to me right now.

I continue to have issues with the writing at a strange medium-level—somewhere between micro, where the dialogue and characters are really good, and macro, where I’m digging the pace of the overall season, it almost feels like something went wrong in the assembly process, and the script ended up a little bit less than the sum of its perfectly good parts. Again.

But that’s such vague criticism as to be nearly meaningless, and it’s hardly the most interesting level to spend time on anyway. If I zoom out, the parallel season arcs of “getting used to the future” and “the mystery of the Burn” are hanging together wayyyyy better than the Red Angel saga did last year.

And if I zoom in? This episode was funny as shit, wtf.

The discourse re: Tilly these past couple of weeks has been bullshit, and I have a whole angry thing to say about it—but honestly, if you can’t appreciate Doug Jones and Mary Wiseman as a comedic duo, I’m not really mad: mostly I pity the lack of joy in your heart.

Everyone on this show is so funny. Doug’s prissy little delivery absolutely slaughters me (“Execute!...?”), Mary will make a face sometimes that has me screaming laughter into my hands, and I’ve gone on before—and will again—about Sonequa Martin-Green’s egregiously underrated comedy chops.

They were obviously casting for folks w/ jokes in the new season too: David Ajada is no slouch in the dry-delivery or the goofy-face department; his energy and chemistry with Sonequa are as suited to comedy as they are to romance (i.e. extremely 🥵). Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz we knew about, but Blu del Barrio—a certified tiny baby!!!—holds their own and lands every smartass whiz-kid one-liner just on the right side of “too precious to stand.” (I almost always at least chuckle, and never roll my eyes, and for a “teen genius” character that’s literally as good as it gets.) And living legend Michelle Yeoh is clearly having the time of her life, omfg.

Disco’s not funny-funny like Lower Decks, but they do funny-on-purpose better than any live-action Trek except maybe DS9. They have such a deep comedic bench they don’t even need Tig Notaro—they have her on just to flex, I presume.

(I don’t know if I’m predicting, per se, that Strange New Worlds—with Rebecca Romjin’s deadpan, Anson Mount’s twinkly eyes, and Ethan Peck’s twinkly-eyed deadpan—is going to have a tone somewhere between Disco S3 and LwD—but I mean... it kinda has to, right? And you know they kept the number for Rainn Wilson’s agent.)

***

At the start of this episode, I was “sure, why the fuck not” about First Officer Tilly; by the end, I was completely on board. And to everyone who’s still wringing their hands about “the real military” this (always from people who have no idea how actual militaries work, lol) and “Lt. Nilsson” that (she... already has a job on the ship? And no character traits besides “stoic” and “furrows brow”? Oh, I get it—she’s skinny and blonde)—y’all are kind of embarrassing me.

“Rank” and “position” (and “seniority” and “day-to-day duties”...) aren’t the same thing, in Star Trek or any IRL military. Yes, the permanent first officers of normal-duty Starfleet ships we’ve seen have usually been command-division officers with the rank of Commander—but not always. Star Trek: Discovery-A, if you will, is a unique show about a unique ship in a unique situation: “B-b-but that’s not how they do it on Star Trek!!!” isn’t a legitimate criticism, not of this—it’s the mournful cry of an entitled pissbaby who isn’t having their hand held all the way to the fireworks factory.

Here’s what an argument supported by the text of the first 37 episodes of Star Trek: Discovery actually looks like: Sylvia Tilly is nervous and lacks self-confidence, but once she gets over herself—which she can do pretty much instantly in a crisis, even when hilariously intoxicated—she is competent as hell. In lower-stakes situations, without intense pressure to focus her attention, she sometimes gets sidetracked by her own insecurities; at her best, she channels that anxious energy into ambition, drive, and being scrupulously organized.

The only person Tilly doesn’t always get along with is Stamets, and even Stamets’s husband thinks he’s an asshole. Since Season 1, we’ve seen her easily socializing with the rest of the crew, who seem to universally adore her. And she’s also happy to leave her social comfort zone at a moment’s notice: she aligned herself with Ash Tyler (miss you, Shazad!) when no one else would, and she instantly befriended Po even when Po was in Weird Feral Alien Princess mode and Tilly had salad in her hair. She doesn’t like confrontation, but she’s brave enough to initiate it anyway if she needs to, and she’s compassionate with other people’s feelings while still setting firm boundaries. (Her graceful dodge of Rhys’s tipsy kiss at the party in 1.07 lives rent-free in my head to this day.)

No, Tilly didn’t finish the Command Training Program—but she started it, which is almost certainly more command training than any of the lieutenants whose names we know, all of whom are Ops or Science personnel with, presumably, specialized non-command training of their own. The same could be assumed for any unseen ranking officers on this science ship with an entirely volunteer skeleton crew.

And seriously, about Nilsson: she’s my #3 background bae after Octopus Head and the lady on Pike’s Enterprise with the spiky red face, but her job is Spore Drive Ops, not personnel. If she’s running after Saru with a holo-clipboard, who’s going to look serious and push holo-buttons when there’s a Black Alert? *drops holo-mic* Drumhead!

***

The stuff on Kwejian, though. Ooof. Ol’ Two-Takes Frakes directed this one, and between the kinetic energy he always adds to the camera and the scintillating performances he evokes, things stayed moving so briskly I almost didn’t notice Book’s entire “homeworld” was a rental house outside Vancouver, a couple acres of adjacent woods, and like six or seven people.

It’s a hot mess in retrospect, but in the moment it gave us the intensity of Book and Kyheem trying to hurt each other’s feelings by poking at 15-year-old wounds, which as a sibling with complicated sibling relationships I found both funny and devastating—not to mention Frakes directing “shaky bridge” explosion falls at an obvious intensity of “10” on an outdoor location shoot. It falls apart at the slightest scrutiny, but I can’t lie, on first viewing I was totally along for the ride.

***

I’m dying to see where this Georgiou thing goes. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to assume she got Cronenberg’d a couple weeks ago, probably to get her under the thumb of this century’s Section 31, and that her arc is going to take Michelle Yeoh off this show in a way that sets up the S31 show. But also, I don’t care so much whether I’m right, I just want to watch Michelle Yeoh—and Sonequa Martin-Green, and also David Cronenberg tbh, and bring back Shazad Latif while you’re at it—get wherever they’re going.

It’s also a fun and interesting direction to take the comically-evil comic relief character and show that her performative moustache-twirling is partly habit and partly a transparent emotional defence against very real fear and vulnerability. We’re all products of our circumstances, and a radical enough change in circumstances can afford almost anyone at least the opportunity to change. I can’t say Emperor Georgiou would have been my first choice of protagonist for that storyline, but it’s not like Michelle Yeoh’s not going to fuckin’ crush it.

***

Miscellany:

So the Burn had an origin point, and now that point is broadcasting a signal that’s somehow both a haunting melody that everyone seems to know—but no one can remember learning—and a Federation distress signal. What the fuck, y’all. I have full-body goosebumps just typing that.

Saru workshopping his own captainly catchphrase with the aid of Tilly’s extreme sincerity and organizational skills is probably the funniest thing that’s ever happened on this show—followed closely by the uncomfortably lingering reaction shots when he’s trying them out on the bridge 😂 (And omg please give Rhys and Bryce the dumbass buddy-comedy C-plots they deserve next season, I beg you.)

I would do a little “prop watch” entry on those Kwejianian(?) bolt-throwing rifles, but I’d have to stop drooling over them first. “Curvy polished hardwood” seems to be New Trek shorthand for “extra sleek and futuristic” (cf. the bridge of the USS Titan in the LwD finale), and I have to say: I am fully into it.

Restating my prediction that we will not see Detmer and Owosekun get together this season, because we will find out that they’ve been together for ages. Everyone knew—Pike even knew!—it just never came up in front of the audience before. That would be one of the cutest ways to do it imho, and one of the funniest too, especially as a meta-joke about how much character development didn’t happen in the first two seasons. (That said, if we get to see their first kiss, I will be screaming with incoherent joy for days, so this is a real win-win for me.)

Speaking of cute: IRL spouses Mary Wiseman and Noah Averbach-Katz, both Julliard-trained actors (it’s where they met!), can’t quite hide their chemistry in the scenes between Tilly and Ryn. I loved seeing Tilly be a hardass when Ryn was rude to the captain, but that sparkle in her eyes didn’t quite match the context <3

And speaking of people who are VERY OBVIOUSLY IN LOVE: that last scene with Book and Michael, and his nervous little “yeah, I said it” eyebrow lift, and her irrepressible giggle as she’s walking away... it was almost too much. Especially right after the queer-family scenes with Stamets and Culber and Adira. My poor heart is going through a lot lately, and I guess I’m just glad Season 3’s emotional intensity is melting it with soft sweet scenes like that instead of kicking it down repeated flights of stairs like Season 1.

***

Next week: everyone stops caring about the Burn and starts trying to solve an even more important mystery—why is this (holographic) dude wearing an early-2360s uniform with an early-2370s combadge?

[inspirationdivine]

Blank Space || Todd and Lydia

Timing: Current Parties: @itsyaboytodd @inspirationdivine Summary: Oh Anna, if only there was somebody out there who loved you... Warnings: Emotional abuse, domestic abuse, drug manipulation (leanan sidhe kiss)

There were a dozen reasons why Remmy leaving was devastating, but it made one single task easier. Lydia had spent hours dwelling on the bad, not enough considering the delay it had brought into other parts of her life. Now, it was time.  Lydia reapplied her ruby red lipstick, and pulled on her glamour, although Todd would see through it as he had the last few times they met. At the center of her chest, she was starting to feel him. Like a little bud, showing its first leaves, he would grow inside her from each meal she had from here on out, his emotions fogging up her own. Better than Chloe’s, Lydia hoped. Lydia looked at the text she’d sent him. Can you please cancel your plans for today? I need to see you. Like a good little human, he had. She climbed out of the car with a smile. “Todd! Oh gosh, you have no idea how much this means to me! I’ve just had such a difficult week, I’m so glad you’re here!” She wrapped her arms around him as if she meant it, and immediately took his hand in hers. After today, Lydia wasn’t going to let go. 

 Todd smoothed his hands over his shirt, making sure that it looked nice and neat. He wanted to look his best for Lydia-- he alway did! But, like, she’d been the only thing on his mind lately. After their last date, he’d been up all night, his mind just playing the date over and over again, his entire body practically radiating with excited energy. His mind kept going back to the kiss, to that perfect kiss. He’d been mixing for days after, the beats coming so much smoother, the melody of songs clicking together like effortlessly matched puzzle pieces. The bass, the kick, the build up to the awesome, absolute banger of a drop? His latest song, he wanted to show it to her. When he caught sight of Lydia stepping out of the car,  she looked absolutely… amazing. So fucking amazing. How did he get so lucky? “Of course! I’m glad that I could help, I’m sorry that you’ve had a bad week, that sucks.” As she took his hand, he could feel his pulse speed up, stomach flip flopping with nerves but also excitement. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

 Oh, this sweet innocent pea. Lydia smiled at his carefully chosen attire. He was completely under, wasn’t he? He could see right through her now, which was always a mildly concerning proposition, but apparently even on second viewing he was completely overwhelmed with her. She quickly raised his hand so she could press a quick kiss to the back of his palm, a seemingly casual show of affection, but really a re-enforcement of his good behaviour. “Can we just go for a walk?” Lydia asked. “I just… really want the company. I want to hear about good things. How are you?”

 Todd couldn’t take his eyes off Lydia as she took his hand, a slight shiver running down his spine as she pressed her lips to his hand. She was well, she wasn’t like other ladies he’d dated, for sure. Not only was there the whole, like, luminous skin, pointy ears, all that stuff, but she was the only one who’d ever really… liked him for who he was and supported his dreams. “We can definitely do that.” He said with an enthusiastic nod, holding out his arm for her, because he’d seen a dude do it in a movie once. It was, like, the polite thing to do for a classy lady, right? “Good things-- I posted a new song on soundcloud and it got a LOT of traction. Like, way more than I expected.” He said with a slightly flustered laugh, “And I think I might have a new gig coming up? I sent a guy my tracks and he’s gonna let me know, but I think I’ve got a shot.”

 Lydia smiled brightly as she tucked her hand in his arm, falling in step beside him as they walked seemingly randomly, but Lydia was slowly steering him towards Harris island. She listened attentively, looking up at him as he talked. All his wonderful progress would have to be dismantled, of course, the existence of DJ Dayze carefully erased from the internet over time. Right now, though, she wasn’t about to curb that enthusiasm. Let him feel inspired. It would make everything so much easier, so much more comfortable. “Oh, I’d love to hear it!” Lydia exclaimed, grinning up at him. “I’m so happy for you, you deserve so many good things.”

 Cheeks reddening, Todd walked alongside Lydia, only too happy to follow where she led him. He wasn’t super sure where they were going, but he wasn’t exactly an outdoorsy kinda guy. White Crest was cool because there were parties and bars with sick setups for him to play at, not because of the trees or whatever. “It’s honestly a ba-- really sick song,” Todd said, deciding mid-word that “a banger” wasn’t exactly how he wanted to describe his music to someone like Lydia. “Thanks! I… Yeah, I do.” He said with a sheepish grin. It felt a little weird to say, but Lydia was right. He’d worked hard for what he’d accomplished. And sure, it wasn’t much right now. But it would be.

 “You do,” Lydia agreed. “It’s just such a shame your friends can’t see it.” He would be less likely to disagree with her now, but even if he did, all it would reveal is that she had extra work to do, extra things to fix as she brought him in. His sound studio wasn’t even entirely finished, the fog had caused absurd delays in her construction, but she would figure it out. The sooner she could get him productive, the better. Of course, there was also the issue of getting Chloe back to being productive, and she hoped company and a new soul to talk to would draw her out of her… unfortunate funk. Lydia walked with him along the causeway, looking out to the ocean. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Sometimes I come along here just to enjoy how beautiful and peaceful it all is. Especially at sunset.”

 At Lydia’s words, Todd’s forehead wrinkled in a slight frown. It wasn’t that they didn’t see how hard he worked, right? They were just busy… But, that was kinda the same thing, wasn’t it? They were just, so into their own lives, so busy doing their own cool, awesome real adult stuff that they couldn’t see that he was doing just as serious and awesome stuff too. Swallowing, he shrugged. “I’ll show them once I get my big break.” He said with a grin and a nod. He was going to be the best DJ in Maine, no, in the entire Northeast. And then, he was going to go nationwide. He was gonna show them all that DJ Dayze was the real deal. That he was the real deal. Glancing out at the sea, Todd took in the dark waves. “It really is. I’ve never spent much time out here.” He admitted, “But it’s really really pretty.” 

 “Absolutely,” Lydia agreed with a smile, but he would never get his big break, would he? She would get hers, but oh, he wouldn’t. “Are you more of an indoors, person, then?” That was good news, if so. Lydia still didn’t quite have them exactly where she wanted, but being down to one meal was horrifically monotonous, and frankly unhealthy for both of them. She needed to be back up to a full house, so the rest of the ground work would have to happen later. All the same, outdoorsy humans were a nightmare to keep in the house. They bounced off the walls, itched to go into the garden, which also wasn’t feasible with Remmy there, and were just harder upkeep. “I’m working on a painting at the moment, repairing it, that shows the Irish coast line. When I look at it, I think of home.”

 With a rueful smile, Todd nodded. “Yeah, I’ve always liked chilling at home or like, going to movies or clubs than the outdoors. Like, outdoor sets are fun! But, I’ve never really been a great outdoors kinda dude, you know? I think it’s super pretty though!” He said quickly, just in case Lydia was like, a hiking kind of girl. He didn’t wanna make it sound like he’d hate it if she wanted to go spend the weekend in the outdoors or something. “Oh, that’s really cool.” He said, genuinely interested by that. He didn’t know much about Lydia, where she was from, or how long she’d lived in White Crest. “Have you lived here all your life? Or uh, are you from Ireland?”

 “Oh, I get it. My brother is like that. Rather at a nightclub than a forest. Which I totally understand, I love both, the balance. But in my mind, Nature is the original artist, and we can only ever aspire to be as great as her.” Lydia paused, thinking of Sammy’s blood on the walls, how her first thought when his body had dropped to the floor was that the blood spatters had looked like a bouquet. She smiled, shaking away the thought. He had become irrelevant, Todd was the human that mattered now. “Sorry, I hardly meant to wax lyrical like that.” She wrapped her arm around his waist, holding him close. “I grew up in Argentina,” Lydia said. “And Peru. I’ve lived in Northern America most of my life, but my family has a special connection to Ireland. One way or another, it is always home. Then, I’ve only been here in White Crest for a year….Hey, my place isn’t far from here,” She started, as if it was an errant thought, rather than a carefully planned trap. “Do you want to come over for a bit?”

 At the mention of a brother, Todd realized that he didn’t even realize that Lydia had siblings. He’d talked about his own siblings, with their careers working for his father, their lives as just three more cogs in the corporate machine. But, had he really never asked her about her own family? “For sure, for sure. I kinda think of music the same way? Like, there are so many cool sounds in nature. There’s music all around you, as long as you listen for it.” He said with a nod. As she apologized, he shook his head energetically. “No, no, I like hearing you talk about art.” He said with a grin. She’d always listened to him, he wanted to show her that he cared too. Because he did, even if he didn’t super get it. “Oh forre-- really? My family’s from Brazil, actually! I grew up in Boston, but I’ve been a couple times. Never been to Peru, though.” At her suggestion, Todd blinked, startled. She was inviting her back to hers? She’d never done that before. “Uh… Yeah! Yeah, that’d be really cool.” He said with a grin. 

 “I couldn’t agree more. The most joyous sounds of spring are the birds returning, in autumn, the gentle rustling of leaves underfoot.” Lydia laughed. “But those are perhaps not the noises that inspire your music.” Lydia pressed herself closer against his side, lighting up with a false excitement at his agreement. “Wonderful. You can tell me about your trips to Brazil as you go. I’ve been to Brasilia, but nowhere else, which is a horrific shame considering how much the country has to offer.” Lydia said, slowly ambling them along to her home. “I feel so much better just for having you with me, you know? You’re so… You make my life so much more vibrant. You fulfill part of me.” Specifically, her stomach, but she wasn’t about to mention that, not yet. This was all part of the game. First, she would express something loving, intense, what they wanted to hear, and then… Lydia shook her head, smiling in a self deprecating manner, looking like she might blush. “Sorry. I must sound so silly.” Let them tell you how much they wanted to hear it. Make it all seem more real, like you were as swept up by it all as they were.

 Letting out a small laugh, Todd nodded. “Yeah, not quite the sounds I go after. But, like, you get what I mean.” He grinned as they continued to walk, arm in arm through the woods. The feeling of her body pressed against him sent his heartbeat racing. God, Lydia was… something else. Just being around her, he didn’t even know how to describe how she made him feel. It was like she was really seeing him, for who he was. “Brasilia, I’ve never been there. My family, we’re from São Paolo, so that’s usually where we went. I’ve been to Rio a few times too, mostly for Carnival with my cousins. Carnival is such a cool time.” He said, thinking back to the colorful costumes and amazing, wild nights he’d had. At her words, Todd felt the feeling in his chest swell, warmth washing over him. “No, no, it’s not silly at all. I, uh… I feel the same way. About you.” He said, a touch bashful. 

 “That sounds amazing,” Lydia said, leaning into him as she slowly meandered back to her home. Nearly at the end post. “I can only imagine. I mean, I know you’re the party type, so I can only imagine how much you loved Carnival.” Not that there would be any raves where they were going. He blushed, warming up under her words. Lydia’s smile wasn’t as bashful of his, but rather like someone who had drawn the perfect hand in poker, or someone who wanted you to believe they had. “I’m ever so glad to hear that,” she said, tracing small circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. “We’re here,” she breathed, walking them into the driveway of her mansion. She pulled out her keys, waving to O as she unlocked the door. “Well? What do you think?”

 “It was just so awesome, being in the middle of it all. We were there for a week and it was the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I want to go again someday. It’s just such a cool time, cuz like, the entire city is just one massive party.” Todd said, thinking back to the crazy times he’d had in Rio. It had been so much fun, partying with his cousins, just bouncing from street party to party that spilled across the city. He’d loved every second of it. As they walked up to the massive house, Todd blinked in surprise. Not that he didn’t expect a mansion-- she had a private driver who picked him up whenever they went places, like, he didn’t not expect a mansion. But, seeing it for real? That was a different story. “Wow. This place is huge. It’s uh,” He nodded, still startled by the house. “It’s amazing. Really really pretty.” He said, not really knowing how else to describe the giant home. “You live here all by yourself? That sounds… kinda lonely.”

 Everything was pristine. Lydia wanted it to be. A new start, for him and her both, was just what she needed to get her household under control. A Magritte hung on the wall with a dark wood polished to perfection. There was no evidence in the hall of that dreadful attack, the Bannister and door frame and floor all following and new. Upstairs, she already had new clothes in the dresser, new sheets on the bed. Sammy Metz was all but replaced. "You're ever so kind. I made this place somewhere I wanted to live and show off." She took him by the hand, tugging him into the living room so he could see the large French windows into her small garden. "No, not entirely by myself. Why, are you offering to keep me company?" Lydia murmured, wrapping her arms around his waist, smiling up at him. Even if he wanted to pull away, he couldn't. "You could belong here, you know, here with me. If that's what you want."

 Still taking in the massive house, the art, the wooden banisters, Todd was in absolute awe. There was just something so distinctly Lydia about this place. It was elegant and pretty and polished in all the same ways she was. “Makes sense, it really looks like it. Like, that’s… a really cool painting. I feel like I’ve seen it in a museum somewhere.” He said, nodding to the painting on the wall. At her question, Todd felt his cheeks redden and he waved his hands apologetically, “I, uh, that’s not what I was getting at-- it’s just, it’s like this huge house, you know? It seems like it’d be really lonely to be in, that’s all.” He said, trying not to be too forward about the situation. But, Lydia didn’t seem to mind? At least, that’s not how it seemed, with her holding him tight and staring up at him. Swallowing, he looked at her, “Uh… are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to get in the way or anything.”

 “You probably have. I was loaning it out to a museum for an exhibition for the last few years,” Lydia replied, grinning up to him. Why were all humans in their twenties so uncultured? Why couldn’t he name even that it was a Magritte? It was truly appalling that the best company in her home was a cat. He blushed, with every beat of his heart stepping closer into her trap. Without Remmy here, it was lonely, but Todd would hardly alleviate that, would he? “I’m sure. Are you? It has to be your choice. I don’t want to pressure you into anything.” The gesture was symbolic more than anything else, but the rituals of the old ways still needed to be followed. He had to say yes, even if her magic was part of the reason. She had him so thoroughly wrapped around her finger that he would have said yes, even without the kiss, but he still had to say it.

 “Seriously? Wow, that’s ins--” Todd caught himself, he didn’t want to sound like a total loser, “Incredible. Like, really. That’s so cool that you have something like this. But, uh, I guess it makes sense, given your work.” He nodded, trying to hide how just out of his depth he was. He knew that Lydia worked with art, restoring them, but the specifics of it were all a bit of a mystery to him. As she continued to talk, Todd rubbed the back of his neck, trying to hide how her words made him feel. She was sure, she wanted him here. She knew how hard he worked for his music, she appreciated him. And she… wanted him. It felt nice, being wanted. “I, uh… If you’re sure, I’d like that. I’d like to, uh, live here with you. Together.” He said.

 Lydia could not stand this small talk for one second longer. His talents far outweighed how interesting he was. She just smiled appreciatively, tucking her hair behind her should. “I like owning pretty things.” She was so ready to pull away from him to wash the human grime off her skin, and then when he spoke she had to stop herself stamping her feet in annoyance. I’d like and I will were just ever so grammatically too far apart. In spirit, they were the same. She just needed a little more, to ensnare him in her little red promise threads. Lydia pressed herself a little closer, grinning so much it hurt her cheeks, as if he had made her whole week. “Promise me you won’t leave me?” She murmured into his ear, sliding one hand around the back of his neck.

 The way she was looking up at him, the way that she just seemed to see him, all of him, and care? Todd was smitten. He… wow, he really, really liked her. More than any other girl he’d dated, because she wasn’t like the other girls. There was more to her and he wanted to know it all. She cared so much about what he did, had supported him so much, and he wanted to be able to do the same for her. At her question, as she wrapped her hand around him, he could feel the warmth of her pressed against him. “I… I’d never leave you. Never.” He said, shaking his head at the idea. “I promise, I’ll be here for you.” He said, because it was true. In all the ways she’d been there for him, he wanted to be there for Lydia. 

 “Oh Todd…” Lydia smirked, running her fingers through a lock of his hair. “That was far too easy.” She dropped back down to her heels and stepped away, smoothing down her clothes. She chuckled, giddy on a successful hunt. It was almost good enough to heal the ache in her chest. Her face shifted, her affection mask dropped to one of indifference to him and pride in herself. It was a delicious feeling. “But then you never were the brightest spark. Chloe!” She called up the stairs, pursing her lips as Chloe slunk into view, staring at Todd with a sinking look of understanding. “Meet Todd. He’s the one the sound production studio is for.”

 “Easy..?” Todd echoed, not sure what was going even as Lydia pulled away. What did she mean by that? What was going on? His eyebrows pinched together as he watched the way her face shifted, into an expression he’d never seen before. It was a completely different side of her. What? “Brightest spark-- I don’t understand. Who?” Head spinning in confusion, he looked up to where Lydia was speaking and saw a girl emerge from one of the doors, her face falling as she stared at him. It almost looked like she was… sad? Sad for him? What? “Sound production studio? What’s… what’s going on, Lydia?” He asked as he stared back and forth from the two women. “Who’s that?”

 “How can I put this succinctly? Todd, you aren’t my dinner date, you’re my dinner,” Lydia gestured for Chloe to come downstairs. “Come on now, you can see I’m not human.” She gestured at her ears and her wings. “You’ve been able to see that for a while, there’s no denying it.” Since their first kiss, after all. “Chloe will take you through the details, I’m far too busy for all that, but now that you’ve promised to stay here, you won’t get to leave. I’ve already even picked out your new clothes.” She pat his cheek with a bright smile. “Smile, Todd. This is an honour. An honour where your brain and body collapses under my influence until I have consumed every part of your spirit in a few short years, but an honour nonetheless. You were the most talented of all the humans I hunted these last few months.” Lydia wondered what Remmy might have said, had they seen this. Would it have horrified them more or less than the basement, she wondered idly. She shoved the thought away before it could sour her mood further. “Chloe, darling, now.” She glared at the other woman, before looking back at Todd. “Of course, I expect your complete obedience, but don’t worry. I will reward good behaviour with the approval you desperately crave. Chloe! Speaking of, Todd, give me your phone, and any other communication devices you have on you. Now, please.” She held out her hand with an expectant smile.

 Chloe stood frozen at the top of the stairs, staring down at the boy in the hall. He looked even younger than Sammy had, but she didn’t know if that was because he was, or because he looked so lost. No matter how much she willed herself to move, she couldn’t quite do it. Anneliese had done it for her, and for Sammy. She’d done it without flinching, with a soft smile and a kind hand as she explained in her soft voice the hell they had found themselves in. Chloe had resented her for it for months, and Anneliese had just smiled and accepted that as she smiled and accepted everything else. Like Anneliese had been playing the good jailor to Lydia’s bad jailor. Even as their friendship had grown, it had taken Chloe years to realise that that gentle warm flame had to be carefully cultivated and protected from every icy gust and flaring temper. Sammy hadn’t gotten angry at Anneliese at all, but he hadn’t processed anything for a week, until one night he’d collapsed in Anneliese’s arms in roaring sobs. She’d been strong as a willow tree then, and had held him as long as he needed. But now there was no Anneliese. There was no Sammy. Chloe would have to do this for Todd. She didn’t know if she could. Chloe swallowed as Lydia barked her name, and slowly forced herself down the stairs. She didn’t even look at Lydia, watching Todd to work out what he needed. Praying she could provide whatever that would be. 

 Still frozen in place, Todd stared at Lydia, not able to comprehend just what she was saying. Dinner… She was… He-- what? “What do you mean I can’t leave, I can just,” He said, starting to turn towards the door. But, even as he took the first few steps towards the door, he felt his stomach start to twist and turn. It started out as discomfort before shifting into full on pain as he tried to put his hand on the doorknob. His hand felt like needles, burning hot and searing, were being pushed into his skin as he gripped the door and he let out a cry before pulling his hand away. Looking down at his hand, Todd stared. It looked fine, there was nothing wrong with it. But, his stomach continued to writhe and the pain continued to grow and grow until he was dizzy from it all. Shaking his head, he reeled away from the door. “What’s… what did you do to me?” He asked Lydia, not understanding what was going on. “My phone? I… Why?” He asked.

 Lydia rolled her eyes, pursing her lips as he made to move for the door. She didn’t move, she didn’t have to, as the invisible chains tying him to this house made themselves ever so clear. Humans were so repetitive, really. Every hunt was a carefully choreographed dance, and Lydia always knew what her prey’s next step would be. “I made you mine. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Her smile was sharp and icy, lips closed, so that he knew her patience was wearing thin. “Because you won’t need it anymore. God, you are slow. I don’t have all day, you really don’t want to provoke my ire.” Lydia clicked her fingers impatiently, before opening her hand for his phone again. 

 God, she had faced so much of Lydia’s rage and grief recently. Was it terrible to be the tiniest grateful there would be someone else to share it with her? It was, Chloe decided immediately, looking at the confusion and hurt in his eyes. Lydia had been hunting him for so long, now. “Todd, please- please just give it to her.” Chloe hated saying it, the words sickening her mouth. It felt like a betrayal. But Chloe hadn’t insisted the Sammy let go of his plans with Ariana, and- her stomach lurched. “Please.” Her voice cracked. 

 “Made me yours?” Todd shook his head, clutching at his stomach. He felt sick, he felt like his body was going to collapse in on himself as he tried to fight through the feeling. She didn’t, she didn’t control him. He wasn’t hers. Not like that. He cared about her, he-- God, he thought he loved her. But this, it wasn’t love. It was all an act. “You don’t… I thought you cared about me.” He said, bitterness and fear leaking into his voice. “My friends, they’ll know something’s up if you take my phone. They’ll figure it out.” Todd said, pleading. Hoping that it would work. He could only hope that it was true. But, would any of his friends notice? Would any of them care?

 Looking at the other woman, he stared at her with wide eyes. “Chloe-- who are you? Why are you listening her?” He asked, though a creeping feeling grew in his stomach, overwhelming the sense of pain. The feeling was dread, was fear. Fear that she was exactly like him. Trapped. A hostage. A prisoner. 

 How many people had Anneliese done this for? Six, seven humans, who had walked in here looking for love, attention, fame, and had not walked out ever again. Todd looked at her with a slow realisation that cracked open Chloe’s heart and splintered her soul. How Anneliese had done this more than once was beyond her. She tried to smile, but it felt more like a gash across her lips. “It’s o- I’ll help you, okay? I’ll explain everything.” But she didn’t dare go closer, not while Lydia glared daggers at him. When it came to her own instincts and the magical desire to please Lydia, the latter would always win. 

 Lydia’s voice had no such kindness in them. “I think you have excessive faith in your friends. You certainly have excessive faith in my patience. You’ve barely been here five minutes, and you’re already a disappointment. I really expected better of you, Todd.” He’d succumb. They all did, in the end. And once he got a taste of how good obeying could be, she wouldn’t have to deal with this again. Especially once he succumbed to the promises she would ask him to make. 

 Eyes darting between Chloe and Lydia, Todd felt the fear grow and claw in the pit of his stomach. Chloe was going to help him? Could he even trust her? But, he didn’t see how he had any choice in the matter, not anymore. Looking back at the door, the motion sent a fresh wave pain shooting through his body and Todd let out a whimper of pain. He did his best to hide the way it hurt, the way all of this hurt. Not just on a physical level but… he’d thought that Lydia had cared about him. He thought she’d loved him. How had this happened? With a reluctant expression on his face, Todd pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Lydia. “That’s all I have. I don’t… Please. Why are you doing this?” He asked, still trying to wrap his head around it all. 

 “There. Oh, Todd, you’ve made me ever so happy. I knew you would do the right thing.” Lydia pulled a face at his lock screen before turning the phone off altogether. Then she looked up at him and smiled, stretching on her toes to kiss his cheek, knowing with a precise cruelty how much he would crave her acceptance. It was like giving a starving man a Christmas roast. “Because I need to eat. There are worse places to be. Honestly, Todd, you would have inevitably been eaten by a zombie or something in the next few years anyway, torn limb from limb in some terribly disturbing way. Here, you get all your own space, your own sound production studio, you’ll spend the rest of your short life in the lap of luxury, if you behave.” Lydia gestured Chloe over, who paused just short of putting a hand on Todd’s shoulder. “I’m not particularly interested in answering all your questions or dealing with… this, so I am leaving you in Chloe’s hands. I still have to get the singer, and then deal with your social media presences. It is ever such an inconvenience how much all modern artists self-advertise these days.” Lydia looked to Chloe sharply. “Sammy’s old bed is already made up. Show Todd around, and make sure that by the time I’m back, he is ready to make the rest of his promises. I don’t want to deal with this behaviour again, am I understood? You’ll be good for me, won’t you, Todd?”

 The relief, the strange easing sense of calm that washed over him at her words, Todd couldn’t understand it. But, it felt so good, knowing that she was happy with him. He wanted her to be happy, that was… no, it wasn’t all he wanted. He wanted to leave this place, he wanted to run away as fast as he could. But, it felt so good, so right, knowing that he’d done well by Lydia. It just didn’t make sense, it didn’t. He hated this, but he loved her, hated what she’d done, but couldn’t help the way he just wanted to please her. What was happening? Barely able to focus on her words, Todd nodded dumbly, still in a state of shock. What was she talking about? Need to eat? Zombies? What? No, those things were just like… horror movie gimmicks. They weren’t real. But, her question jolted him out of his daze and he blinked. “I… I want to.” He said because, as much as it pained him to admit it, the words were the truth. Even though every inch of him screamed no, he still wanted to be good for her, to make Lydia happy. Why? Why was this happening?

 “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lydia pat his cheek twice, with another rewarding smile. Beyond that, this wasn’t her problem right now. She pulled out her own phone, texting her next treat as she turned away. 

 He looked like someone had wacked the back of his head with a pan. What had Anneliese even said to her, the first time? Had she made her a cup of coffee? Hot cocoa? Had she shown Chloe the shared upstairs bedroom, their own private bathroom and kitchenette area? Chloe remembered learning about these things, but it was all stilted, as torn up as she had been when she’d realised her escape had been impossible. The bed had been good; Chloe had just sank into the mattress and pulled the duvet over her own head until the world had melted away in her own tears. Was that- was that what Todd needed right now? She tried touching his shoulder, as if that might snap him out of his daze, and opened her mouth only to close it, the words dying in her mouth. Lydia seemed unperturbed by her flustered silence, switching out her coat for a more distinguished, autumnal look. Like a whirlwind, Lydia was back out of the door, leaving them both in the synthetic cold of her absence. “We’re not supposed to linger in the hallway.” Even to Chloe, she sounded hollow. 

 The moment Lydia had left, Todd had assumed he would feel some kind of relief. That he would feel glad that she was gone. But, instead, the same kind of aching yearning that had filled him since that date, when she’d pressed her lips to his and everything had changed. Bitterly, he shook his head, running his hands through his hair. “Why’s this happening to me? I... I thought she cared about me.” He muttered, tears starting to prickle at the corner of his eyes. Todd swiped at his face with the back of his hand. He didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to just stand here and cry in front of a total stranger. Sucking in a deep breath, he nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He said, “I’m sorry.” Todd mumbled, miserably. He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing, only that it felt like the right thing to say. After all, she was stuck here too, right? 

 “It’s not your fault. It’s not-” Chloe choked on her own words, because how could she tell him right now that Lydia did? In her own monstrous way, she cared, because she felt what they felt. She would hear their dying thoughts, strip them of all their privacy, and perhaps that was the only reason she cared, but she did. She chose the victims she could most tolerate being around, and that was as much as Lydia could care for any human. But it was no reassurance that the monster in the would destroy them with affection. “Don’t apologise to me. You’re going to be doing it so often anyway.” She was still rooted to the spot. “Uh, shit. Um. I’ll, uh, I can show you the bedroom? We can, uh, talk or you can have some time. We have to talk, before she gets back, but if you need a minute- I-” How had Anneliese done this? Chloe ran her hand through her hair. “Shit. Let’s go upstairs.”

 Feeling numb, Todd nodded at the woman’s words. “I think… I think I need a minute. But, thanks. Chloe, right?” He asked with a weak grin. He didn’t know how she’d wound up in this situation too, or even why he was here. Lydia’s words, they just confused him more and more. But, his mind was too much of a mess for him to process anything else. He needed to be alone and just get a handle on what was going on. If he even could. Following her up the stairs, he entered one of the bedrooms. The room was clean, the bed neatly made, clothes hanging in the closet. It was cold and clean and completely removed of any sort of personality. Sinking onto the bed, Todd dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking as the fear finally overtook him. A strangled cry of anguish worked its way free from his throat and he shook his head violently from side to side. No, no, no, no, no.

 This morning, he’d woken up, thinking that it was just any other ordinary day. And now? He was a prisoner. 

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- The Fall of Troy

Last week I discussed an album that, more or less, was defined by looseness and empty spaces. This might as well be the polar opposite of that.

(man no-one seems to have uploaded this album art in high res)

Released in 2003, The Fall of Troy is a self-titled mathcore/post-hardcore/screamo debut album made by 3 17 year olds- and in some ways that shows, but it’s not like they were fresh, they’d had two EPs under a different name by that point. The Fall of Troy is probably best known by their song F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X., having been featured as a bonus track in Guitar Hero III, which is notably, not on this album. Rather, their second album, Doppelganger, had a few tracks that were basically retakes of songs from this first album. But we’re not talking about Doppelganger (and I still can’t find a bloody CD of it), we’re talking about The Fall of Troy, by The Fall of Troy, so let’s bloody well dive in.

The first song on here, Rockstar Nailbomb!, is as much a statement of intent as anything I’ve ever seen. It’s starts with hoarsely screamed, incomprehensible vocals over a frenetic set of guitar riffs, that cuts back into a more traditional song structure, you know, after a bit. Like any good opener, it’s introducing what you’re going to be getting from the album- songs that, while extremely energetic, tend to cut between sung vocals and screamed ones at a moment’s notice, complex and overlapping guitar riffs, and a very deliberately unpolished sound. The technical skill on display is incredible considering the age of the band, as well. For such a short song, Rockstar Nailbomb! goes in some real places, closing with a line that would be appropriate to finish off the album as a whole- but of course, we’re just getting started.

The next song is called Spartacus, and it shows off the talent of the drummer in a way that the previous didn’t. Unfortunately, I almost feel like this song was kind of a half-formed idea, considering it’s a minute and a quarter long, and the…squeal…? Near the end is kind of offputting. A mid one.

Oh boy it wouldn’t be a nerd band without ridiculous track names- next up is The Circus That Has Brought Us Back to These Nights (Yo Chocola), and no I don’t fucking know what that means. This one ironically feels the most like a song than the others before it, a slightly more traditional structure, the screaming and singing vocals forming something of a call-and-response that would probably make more sense if I could understand the lyrics half the time. Despite this, it’s no less speedy, frantic, and intricate, mixes between melody and dissonance that are basically the band’s signature.

The fourth track is named Mouths Like Sidewinder Missiles, and it’s one of my favourite tracks on the album. I can’t really describe why, though, so I’m going to take a minute to talk about something else. See, this is one of the tracks that was redone for Doppelganger, and on Spotify, for whatever reason, has the title misspelled “Misssiles”. I let them know about this years ago and they never fixed it, so I guess this is my callout post. For what it’s worth, I think the Doppelganger version is a bit looser, adding in some elements in the empty space (there’s a reverb after the initial riff I really love), but both have their own merits.

Okay, mild rant over, back to regular old rambling. The next track is The Last March of the Ents, Lord of the Rings reference very much intended. This is one of those tracks I always forgets exists to be honest, like the intro started and I was like…what was this one again? And then the bit at like 50 seconds came in and I remembered everything. That section is honestly really strong, though unfortunately the rest of the track kinda feels just like Mouths like Sidewinder Missiles, but like, slightly worse? Which is especially awkward considering it immediately proceeds that song. I will say the part of the song where it slows alllll the way down is really enjoyable, it’s very gradual and smooth, gives the bass a bit of time to shine, before blowing back up again because these guys just can’t bear to play slow for half a minute.

The next track is F.C.P.S.I.T.S.G.E.P.G.E.P.G.E.P. This is the song that their most popular track, F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. is a version of, and they’ve never actually stated what the acronym is for. A common (and I believe discredited) suggestion is, and I quote, “Fuck condoms, premarital sex is the shit, get ‘er pregnant get ‘er pregnant get ‘er pregnant”, which is A Take. It also has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song itself. This track is actually by far the loosest and slowest on the album completely, appropriate considering it’s first words are “slow down”. There’s really not a lot of screaming on it, left only to the chorus, and they’re actually understandable which is nice (or maybe it’s just because I know it’s “come running home”). This is undoubtedly an emo track, based on the lyrics, but it’s also just kind of excellent, similarly complex lyrics slowed down to a comprehensible tempo and a bridge that builds in a supremely satisfying manner. The comparison to R.E.M.I.X. is of course, inevitable, and I will say the tightening up did help in some places- the very slow section at the latter part of the song probably doesn’t need to go that long, and that’s easily the part that gets sped up most in the redo. Still, the song stands out very naturally, feeling more thoughtful and controlled than its peers.

The next song is titled “Whacko Jacko Steals The Elephant Man’s Bones”, apparently a reference to…a music video where Michael Jackson danced next to a recreation of the skeleton of a famously deformed man. Yeah, ok, sure. I don’t actually have much to say about this one, it’s very scream-led, but doesn’t really stand out to me apart from the naming. It’s play rating supports this, being the second least listened track here, but it’s by no means bad. It’s just kinda long and as generic as something like this can be, I suppose. Honestly I kinda forgot all the directions this goes, some of these sections are really quite excellent, but the song is probably like 2 minutes longer than it needed to be. I’m just saying. Like I kept waiting for this song to try and change my mind and it kinda just didn’t.

Reassurance Rests in the Sea is up next, and god that little riff it’s building around, that just noodles around but at triple speed, is just so sick. It’s a song that spends a lot more time cutting itself down- like F.C.P.etc. it’s looser and slower, but substantially more disjointed than that one is. This song, uh, completely breaks off like two minutes in and just stops. And becomes a different song. Like, I don’t think this is a bonus track or anything, it’s just a part of the same song. And that second half is a really sort of chill (for this album) instrumental, lead by a bassline that slowly gets more riffs over the top of it. And then that bit stops itself, and the main song returns again for like the final half a minute or so. And honestly I was just like, wait, no, go back…….

The actual least listened to track on the album is number 9, The Adventures of Allan Gordon (it’s apparently about a book). Honestly, I’d kinda love to hear this live, because the first minute or so of it is the kind of thing you’d play as an interstitial to keep the audience going while you get your shit ready for the next song. Eventually (and I mean eventually, song’s a third through at this point) the lyrics and such come in, and yeah ok I see why this one isn’t as popular. It’s like, fine? Like, that cut back section is pretty overall mediocre, but when we get back to the screaming and the riffs and the noise its as solid as ever. It’s a little frustrating, because they can do the more lyrical stuff, F.C.P. is right there, but this one doesn’t quite make the mark for me. A shame.

Track 10 is I Just Got This Symphony Goin’, which does not have an actual symphony, but it does present and absolutely killer opening riff, so it’s not all bad. This is one of the songs I most associate with the album, even if it’s one of the ones also on Doppelganger. Its speeding up and slowing down and screaming and singing and lots of interweaving and yeah. I like it. Iunno.

The final song, What Sound Does a Mastodon Make? (I dunno, ask a paleontolgist?), is a full seven minutes, 2 minutes longer than the next longest track. It’s kind of interesting, since the second half of the album going by tracks is much much longer than the first half. It does this really fun bit where the lead guitar and rhythm guitar do their own little call and response thing, immediately followed by one of the weirdest vocal noises I’ve ever heard, and I don’t have a word to describe it, so you’re gonna have to either trust me or listen to it yourself. This song is just really, really long, man, and it goes in a lot of places but none of them are exceptional enough to really justify slogging through a total 7 minutes of it. I’m going to be honest, I’m probably not going to listen to it unless I’m going through the whole album. The extended build near the end is pretty sick, I guess? And the way the last minute just decides to, like, drop everything, and just end with a very quiet, indie-esque instrumental. Like the very “we did it, now we can relax” sort of moment. Lets both you and the band know its over, and you can move on past your energy high to something a bit more chill.

I think the best phrase I can use to describe The Fall of Troy is “ADHD music”. Both in that it feels almost a little distractable sometimes, multidirectional and often not fully resolving its lines, and also in that said lines are great if you’re someone like myself who’s brain needs something to be chewing over while the more conscious parts are trying to do something else. To be clear, I consider this a compliment. Like most music I discuss, this certainly isn’t for everyone, as you’re going to need a tolerance for adrenaline and screaming to enjoy this album, but I do think it’s worth the attempt. Now, I haven’t listened to Doppelganger (or any of the other albums for that manner) in full, so I can’t comment on how the style of The Fall of Troy would evolve over time. But at the very least, this is a very solid starting point for what would become a surprisingly long-lasting act.

[iturbide]

Spite Project - So if Byleth is a Knight, then who is the third instructor? Ohh I reread some of the previous posts and Claude helps Dimitri in the Battle of Eagle and Lion! Interesting! I wonder if that gave Edelgard a bad premonition. What’s Dedue up to during the TS? So retaking Fhirdiad happens early in the war, I can see a lot of emotional moments and convos happening there. With all that marching I wonder if the Imperial army is getting very tired at that point. 1/3

well I’m almost up to a 5% pity rate and no Spring Units at all, so April’s not going so hot just yet haha and next week is going to be a non-stop rollercoaster so wish me luck

When it comes to the final professor, in the short term Jeritza likely takes over, specifically as the instructor for the Black Eagles house for fairly obvious reasons; this leaves Manuela and Hanneman covering the Blue Lions and Golden Deer, respectively.  Of course, Jeritza goes AWOL the month Flayn is kidnapped and then never returns, so with their options fairly limited the two remaining professors split the work as best they can, with Seteth occasionally filling in when and where he can (and if he maybe prioritizes the classes Flayn’s sitting in on...well, that’s obviously a coincidence).  But this does mean that the students are on their own when the Battle of the Eagle and Lion rolls around, since Manuela’s still in recovery and there’s no third professor.

But Edelgard doesn’t see that battle as a premonition, mostly because Claude isn’t exclusively offering to help Dimitri: just before the battle starts, Claude actually calls both of his fellow House Leaders over and suggests they just not fight each other, making the battle a three-way tie.  Edelgard, obviously, turns this down (and assumes that he’s making the suggestion because his House is in no way capable of winning), but Dimitri cautiously accepts this truce to claim victory over the Black Eagles, prepared to fight the Deer afterward if it proves necessary -- but true to his word, Claude makes no move to fight Dimitri after Edelgard retreats, and Dimitri gladly lays down his lance in turn.

(Rhea’s not thrilled about this break from tradition, though, and in the end she declares it a Blue Lions victory since historically the Alliance didn’t exist at that point; the Golden Deer are none too happy about this, but frankly neither is Dimitri, since it seems grossly unfair.)

As for Dedue, he spends the bulk of the timeskip period in Faerghus, since he was still instrumental in freeing Dimitri from imprisonment and Dimitri still believed he died in the escape attempt; however, roughly the last year before Millennium Festival, he makes it to the Alliance and reunites with Dimitri, thanks to the joint machinations of Claude and Judith.  Dimitri’s overjoyed to have Dedue back safe, especially since he had been so certain that his friend had died trying to save him; and Dedue is equally stunned by how different Dimitri looks, more calm and stable and free with his laughter than Dedue had ever known him.

Intense stuff always seems to happen in Fhirdiad (or at least, I think it should).  Dimitri still has to come to grips with the fact that he’ll be king of Faerghus, and whether he’s really ready for it or not -- but he has Claude backing him up, and given that he’s spent the last four years taking care of himself and recovering from a lot of his past trauma, he feels a lot more ready now than he did the last time he’d faced this possibility, just after the fall of Garreg Mach when it seemed like assuming the throne was the only way to oppose Edelgard.  He’s more stable, more aware of how to manage the needs of others while still taking care of his own, and it gives him more confidence in his ability to meet the demands of leadership.  He and Claude definitely have some long talks before the actual coronation, though, because it’s still a lot to deal with.

But honestly, the Imperial Army has always had a lot to deal with.  They’ve been at war for five years already, after all, and stretched thin since they have not only their own border with the Alliance to keep an eye on but an active front in Faerghus.  Edelgard’s particular detachment never gets to Gronder, though, since Fhirdiad falls while she and her company are resting and restocking at Merceus, at which point they change course and head for Arianrhod for another rest and resupply before making for Tailtean; their retreat from that field is significantly less organized, though, and the stopover at the Silver Maiden much shorter, intended only to tend to the wounded before continuing back toward home. 

Of course, Arundel starts putting his plans in motion there, too, which is part of why we end up having a surprising end battle

But to be honest my absolute favorite thing about Spite Project is still Dimitri innocently causing the biggest invasion scare since the last Fodlan-Almyra war.  He didn’t mean to, honestly, and everyone thinks it’s hilarious after the fact, but he’s still very sheepish about the whole thing.

For Bad End AU...well, Byleth has come to the realization that they made a mistake, and unfortunately there’s no talking Edelgard out of it at this point.  They’d been hoping, earnestly, that they could get her to stay her hand, try to save what lives they could...but when she decided to execute Claude, that’s when they knew that they had no chance of that.  So they decided to risk everything on trying to get Claude out of Derdriu: that strike was meant to leave him alive, as was Hilda’s (though Byleth was significantly more worried about her since the attack was more rushed and could very well have killed her).  Once the war ends, they take to the front lines against the Agarthans almost entirely because it keeps them far from Edelgard, and even though they can’t use the Sword of the Creator anymore, their combat prowess is noteworthy, which is what keeps them from being utterly crushed by an enemy that hasn’t been exhausted by five years of war and also has tactical missiles.

When it comes to unexpected survival, though...well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “unexpected.”  A lot of the Golden Deer were presumed dead by the Black Eagles, and have been lying low since the end of the war specifically to avoid their notice: this includes both Raphael, who Bernadetta is convinced she killed at Myrrdin, contributing to her crippling guilt in the years following the war; and Ignatz, who Petra reported as dead in order to cover for his escape since she couldn’t bring herself to kill him at Derdriu.  Ashe and Annette both were missing and presumed dead after the fall of the Kingdom, but their appearance isn’t the same kind of “risen from the grave” shock that Claude and Hilda pull off when they storm Fodlan again.

Thanks for the AA fic rec, too!  It’s actually been a long time since I’ve read much for the fandom (not to mention written for it -- Crime of Passion is a decade in the making with no actual start date in sight haha whoops), and I struggle with managing my time well enough to both read and write, which is what I usually prefer to be doing when I have the opportunity, but I do love found family stuff, so it’s going on the list.

Also, RE: Felix pokemon: yes to Perrserker.  Every time I see that little monstrous furball I crack up, and between it being A) a cat and B) made of knives, it’s basically his perfect pokemon.  When it comes to Ferdinand, a standard Ponyta/Rapidash might fit better than a Galarian one since the flames are a better fit for not only the Imperial color scheme, but also his glorious post-timeskip hair.  No I’m still not over Ferdinand von Aegir and his incredible mane like wow Ferdie you go.  Also he’s just.  So passionate about everything he believes in.  Very fiery when he gets going.  And as for Mercie, an Audino is an absolute necessity!  They’re sweet pokemon and very attuned to others’ feelings, so it makes a lot of sense that she’d have one, especially since it’s a supportive healer.  I could also see her with a Ralts, again playing off the empathetic nature, and possibly a Bellossom for its generally carefree nature and its penchant for soothing others, in this case through the melody its flowers produce while it dances.

[perfectirishgifts]

Sunday Conversation: Fleet Foxes On Making ‘Shore,’ Being Backstage With Paul McCartney And Neil Young And More

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Sunday Conversation: Fleet Foxes On Making ‘Shore,’ Being Backstage With Paul McCartney And Neil Young And More

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND – JULY 28: Robin Noel Pecknold of the Fleet Foxes performs during “If I Had A … [] Song”, closing the 60th annual Newport Folk Festival 2019 at Fort Adams State Park on July 28, 2019 in Newport, Rhode Island. (Photo by Douglas Mason/WireImage)

In September Fleet Foxes released their fourth album, Shore. The collection, a surprise announced just the day before its September 22 release, is a sterling 15-track package of songs that has ended up on numerous best of year-end lists.

I spoke with Fleet Foxes mastermind Robin Pecknold who told me the album was begun pre COVID, then finished in isolation during the pandemic. And in terms of the surprise release, Pecknold admits he was partially inspired by Taylor Swift’s Folklore.

During the course of our very engaging conversation Pecknold took me through the making of the album, what it was like to be in a conversation with Neil Young and Paul McCartney and how his songs have changed over the years.

Steve Baltin: How is it in New York City now?

Robin Pecknold: It’s alright, it’s getting a little colder, which is feeling good. They’re installing permanent outdoor dining in all the restaurants so it feels a bit like a permanent music festival, lot of tents everywhere. But it’s been good all things considered.

Baltin: How long have you lived in New York?

Pecknold: I’ve been here on and off for like six years or so.

Baltin: Where was Shore written?

Pecknold: Some stuff in Portugal, I took a couple weeks and went to Portugal, and then mostly in my apartment in New York.

Baltin: I am always a big believer in how environment affects writing. So does the stuff you wrote in Portugal feel different to you then the stuff written in New York?

Pecknold: I can’t say it was actually entirely written in New York, but I did kind of write some stuff in Portugal. We were working in a studio in France where I ended up writing some stuff. And then worked in a studio in L.A. where I was writing a lot. And, like you were saying, I had the thought maybe at some point to make my own little studio space to work in, but then I also love variety and I think variety is super important to how a record turns out. And I wouldn’’t want to feel obligated to only work in one space I guess, as I spend a bunch of money setting it up for that reason, but maybe someday. I think, for writing chord progressions and stuff that can happen anywhere, and a lot of that I just did in my bedroom. But then writing songs, it’s good to buy a new guitar or go to some place in the woods, or whatever it is, to kind of get out of the routine mind set.

Baltin: For you this is a very global album, what was the time spent that it was written and recorded then? I am assuming it predates COVID then?

Pecknold: It does definitely predate COVID. I started working on this right at the end of the Crack Up tour. September 2018 I started writing songs for this kind of knowing that it can take me a while to write stuff and I wanted to have something out within three years of that album, even though we did a two-year tour. So I had to kind of just keep going after that was done. Um, and so most of the music was done by February of 2020, but I didn’t have any lyrics written and there were a couple gaps in the track listing. It totally pre-dates COVID. I was kind of confused about how to finish it once the pandemic hit, when and how it should come out, or if I should even put the time and money into finishing it at all, but I’m glad that it came together like how it did.

Baltin: So at what point did you make the decision to put it out? Why a surprise release.

Pecknold: It was sometime in June or July, cause the big bottleneck was having lyrics to record and I didn’t have any. And that was just like, “Who knows when these will happen, this could take until the end of fall. This could drag on forever if I can’t get these lyrics done.” But then they just kind of started happening in a way I wasn’t really expecting in June. Once that happened I was like, “Okay great, I have all these lyrics I can record, so I can actually finish this damn album now.” Then in July I had to start thinking about that ‘when it’s going to come out’ and I think a few days before that Taylor Swift album came out and I was like “I just want to put it out a couple weeks after it’s done. If I have to do that on Bandcamp so be it.” And then, that happened and that emboldened me to do that because, she’s obviously much more successful, but someone else publicly releasing music was thinking along those same lines just that this uncertainty will continue for who knows how long. So it was kind of in July that the September release plan came together. And tying it to the equinox felt really good cause it was on a Tuesday. Albums used to come out on Tuesday and I used to love that. And that felt like tying it to something that didn’t have anything to do with politics or with the stresses of 2020, the societal stresses. It’s a gamble, who knows if that was the best idea in the long run but it’s worth it to me to just have it off my mental plate.

Baltin: Was there a turning point where you started to feel like the songs were coming in a direction for you or the lyrics started to manifest themselves?

Pecknold: Yeah, like I said, I went right into making this album right after the last tour and so that was two years of touring. I guess there is some stuff people write about, exhaustion on tour or make albums about that. I didn’t have like a big break up I wanted to write about. I was just kind of making music or thinking about music for like four years straight. So I didn’t feel like I had a lot to write about before the pandemic. But then having this like three-month forced reflection time when there’s this long overdue emphasis on social justice and systemic injustice and class consciousness that was not being paid enough attention to the last few years. And just feeling grateful to have a roof over my head and to not know anyone who’s passed but also feeling an impetus to keep the memory of the dead alive in some way musically and lyrically. I guess all of the lyrical ideas I found for the album were totally just resultant from lock down and the pandemic, and without that I wouldn’t have had anything to really write about.

Baltin: Writing is such a subconscious thing, so we’re there lyrics that when you go back and look at them that really kind of surprised you?

Pecknold: Yeah, I think there is a lyric in the song “Featherweight” that talks about making life harder for yourself, something I would have definitely done in the past, out of success coming too easy, or stuff like that. I would seek out hardship where I found it just to kind of temper the good luck I’ve had. And so, I wasn’t intending to write a song about that, but the lyric kind of came out, “In all this war I’d forgotten how many men might die for what I’d renounce.” That lyric just flowed perfectly with the melody and rhymed perfectly and it was just the first lyric that came out of nowhere and then kind of set the tone for the rest of it.

Baltin: As you get older, I think for everyone, you get more comfortable with yourself. So do you feel like that’s allowed you to get a little more comfortable with the idea of success or the fact that you’ve had the success?

Pecknold: I’m super lucky to be able to make music for a living still. I’m not set for life by any means. I want to continue working and doing exciting things and I intend to keep that energy going. As far as shirking success I can see both sides of that where you would say, “Yeah this is uncomfortable.” I’m super lucky I’m not so well known that I can’t go outside in some fame prison, that seems difficult in some ways. But also those people have all the resources in the world and can mitigate that however they want. I don’t have that experience, I’m pretty anonymous. I’m not like embracing success or chasing it but something feels kind of gross about renouncing it or when it’s a really rare opportunity and a lot of people would kill to be in a position to be able to do that.

Baltin: A lot of people who would kill to be in that position have no idea what it comes with. Is there one artist that you look to as having sort of the role model career, the definitive career of that balance of fame and success and everything?

Pecknold: My answer for this, Charles Ives (laughs). Which is kind of a pretentious answer, but he was an insurance broker and a well respected one, and he won awards in the business and that security allowed him to make this insane innovative classical music, kind of in his spare time, a little bit. I think Charles Ives is my weird answer to that.

Baltin: That’s a great answer. I don’t know who he is. Now I’m curious to go check him out.

Pecknold: He’s experimental and Americana type classical music from a long time ago.

Baltin: My answer is Tom Waits. He can go tour whenever he wants, he’s set from royalties presumably, he’s always got a following. But he can go into the market and no one knows who he is other than you and me and music geeks.

Pecknold: That is the absolute dream. And his success with Anti Records is one of many reasons that we wanted to put out the album with them. He’s actually not that different from Charles Ives in my opinion as someone who is kind of taking American tropes and twisting them and making them their own. 1699

Baltin: Are there songs of yours where you go back and they change for you over time? Are there songs of yours that you have the different appreciation for that have changed over the years?

Pecknold: Yeah definitely. As a lyricist I always start with the melody first. I always want to work as much meaning as I can. I want it to be as coherent as a story or as whatever the lyric is. It’s always the melody first. It can be the kind of thing where one word pops out and then the words that rhyme with that word kind of dictate almost how the lyric flows. So sometimes when I am writing lyrics, I don’t feel that in control because I feel like I have so many restrictions on how it needs to be. And I will look back and be like, “Damn that guy, he was really searching or he was really confused,” in a way that I wasn’t really conscious of in the moment writing it. I think there was song on the Crack-Up album called “Cassius” that was really about walking in protest, but I didn’t know how much I could claim that so it was a little bit imagistic. I felt uncomfortable owning it for some reason, because of who I am. I didn’t want to feel appropriative of the moment. And all of that album, all the lyrics for that were written on November/December 2016 and now were four years up from that. So there is a lot of despair in that album that I have to associate with that winter, that fall.

Baltin: I like the way that you put it, where you’re talking about it, and you’re like, that guy. When you go back and look at stuff, do you feel like it almost is coming from someone else, because it’s subconscious?

Pecknold: Oh, absolutely. There are things that remain, like a work ethic or a set of standards or certain kinds of tastes, but the subconscious stuff that’s happening with lyrics, that was someone else’s work entirely. There is a whole different set of behind the scenes factors going on now verses then. In that Dylan interview where he is like I can’t access that anymore, the guy that wrote those songs, in that 60 Minutes interview. You just hope that whatever you do have access to remains exciting to you I guess. But yeah, I don’t feel like the same person that made those early albums at all.

Baltin: We talked early on about dealing with success and the different feelings that come with that. Are there artists that you’ve gotten to speak to or that you look to that you really admire for the way that they, or the advice that they’ve given you for how to sort of handle that double edge sword?

Pecknold: I guess I have some contemporaries, like the guys in Grizzly Bear or Dirty Projectors, we’ll kind of talk shop about how our “careers” are going or like what we wanna do, or touring, or recording. We’ll of talk shop every once in a while and check in with each other and that’s kind of helpful I think. There was one festival, this was 10 years ago, where I found myself speaking with Neil Young and Paul McCartney. This was the weirdest triangle of people I’ve obviously ever been in. I said literally nothing. I was just shocked at being in that position of standing next to those two guys, and they were talking about something. And then Paul McCartney was like “Oh hey, great album, keep Fleeting.”He just mentioned it in this cheeky kind of Paul McCartney way I think, just this little pun. But I have thought over the years at times of difficulty, I’ve thought, “Keep Fleeting.” In this kind of like way of if, Paul told me to keep fleeting, I must keep fleeting. So that’s as a weirdly minor event, that he probably doesn’t even remember saying it, but you know, those things have deeper resonance than someone intends.

Baltin: Now being older, having more experience in the industry, what would you ask Paul McCartney and Neil Young hanging out with both of them if you felt more comfortable to contribute to the conversation?

Pecknold: I would just ask how they got through certain phases of their career where they were finding some new thing they wanted to do, but they were a couple years off of their biggest albums. How were they keeping excited and what else was on their mind. I guess I would ask those kinds of questions about that as I am kind of moving into that phase a little bit myself, you know, doing this for 10 or 12 years now. I totally agree that you should never lose your fandom and i think it’s almost better just to be guileless enough to be like, “Hey, I’m a big fan, I love your music.” Rather than try to be kind of like, Yeah, we’re peers. Or to ingratiate yourself with someone because you want something from them, that always feels gross to me, and I try to avoid that as much as possible.

More from Arts in Perfectirishgifts

[hmel78]

In conversation with Anthony Phillips ...

1967 – the World watched on as San Francisco experienced it’s ‘Summer Of Love’, and listened on as music reached the dizzy heights of psychedelic rock; Classical music seemed to be drowned out by the screams accompanying  The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who … Meanwhile, at Charterhouse school - one of Great Britain’s finest ‘public’ educational establishments in the idyllic English county of Surrey - a handful of budding young musicians, were busily trying to prove to their masters that banning guitar practice as a punishment for missed homework, would not stop the musical revolution that had begun to happen within it’s own splendid Gothic walls! Unsurprisingly, there is a noteable list of ‘Old Carthusians’ – including the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, amongst numerous artists, actors, poets , sportsmen, TV personalities, journalists, politicians, and Bishops! – but we doubt that they could ever have imagined that they would also nurture, and eventually include in that list, the founder members of a band called … ‘Genesis’. Perhaps you have heard of them?

Peter Gabriel, Michael Rutherford, Tony Banks, Christopher Stewart, and … Anthony Phillips. Despite his departure from the band in 1970, Ant has never strayed from his musical path.   His solo discography boasts in excess of 30 albums; in addition to that he enjoys an incredibly busy, and successful career as a TV and ‘library’ composer; and has been involved with a number of musical projects including collaborations with fellow ‘Genesis’ band mates Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, and Peter Gabriel -  but it hasn’t all been plain sailing …   Helen Robinson, caught up with him to find out more : HR - So where did your musical journey begin?

AP - I was pretty much self taught at school. I studied music later, but in the beginning I was self taught. I briefly had guitar lessons from a chap who was very impressive. My mum used to buy me the Beatles sheet music, and kindly send it down to me at ‘Charterhouse’ – and this chap  would just look at them and read from the piano score, with guitar ‘shapes’ written in fret numbers as opposed to tablature – and he would play the chords and the melody on this beautiful classical guitar. I just wanted to be able to strum the chords to the songs and sing along really, and I think at the time he was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t prepared to go the classical route … Anyway I didn’t.   Then formed a band at school – doing Rolling Stones,  Beatles, Kinks, Animals, The Shadows  - Hank was a big influence - and that took me up to starting to write my own stuff; A lot of it with Mike Rutherford. I met Mike when I was 13 – the other Genesis guys were quite a bit older so we didn’t get together with them for a couple of years. The school band – The Anon - was people more my age. I was the babe of Genesis!

HR - Indeed – and with that in mind, how much input did they allow you to have on the debut album – “From Genesis To Revelation”?

AP - The first album I didn’t do an enormous amount of writing – it was very much dominated by Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks.   The second album – “Trespass” -  was much more of a ‘group’ album. In fact, myself and Mike were responsible for the basis of 3 or 4 of the tracks on “Trespass”. “Visions of Angels” was my piano track originally. Songs like “Looking For Someone” were Peter Gabriel songs that the rest of us developed the instrumentals around. I had a reasonable amount of stuff on “Genesis To Revelation”, but Mike had very little – we came much more into play on ‘Trespass’.

HR - You’d left the band by the time their 3rd album was released. Did they take any of your ideas forward into “Nursery Cryme”? AP - Actually, I was responsible for mucking about with a few ideas that ended up on the album, way before I left   - Mike had this weird tuning of F# which we played about on.  That song became “The Musical Box” later – so, yes, a couple of ideas made it.

HR - Do you ever listen back to the first two albums, and hear things that you would change?

AP - I don’t often listen, no - and I haven’t listened to them enough to have any really strong thoughts. I think if you don’t listen for a while then it’s quite pleasant. If you have a period away from these things, you tend to forget what you thought was wrong,  so then it’s not so bad – but I must say that when you listen repeatedly, then you start to think “oh dear”, I could have done that differently. We all felt that the business of putting strings on “Genesis To Revelation”  - which necessitated reducing the backing track to mono -was a bit of a disaster.   Whilst our playing wasn’t the best, the album had a rough, raw power to it which, that process of adding these high wheeling strings to, made it lose something, and anodyne, perhaps. I know that our producer was trying to give it a more commercial edge, which I understand, but I don’t think it really came off -  and it was at some cost too!

HR - Would you re-record or re-mix any of it again now, in your own way?

AP - No I don’t think so.  I think it is of its time really.   The other thing of course is that it’s physically impossible now.   That reduction process, means that things were erased, so we can’t get back to the original stages even if we wanted to. That’s all changed now, mercifully, with computers . You can get back to any stage these days – providing you remember to save it!

HR – Ah, yes!  The wonders of modern technology.  And … NOT saving things! [laughs]

AP - Yes – we’ve all done it!!!  It’s all so easily done. We take too much for granted with technology. You can become over reliant on it, and lazy! I do fall into that trap myself sometimes actually – musically. I don’t think enough about original sounds I just tend to buy virtual instruments. T hey are wonderful, but if you think back to albums like  [The Beach Boys], “Pet Sounds” and [The Beatles] “Sgt Pepper”, those sounds were created, they weren’t just there at the push of a button!

HR - I know you’re quite experimental with your solo work … Once you’d left Genesis , how easy was it to move into a more classical sound with your compositions?

AP - I found it difficult! I could play by ear, but learning to read music at the age of 18 was incredibly hard to grasp. It was a different discipline of course, of not looking at the guitar or the piano, whilst reading music. My motivation in doing it, was because I wanted the ability to orchestrate ; Not having had that set of skills in Genesis , we couldn’t really have any input into the orchestral approach because we simply didn’t really understand it. Tony Banks did more than the rest of us, although he wasn’t orchestrally trained, but he could read music. So I wanted the power to orchestrate. It wasn’t simply about being able to read music, or being able to play piano pieces – It was definitely to understand notation, so that I could write orchestral pieces. I had a ‘Road to Damascus’, if you like,  after I left Genesis, and listened to all sorts of composers. “The Karelia Suite”, by Sibelius, was my epiphany. I suddenly thought “this doesn’t sound like classical music!”. I must have listened to the wrong things, or maybe my ears weren’t ready to listen as a child, so I had a lot of catching up to do. There was a huge ‘pop’ / ‘Classical’ divide as I was growing up in the 60s – it was rancorous between the establishment and the young tear-aways, and hippies.   It was a wonderful voyage of discovery though, but frustrating at the same time –  technically -  I loved doing Bach ‘Chorales’ and things like that, but some of the exercises I had to do, I found quite dull.

HR - Having honed your skills then,  did you find that it made a difference to the music that you wanted to write? Did you find yourself wanting to bridge the gap between pop and classical – through a ‘progressive’ angle?

AP - Hmmm, Bridge the gap is interesting. It didn’t make a great deal of difference to me in terms of the progressive wing of my writing – I think I would have grown into that anyway.

With Genesis - There were some moments which were quasi classical, but I don’t think they bridged the gap really, no. Tony Banks was very familiar with the classical repertoire, so you could argue that his chord sequences were classically influenced. What studying  did for me, was give me the ability to do - with the more markedly classical wing of things (although you may argue that it’s a fine line to distinguish which bits are prog, and which are classical!) –  was cope with them better.

On “The Geese And The Ghost” for instance, having studied orchestration, and knowing how to write the parts, I didn’t have to get an arranger in. I could think for myself and make my own judgments on which instrument to add where. Plus – arrangers inevitably, like anyone else, tend to have their own styles which then reflect on the piece, which might be good, but it might not be necessarily what you want. So it really did help me in that respect.

HR - Genesis certainly didn’t carry any of that vibe forward, into their commercial phase …

AP - No! Well, the post Gabriel group gradually became more and more commercial didn’t they. Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel were quite different animals really - Obviously Peter did some successful commercial things afterwards. To be fair to them [Genesis], it would have been very difficult to carry on that way – especially post punk, and disco eras. There was almost a unilateral, multilateral, Palace revolution, that everyone had to start doing that! It became very unfashionable to be ‘prog’ and have such complicated long and drawn out pieces of music.

My timing was peccable -  I’m not sure there is such a word, but I like it anyway! - coming back into the business, because I walked straight into the teeth of punk! Whilst I had nothing against it, in the sense that if I had been 10 years younger I would have been doing the same thing –what I did object to, was being asked to go into reverse gear, and start doing simple pop stuff, because I’d out grown it.

So I think it actually, for the purposes of the market, became very difficult for groups to stay true to their former selves and continue to produce classically based music. I don’t think it was a conscious direction on behalf of a lot of groups to start to simplify their music, they just were not given much choice.   It didn’t do England a great deal of credit the way that everyone cashed in on that - there was so much clichéd nonsense around and people were saying “this music hasn’t got any balls!”. In a lot of European countries and the States, different styles were able to co-exist much better, than here in the UK. It was the fault of the record companies rather than a lot of the punk musicians really - they were just happy doing their own thing, but there was a lot of unpleasantness at that time. There were a lot of people who were heroes one day, and then being knifed in the back the day after by the people who had been adulating them! Which wasn’t anything to be terribly proud about …

HR - Not at all! But, something to be proud about is this lovely re-issue of your debut solo album “The Geese And The Ghost”!

AP - Yes!  Absolutely! It’s just come out again, and in surround sound too, which is the first time I have had a surround sound album, and they have done a fantastic job with it! Particularly the instrumentals – it really does make a difference to have that experience of surround sound. And they’re releasing limited editions on Vinyl too, which is fabulous because that is when the artwork really comes into it’s own. Vinyl seems to be having a bit of a revival, which is great! MP3s are OK, but the sound is pretty impoverished really one you’ve narrowed the bandwidth of the sound. It sounds like a different album really, with that treatment! HR - When you started work on “The Geese And The Ghost” originally - Did you write it from a fresh perspective or was it something that you had brought forward from Genesis?

AP - It was actually written from a period as far back as 1969 / 1970. Things that Mike [Rutherford] and I had played around with then. There were some additions and refinements made between 1973 / 1974. Recording began in 1974, although the main body of it was done in 1975 – which is actually 40 years ago, isn’t that terrible?! And then, because they were now unfashionable times, we really struggled to get it released - so it didn’t come out until early 1977, by which time some of that material was over 7 years old!

HR - When you were selecting musicians to work with, what influenced your decision to ask Phil Collins and not Peter Gabriel?

AP - Well, Mike and I wrote together, and Peter and Tony [Banks] wrote together -  when we came together as a group, that modified a little, but that initial pairing pretty much stayed the same way. So, because Mike and I had all this unreleased music – which was frustrating –at the earliest opportunity ; at a time where solo albums looked like a possibility - we wanted to use this material. We had done a single with Phil in 1973 which ironically was written about the previous Genesis drummer, Jonathan Silver, who was on the first album.  I had written this with Mike – a very uncharacteristic kid of loose country song called “The Silver Song” and Phil came down and sang the demo and did such a great job of it. You see, Peter was married, so whenever we had any time off - he went home to spend it with Jill ; whereas Phil was foot loose and fancy free and had tons of energy. The single never got released for various reasons, but when it came to “The Geese And The Ghost” he was the obvious choice because the three of us had worked together before. HR - I’m glad you mentioned Jonathan Silver there –  with regards to him, and John Mayhew – were they just hired guns for the early Genesis albums or did they have creative input?

AP - No, they weren’t hired guns as such, but by the same token they didn’t have a huge input, but we did group compositions on all the tracks on those first 2 albums –  so whilst they weren’t writing huge swaythes of chord sequences, they were putting in little bits here and there. Jon Silver was full of energy and ideas about arranging and how things were connected. HR - We never really get to know the dynamics of the early stuff, which is why I was curious. It has always seemed to me, that Phil Collins became Genesis … or is that an unfair judgment?

AP - Well he had the big commercial success and I don’t think it would have been easy to keep him unless he had the lion share of the writing credits, although I think they’ve shared the credits pretty well … I think it’s sad to see him fall so far from all of that these days, with the press in particular, but he was colossally successful, and I think the group would have been looking the gift horse in the mouth if they hadn’t run with Phil.

The media can be so cruel. I remember a duel review of “The Geese And The Ghost” being handed to me from the states. One called it a “mellow rock classic”, the other said it was “music to wash dishes to” … and sadly you seem only to remember the bad ones!

And do you know, that it was the album that very nearly never came out?!! It sat on a shelf whilst punk roared away, and I’d given up on it to be honest. It was 15 months between finishing it and it being picked up to be released.   For the first 3 or 4 months I was quite hopeful;  by new year  1976 I was beginning to lose hope, and by the summer I was definitely starting to think about other things, and applying to go to music college full time.  

It was a pretty soul destroying time – I’d spent a lot of time and energy on it; a lot of angst , and thought, apart from hard work, had gone into it … And then right at the 11th hour, while I was going for auditions to music college for the following year  - suddenly it was picked up by an American record company. It was never actually released on a formal English record company label - it was released by the Genesis management company with whom I was with at the time – ‘Hit And Run’ – so like I say it’s the album that nearly never was!

HR - If it hadn’t been picked up then, do you think you’d have given it another shot down the line?

AP - No … I don’t actually. I think I would have gone to music college, and ...   Good point! What would I have done at the end of it?   I think I would have carried on composing, definitely, but I’m not quite sure where I would have come out at the other end, because the progressive scene had long gone, when I finished college in 1979– [laughs] Yes - in a parallel world what would I have done?   I have absolutely no idea! I would probably have ended up as a music teacher.

HR - Did you teach, at some point?

AP - Yes … yes I did funnily enough. Whilst I was studying, I taught classical guitar - which helped me a lot. I had always played acoustic guitar, but didn’t play proper finger style - my right hand was quite basic, so I studied classical guitar as well as piano when I left Genesis, and teaching then helped me to pass the Classical Guitar teachers exams (as opposed to the performers diploma). I taught at a couple of different schools. One was Pepper Harrow ; which was like a progressive borstal for kids who were very bright, but who’d fallen foul of authority - not so badly that had to be interned, as it were.   A great number of them had come from some pretty horrific backgrounds, but a number of them have gone on to do great things. Some of them were brilliant musicians!   I remember wondering what I was letting myself in for initially, but it’s something that I look back on with a great deal of affection. They weren’t just guitar lessons – they were much more -  the music was a vital part of these guys rehabilitation.

HR - Sounds like you’d have made a fantastic teacher, had all else failed! Given that “The Geese And The Ghost” almost didn’t happen – did that fill you with confidence to carry on to do the next album straight away, or had it discouraged you a little?

AP - Oh I’ve had more than my fair share of discouragement over the years! The album that came directly afterwards was “Wise After The Event” and I was immediately told that it had to be an album of songs – the writing was on the wall for these straggly instrumental albums -  and it was time to crank up the electric guitar into a heavier rock genre, or don’t bother turning up, kind of thing.

“Sides” was originally going to be called “Balls”, which was cocking-a-snook at people for saying that my music didn’t have enough balls! At the time it seemed to me to be so ludicrous to have this blanket approach across all music  - so that’s why we had the cover with the table football table on it - But the powers that be, over-ruled “Balls” and we had to change it to “Sides” ; because it did have one side that was more overtly commercial than the other, which is a little more instrumental.

I was lucky at that point, because the “Private Parts and Pieces” idea just came out of the blue really. I had been recording and stockpiling quite a lot throughout the year when nothing was happening with “The Geese And The Ghost”, and I asked if it might be possible, as a foil to this more rock orientated stuff, to be able to release an album of piano pieces, guitar pieces – sort of home recordings, which made up in their atmosphere and mood, what they lacked in technical perfection - and they said yes!  

The first X of “Sides” was released as “Private Parts And Pieces” - as a freebie.   It wasn’t actually “Private Parts and Pieces I” because it was a one off, but that numbering thing became sort of a generic term for my albums which were more homespun and simple – you know, small scale, as opposed to the more magnum opuses.

Not that I was able to do a Magnum Opus for quite a while! There was the “Invisible Men” album, which had a certain amount of record company backing, but that was again released around the time of the ‘New Romantics’ – more bad timing! I’d just bought my first house, and was under huge financial pressure with about 18 lodgers to pay the mortgage!   So there was big pressure on to have hit singles and get paid, and so I didn’t do another full scale album for about another 6 years. I was lucky to still have this  ‘outlet’, with the small scale releases, to continue to get some music out there during the 80s  - when the climate was very much against the more classical stuff -  at least I did continue to get piano, guitar, synth - slightly more imaginative stuff - out there, but all very much on a small scale.

Thinking about it, it was actually a full 7 years gap before I had the opportunity to do another large scale album at the end of the 80s. It was a frustrating time that too,  I can tell you. I had rather a chequered career for a while. I was doing a lot of songwriting, and aiming it at other artists. We would keep getting close, but then, the management would lose the artist, or the album was canned. They weren’t collaborations or anything, but we had some placements in the works for Sheena Easton, Roger Daltry and people like that, but they never worked out. We had a song covered by Bucks Fizz – who promptly had a coach crash! So I had a run of bad luck with that really. It was an interesting time –  I was trying allsorts of different things whilst my own music wasn’t making much money, and whilst trying to pay for the new house. It didn’t quite come to being a cat burglar, or an assassin, but I did give it some serious thought!

HR - Your celebrity friends could have hired you to assassinate the music press …

AP - [laughs] Yes …

HR - Is there anyone in particular, that you would like to collaborate with? AP - I thought you were going to say Assassinate! I don’t know these days … about collaborations … Mike and I were always a good team but we have gone in different directions now.   I’m not sure that he’s interested in doing complicated instrumental stuff any longer.   He did ask me if I wanted to be involved with the Mike and Mechanics albums, but I knew that I couldn’t see the whole project through with the touring and everything, which is what he needed.   And it’s not necessarily my bag if I’m honest, although I very much respect what he’s achieved. I think maybe we’ve gone too far down different roads now to make anything work. Steve Hackett and I have talked about writing together a few times, but it’s always risky when someone is your friend. Working relationships do change things, and I’m not sure I’d want to risk my friendship with Steve!

With my TV library music, I do collaborate with quite a lot of people then anyway, so I’m not one of these musicians who doesn’t want to work with anybody else.

HR - When are you at your happiest then?  When you’re working on solo stuff and you’re completely in control of it (and I’m not insinuating that you’re a control freak!)  …

AP - Ha, NO! Actually, a great friend of mine calls my studio the spaceship! And I’m completely happy in there when I’m just mucking about with all the wonderful synth sounds, creating tapestries of colour with sound – Love it!

And also playing guitar, which increasingly seems to happen late at night in front of the TV. Just picking up a guitar – 12 String or Classical – when these ideas enter my head at absurd times of the day. On the recordings you can invariably hear Alan Hansen and Match Of The Day commentary in the background! And I do actually present demos to my library producer, with TV programmes going on in the background.

HR - What  sort of boundaries are in place with your Library writing? Can you remain true to your ‘album’ style, or are you tied  to a  brief?

AP - I have a lot more freedom these days to create some varied pieces – guitar, synth – it’s very varied, and that’s what I love about it, but it’s hugely competitive, and the recession spawned a lot of ‘under-cutting’ -  the market is flooded, and the rates of pay have dropped! I feel very fortunate to have done well at a time when it was less competitive, and to have continued to do it. It’s incumbent on me to keep writing as much as possible -  I can’t afford to take my foot off the peddle. So when things come up, I don’t ever really have a blank page because of the stockpile of guitar, piano , synth, and orchestral library pieces already down – I have all of this material ready to go, rather than start from scratch. Some of them are slightly rough and would need to be redone, but the mood is there, and if someone came to me tomorrow asking for such and such, I would hope that I have something that would suit. Unless they asked for a bagpipe concerto. I haven’t got one of those. It’s unlikely to happen, but you never know …

HR - So when we end this conversation, you’re going to go and write one …

AP - [laughs]They’re not a pretty sound when people turn them off you know! What they don’t tell you is that when they’re warming up and cooling down they sound like a sick cow! It is a racket! We had a funny incident on the road with Genesis actually. Peter Gabriel was a little bit accident prone, and slightly absent minded on stage, and used to play the accordion in Stagnation, a bit – in quite an unconventional way, not like jolly French stuff with the onions and the beret - but he would put it down during a very quiet section and if he didn’t put it down properly, it would make this kind of squealing noise going off into the distance, and suddenly we would sound like a John Cage outfit! People would look up completely startled! Another thing he would do – he was a good flute player but struggled with an A flat in “The Knife” which was our closing song – and Tony Banks had to remind him before we went on, that you had to tweek the flute to tune it by a semi-tone. Occasionally Tony would forget to tell him, and Peter wouldn’t remember;  The lights would dim, and we’d be ready for this lovely moody bit, and BANG! He would come in a semi tone out!  That was pretty tense I can tell you! I love all of those instruments …

HR - What’s your favorite instrument?

AP - Ooooh Tricky. I think pushed to answer that, I’d have to say 12 string guitar 1st, followed very closely by piano, Classical guitar 3rd, and underwater sousaphone 4th …

HR - And, may I say you play all 4 brilliantly!

AP - Aww thanks …

HR - I’ll look forward to your underwater sousaphone symphony at some point, amidst the forthcoming re-releases! Were you looking at reworking your back catalog, or was it something that you were approached to do?

AP - They approached me!  [Cherry Red / Esoteric Records]. Not to put too finer point on it but I make the majority of my living from my TV music, and the album work has always been a very nice foil to that, but it’s not been my bread and butter, as it were. I’m probably one of the only artists who has ever said to a record company – “are you really sure you want to do this?” And they did, so I was a bit surprised really! I gathered they were in the business of picking up back catalogs– and I hate the world ‘cult’ – but of people who have ‘cult’ followings, and it felt like entirely the right thing to do. It feels a safe place to be, and with a decent company who have their act together; after having had so many years of uncertainty with this stuff.

HR - How much influence did you have over the way that the 2014 anthology “Harvest Of The Heart”, was put together?

AP - Not a lot actually, but entirely by choice. I wrote a little bit for the blurb on the boxset, but as far as choosing what songs to include – I couldn’t make the decision. It was too difficult – I mean, I dither anyway, at the best of times!  And I’m not in any way trying to imply with arrogance that this is all so wonderful, but it was just too hard for me to decide. I’m not a good judge of what other people would have wanted, and to be frank I don’t like listening to a lot of it anyway, once I have done it, otherwise I start to pick it all apart and convince myself that I could have done better … So I was very happy to leave it up to Jonathan Dann, who runs my website ; and Mark Powell (Boss of Cherry Red), who went through all of it. He deserves a medal for that!

HR - I know it’s unfair to ask an artist what their favourite piece of their own music is, but – do you have one?

AP - The albums I’m most proud of , would be “The Geese And The Ghost”, and an album called “Slow Dance” ; which was the first album that I did when I came back after that 7 year hiatus in the wilderness, as it were …

HR - Was that [Slow Dance] released under your own steam outside of record label jurisdiction?

AP - It was actually! I did that off my own bat, and once again ended up having a bad time of it! We’d done an album called “Tarka”, and there was a bit of an upturn in the 80s with the ‘new age’ boom. I’d been doing what was effectively ‘new age’ for a while, but suddenly people realised that, after about 5 years! So I borrowed some money from my management company to crank up my gear, in order to enable me to do a larger scale record. This was in lieu of a small advance from the record company, who then went bust! So the rights to my songs were impounded, under US laws, and my catalogs were frozen (as assets) in the states for a number of years and I couldn’t get them back -  so it was a pretty chaotic period in terms of America, but also I had to finish what I had started here! So I pressed on with this album, very much in debt, because I’d bought the gear, but then hadn’t got the advance to pay it off! Looking back I’m not sure how I kept going really because the record was very complicated … But I did have an ulterior motive which was to try and secure a publishing deal with the then’ Virgin Publishing’ under Richard Branson. I don’t to this day think he realises what he let go of when he sold it on to EMI – it was such a wonderful company to be a part of. Ultimately, I got a deal, which got me out of the mire;  I finished what became “Slow Dance” and then Virgin came in and released ALL of my albums onto CD for the first time, so I was very fortunate then. I owed a lot to that record in the end. But it was a real blood, sweat, and tears album, and it wasn’t just mentally painful to listen to afterwards – it was literally physically painful too ; I would writhe around and cringe listening to it because I spent too long on it, and it sounded awful to me. It tried to do too much. It’s quite filmic, and unabashedly lyrical - It’s very orchestral at times and some of it is artificial; the sounds at that stage weren’t particularly brilliant and in hindsight it would have benefitted from more real orchestra. I think I could listen to it now … There is a two year rule – don’t listen for something you did for two years, and you’ll forget what was wrong with it!

HR - Would you re-record it, now?

AP - Well – it’s one of the things that will come up for discussion, funnily enough,  because we are planning to release some more in surround sound, but it has to be practical to do because it’s a very expensive process, and Cherry Red are very fair, but they know we possibly won’t sell a million copies. I would like to do “Slow Dance” yes. I think any of the orchestral albums would really benefit from being in Surround Sound. The bigger it is, the more there is going on, and the more you can throw around the room. The re-release schedule is a bit torturous actually. Up next is “Private Parts and Pieces” with a bonus CD of material from the time, and  … I don’t want to give too much else away really, but we will be doing more … maybe “Tarka”, eventually.

HR - Would you like to get any of your compositions to a point where an orchestra could perform it live? AP - Oh You bet! I’d love it!! There was a performance of “Tarka” in Australia, but it was with a scratch orchestra, so a rather mixed affair. It’s quite hard [Tarka] although it’s not an incredibly difficult score, but it needs some very good players to do it justice. These things are just so incredibly expensive to put together though, aren’t they?

HR - Yes, they are! Do you ever perform?

AP - I don’t … no. My experience with Genesis made me very tentative about performing, but to be honest - the thing that I enjoy most is composing. I’m a terrible practicer! The process of playing something over and over again, just bores me to tears!

HR - How about conducting then? AP - Gosh no, I’m not a good enough conductor – I did study it for a while, briefly, but I’d be much better on a bus! I know the moves, and the beats, but it’s that business of making the left hand totally independent of what’s going on with the right hand – that’s really difficult.  It’s an extraordinary art! And when I go to see an orchestra, the conductor always seems to be so far ahead, that I can’t ever put it together!! When I was first studying I used to get the orchestra seats behind the Albert Hall proms, which are  the ones behind the Orchestra where you’re looking directly at the conductor – and some of the conductors seemed to be so far ahead of the orchestra, that we used to joke that the conductor would be in the dressing room toweling down, whilst the orchestra were still finishing off! I don’t understand it!! It’s one thing that I do regret in life actually – I would have loved to have been in the middle of a big phat orchestra when something like the  “Rites Of Spring” [Stravinsky]  or “The Planets” [Holst] is being played.  That must be amazing! Even to just play the triangle or something!  I’d love to do that …

HR - There’s always time!  What about your life outside of music? Do you ever divert from your musical routes?

AP - [laughs] It would seem not to the untrained eye eh? I have a lot of friends and probably spend too much time socialising, and eating out, so I burn the candle at both ends too often. I spend a lot of time with my nieces and nephews, and God-children – I don’t have kids of my own but keeping up with all of them makes life pretty full! It is a difficult balance to keep because I really can’t afford to fall behind with work stuff and that involves an endless amount of mind boggling admin with the album career, and for composing for the library - I have to keep up with all the new technology in the studio, and the new sounds – endless changes! I love sports ; all sorts of sports … I’m a big film man  - love films. Probably my favourite music is in film scores these days. My big musical heroes are film composers – amongst many, my favourites are  Ennio Morricone : particularly ”Cinema Paradiso” and the wonderful ”Gabriel’s Oboe” from ’The Mission; John Williams, ”Schindlers List”; George Fenton , ”Shadowlands”; Thomas Newman ,  ”Shawshank Redemption”; Hans Zimmer,  James Newton Howard,  Alan Silvestri and many others … so, yes! How do I actually find time to work? That is the question ...  Not too long after we’d had this chat, Ant got the opportunity to work on a re-release of “Slow Dance” ; here’s the verdict ...  HR : So the ultimate question is, forced to listen to it again, have you grown fonder of Slow Dance during the re-mastering, for this re-release?AP :  My own view in general, which I appreciate may be very different to that of other musicians, is that when you come back to an album not having heard it for ages, it has novelty value and you think ‘that’s not bad at all’….! That’s why i prescribe the ‘two year rule’. Don’t listen to a piece, album, whatever, for a while and you will forget what it was that you are aspiring to that made you feel dissatisfied with its original outcome !Alas, repeated listens gradually bring back the issues that worried you at the time ! And the more time spent on an album (in my case Slow Dance, Geese were particular long campaigns) the worse it is. QBG and I flew through PP3 in the lovely summer of 1981 and it all remained fresh and therefore untarnished in one’s memory. This naturally makes us completely unobjective when it comes to judging our work ! Slow Dance was such a painstaking haul that when I finished it I found it excruciating to listen to.You have a mystical image of how a piece should sound and capturing this remains tantalisingly elusive !   Perhaps this very frustration is what drives you on to try and do better …?So yes, at first pleasantly surprised, with a few reservation, then gradually I began to feel ‘could have done that better - in many instances !But there are sections that I am still quite proud of and I know it is a piece that has been a moving experience for number of people……. HR : When last we spoke, You were enjoying the opportunity to take your recordings into the surround sound arena - has this one surpassed your expectations?AP : The Surround was a tough one : the toughest of all the re-releases thus far….Perhaps not harmonically but certainly in terms of the arrangement, the album was in parts very intricate and both the balance and flow hung by a thread. Any slight change and the wheels would come off. And they did ! It presented an almost insurmountable challenge to Simon Heyworth and Andy Miles, as there were effects on outboard gear (now either absent or defunct !) that weren’t recorded to tape and therefore had to be somehow ‘reconstructed’.  On the other hand instrumental albums such as this and particularly 1984 ( a feast for the guys with all the weird, tricky sounds lending themselves well to sonic spatial manipulation !) do benefit from  the size and ambience that 5.1 affords. So my considered view is that the more ambient, floaty parts benefit greatly whilst other sections slightly less so….But what does the musician / composer’s view count…..? It is only the audience’s opinions that ultimately counts ! I am happy that we try to give anyone repurchasing these albums enough extra material to make it feel worth it !

[adabassist]

SKATING AWAY ON THE FRETLINES OF A NEW DAY

I expect that there’s not a single electric bassist out there who can’t remember the first time they got to play a fretless bass. The difference in the sonic, visual, tactile, even the emotional experience - it leaves an impression on almost every player, whether they pursue the instrument or not. It’s really as close to the human voice as a bass is gonna get. It’s a truly seductive instrument; it’s even downright sexy. If Kathleen Turner played bass, I’d bet you a dollar she’d play a fretless.

The passion I developed for this instrument consumed me; once I discovered the fretless bass, fretted basses became boring, limiting, and they just felt plain weird. I had a fretless with me everywhere I went, every gig, every studio date, every rehearsal, every trip out of town. I even took it on dates; hey, you never know, right?

My introduction to the instrument was anything but unique: my high school band teacher suggested that I get an album called Heavy Weather by a jazz fusion band called Weather Report. Upon hearing the opening track, “Birdland”, I immediately recognized the sound I was hearing as a bass, but it sounded like what that bassist was doing was impossible! As far as I knew, without a whammy bar, there was no way to make those harmonic notes move and slide like that… so I brought the cassette to my teacher and played the intro for him, and asked him how they were doing that… he said, “Well, isn’t Jaco Pastorius the king of the fretless bass?”

I said, “King of the what? And who’s Jaco?”

What followed was a desperate attempt to get my hands on a fretless, even just to try it; none of the music stores around had them (living in a flyover state with the nearest metropolis over an hour away has its disadvantages), nobody I knew had one or even knew anybody else who had one, and when I finally found an upstart guitar company who made a stock affordable fretless, my folks wouldn’t get it for me because, not being terribly musically inclined, they couldn’t understand why I would need a 2nd bass.

At this point my teacher moved away, and I found a new teacher at the music store the next town over. And HE happened to have a fretless bass, and he let me borrow it that summer while he was on vacation. He dropped it off on his way out of town, pretty close to midnight. I took it down into the basement and pulled it out and was all set to plug it in when I heard, “DON’T TURN THAT AMPLIFIER ON, YOUR SISTER IS SLEEPING!”

Jeez, not anymore I bet, Mom. “Okay, okay, I won’t turn it on…”

But there I sat, on my barstool in the basement, bass strapped over my shoulder, just plucking the strings and sliding my fingers up and down the fingerboard. For a good half an hour. If I had smoked, I would have needed a cigarette afterwards. (I told you it was sexy.)

The next morning I realized how amazingly difficult it was to play that bass in tune. No lines, hardly any useful reference points. Very difficult to figure out where I was on the bass. But the tone it created, and my desire to make more tones like that, superseded any concern about how much practice this was going to take. I finally got my very own fretless - a Rickenbacker 4001 - and really began concentrating on mastering it (much to the detriment of my grades in school).

One of my favorite things about the fretless bass is that the tone really lends itself to lyrical melodies. The instrument takes on qualities of the human voice in the middle to upper registers. And I found myself learning horn parts to jazz tunes as well as more traditional bass lines like those from my favorite rock bands, which ended up serving me really well down the road.

Another favorite thing is the fact that many fretless basses used to be fretted basses, and the slots leftover from said frets being removed usually get filled in with material of a contrasting color to the surrounding wood. These are known as “fret lines”, and if used correctly, they can greatly enhance one’s ability to play notes in tune. They are also the subject of great controversy among we bass nerds, as there are those who feel it’s “cheating” somehow. For my money, I’m on Team Fretlines.

So I practiced and practiced, and even went to music school for a year after high school, and came home and kept practicing. One thing led to another, and less than a year after I returned, I found myself auditioning for a band in the area that had already been signed to a small local record label, and was getting some pretty big gigs around the country, and needed a true fretless bassist, as opposed to a bassist who trots out a fretless as a novelty on stage for one song. Unbelievably, I landed the gig. Of course the REAL work was just beginning, but I was blessed with a really fast and accurate ear, and they decided to give me a shot.

I soon realized how green I really was compared to true professional musicians, and I had to make a concerted effort to keep up, but after a lot of hard work, not only did I learn to behave as a pro, but I really sharpened my ear and its relationship to my fingers… I was developing the ability to create a phrase in my head, and play it on my first attempt. (This is a big deal for musicians; imagine not being able to say much to anyone unless you practice it over and over, and you’ll have an idea of how most musicians approach music.)

Several years later (same band), I get a call from my keyboard player, who wants me to come in to the band studio the next morning before rehearsal (we recorded at one band member’s house, and practiced at another’s in the same neighborhood) so I can put down a bass melody for a demo of a song he’s writing for the next album.

I show up with my bass at 8am (yeech!), and we start discussing the song: “I need you to double that melody with the cheesy synth-sax sound. The song goes through the same chord progression 3 times, and the melody occurs during the 1st and the 3rd pass.”

“Got it. What happens during the 2nd pass? Should I just take a solo over the chords?”

“No, I’m going to have my sax player friend replace the synth melody, and he’s going to do a solo, so just leave it empty.”

Plugged in, got signal and levels. I was taught the melody - beautiful, and not too complicated. Cool little chord progression with a twist. He hit the record button, and I played the melody I had just learned along with the track.

As I played the final note, preparing to rest for the next 32 bars, he dropped a bomb in my lap: “Why don’t you just throw down a solo here anyway.”

This was exactly ZERO WARNING, for a song I had heard for the first time about 10 minutes prior. It’s like being thrown an enormous water balloon at 94 mph and being expected to catch it.

That’s when my brain became my best friend.

My ears said to my brain: here’s what should come next. tell the fingers to make this happen…

My brain said: i can do that! fingers, do this, this, and this, and then this.

And the phrase I thought would sound great instantly came out of the studio speakers.

I didn’t have time to be shocked; my ears were ready for the next phrase, giving orders to my brain, which meted them out. This happened at least a dozen times in a row, right up until the melody was supposed to re-enter. And my ears, having connected a long series of invisible dots over the last 60 seconds or so, even properly glued the last phrase to the beginning of the melody. It was like a factory assembly line: my frontal cortex had an idea, my ears refined it and made sure it fit the chords, the frontal cortex figured out where those notes had to be on the fingerboard, the motor cortex took those plans and sent the signals down to my fingers. And each set of “orders” took less time than the blink of an eye.

I peeked up after I got to the “safe zone” of the out melody (which I already knew), and my keyboard player’s jaw was on his chest. I had to remind myself to concentrate; after all, I was still recording.

When I finished, he hit the stop button, turned to me, and said, “How did you do THAT??”

I didn’t quite understand, so he rewound the tape and played back what I had just recorded.

And I was treated to a sonic representation of the way my brain and ears operate when they’re in top form. I had no memory of playing the actual solo (and I still don’t); it was a true transcendental experience. Yet, as I listened back to the track, I KNEW every note I was about to hear as if I had been waiting my entire life to play that solo. It was like a perfectly written story that practically told itself. 25 years later and I still know it by heart; haven’t thought of a single thing I’d do different. It was a complete stream-of-consciousness expression, in fretless bass solo form. I’ve never had another experience like it since.

We both kind of sat there for a few seconds after the song ended, and he finally said, “I don’t care what anyone else says; for my money, this song’s done. Let’s show this to the band at rehearsal.”

So we took it along and played it for everyone else. Everyone loved it, but the bandleader said, “I know that was an amazing solo, but there’s already too much fretless on the upcoming record. I think the solo should be sax instead. I hope you understand.”

And I did understand, even if it was a bit of a bummer. Oh well, at least I had a copy of my solo on cassette tape for posterity.

Sax player showed up a few days later, on a day when I wasn’t there, to play the melody and do a solo, but there was a problem - he had been sent the same demo tape that I had, with my solo on it, and it was influencing his improv in a way that didn’t really suit the sax. He finally said, “I need to skip the solo. The melody is fine, no problem, but I keep veering off course during the solo because I hear the bass solo in my head so strongly.”

So the bandleader calls me and tells me what happened, and that he’s decided that HE will play an electric jazz guitar solo over the chord changes (he did this regularly in the group, and to great effect). Okay, great. Curious as to what I’ll hear in two days when it’s done.

Two days later I get another phone call: “I can’t do it. I keep playing stuff that works great on the guitar, and it fits the changes nicely, but the phrases just sound disconnected, I keep hearing your solo in my head, and I can’t seem to fix it. Would you mind if I transcribed your fretless solo and played it on the jazz guitar?”

“Feel free, it’d be an honor,” I said. Good thing FaceTime wasn’t a thing back then, because I’m sure I was smirking.

The next day I arrived at the studio to record another song for the new record, where I find the bandleader standing outside shaking his head.

“Did you finish the solo? How’d it go?”

“Yep. And I hate it.”

“What happened?”

“I spent over an hour last night transcribing your part. And I just spent another hour recording it. You know what it sounds like?”

I had an answer ready, but I wasn’t about to say it out loud if I didn’t have to. I figured I’d let him say it instead, which he did:

“It sounds like a bunch of great fretless bass licks, played on the wrong instrument. I think we should just use your original bass solo.”

Now that’s taking the long way around to come to the right decision.

When I look back on that moment, I find it amazing that I don’t remember coming up with the phrases, and I certainly don’t remember anything happening that pulled me out of that “mode” I was in; the solo all but wrote itself, and I was simply the conduit. But I remember my bandmate’s reaction.

Since then, I have tried to conjure that mojo dozens of times, with varying degrees of success, but never quite to that level. But it showed me what was possible within the realm of performance. All those scales and exercises and hours upon hours of practice were paid off in that one instance of musical epiphany and pure expression. It was enough to ensure I’ll die a happy man.

[thememoriesofaqueen]

The Things We Do - Part 9

Masterlist (x)

A/N: Finally, the Kalijah-Reunion is happening. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks to all the messages and anons who gave me a lot of inspiration. ♥ I’m also kinda nervous about this chapter so please be nice to me.                English is not my first language      → I do not own anything of the TVD - Universe and I’m not affiliated or                   associated with the writers etc. this is only a headcanon.

Pairing: Kalijah ( Katherine / Elijah )

Setting: post TVD 4x23, no cured Katherine.

TW: -

Word Count: 9.106

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`·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.· At the same time `·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.·

It was early in the morning when he got up, just like every day. He stayed up way too long, got up too early and therefore didn’t exactly get the right amount of sleep. Even if he did get some sleep, his sleep mostly wasn't really restful, often being unable to shake the images of Katerina off. He still managed to keep going, as sleep wouldn’t find him  – fortunately, a vampire doesn’t need as much sleep as a mortal, anyway.

He didn’t really like to make use of the heavy curtains, so he usually finds his way to his bathroom when the first early sun rays lighten up his room, in winter even before that. He showered and shaved, doing the same procedur and morning routine as every day. When he returned from his bathroom with only a towel covering his body, he made his way to his wardrobe, which contained various suits and - how was it called these days? - accessories. He is certain that his wardrobe has a large dimension for a man’s standard, but he didn’t mind it and ignored his sister’s jokes about it as well. A man should always be properly dressed, therefore he had to have a selection of what he is going to wear. He picked a dark blue suit, a white shirt and fitting cufflinks before he started to dress himself. When he was finished, he picked a matching tie and belt, closed his jacket and neatly folded a handkerchief, which he put into his jacket. He checked on his appearance and styled his hair until he was content with his look. It may appear as vain, but he attached importance to his appearance.

Once he was fully dressed, he opened the double wing door and stepped outside, enjoying the warm sun rays on his skin. His balcony gave him a beautiful view over the French Quarter. He could watch the sun rise and appreciated the quiet enviroment. New Orleans is always loud, full of music and artists.

But right now, everything is quiet and still asleep. Even Niklaus. Only the birds are singing. Those peaceful moments are rare, so he always chooses to enjoy them. He went back inside but left the double wing door open, intending to let some fresh air in. He left his room quickly in order to get himself a blood bag, only to return a few seconds later. Despite being a vampire, he had an aversion of biting someone. It isn’t uncivilized and he isn’t a barbarian. Moreover he didn't like being strained with blood nor the sound of screaming people. He opened the blood bag carefully and poured its content in a glass before going to his desk and sitting down. Having seated himself, he grabbed one of his books he liked to read in the morning and sipped on his glass, drinking a bit of blood every now and then.

Usually, reading something is a good way to take his mind somewhere else, away from his sorrows, away from New Orleans and away from her. His dreams about her haven’t faded away and even tonight she had been present in his dreams like a ghost whose only purpose is to haunt him. Consequently, reading isn’t only a good way to start the day, it also helps to stop thinking about those dreams.

He had just finished the third chapter when the buzzing of his phone disturbed the silence. The display of his phone lightened up for a moment, but he ignored it. It was probably just a message from one of his observers, telling him if everything had been okay. It’s always necessary to know about what is going on in the city in order to maintain control. However, he wasn’t in the mood to be disturbed so early in the morning. He wanted to enjoy the peace for another ten minutes before he’ll throw himself into work again. That’s why he finished his glass of blood and started the next chapter.

Unfortunately, the book wasn’t able to capture his attention anymore, something has changed, he couldn’t focus anymore. Something gave him a weird feeling, making him nervous. His heart fluttered and with a quiet sound, he closed his book shut and stood up, wandering around. Out of sudden, he felt restless, strained. Something wasn’t right, something was out of place. But what was it?

He went to his balcony and watched the streets, but everything was normal, the first humans began to roam the streets and filled it with life again. He sighed and closed the double wing door. What was it what made him feel so nervous? It certainly hadn’t happened before. If he hadn't known better, he would describe the feeling like an invisible visitor who is watching him in his room. But that couldn't be. The compound is protected. He stopped and used his supernatural hearing to check the compound. However, everything was normal. Everyone was still asleep, he could hear the even breaths. That knowledge calmed him a little bit, knowing that his family is safe. Nevertheless his internal nervousness didn’t fade away. It’s like he is expecting something to happen, like he subconsciously prepares for something. His gaze roamed through his room before it landed on his phone. There has been a message a few minutes ago. Although a simple message shouldn’t fill him with unease, right?

He frowned and approached his desk whereupon his phone laid. The first thing he does after he waking up, even before going to the bathroom, is checking his phone (and secretly hoping there is a certain message waiting for him). There hadn’t been a single message or notification this morning, so he just assumed that the incoming message was the one of one of his observers. But what if it hadn’t been like that? What if…?

His fingertips thumped onto the mahogany surface of his desk, being unsure of what to do, didn't want to make a fool out of himself. Then, however, he slowly reached out for his phone and unlocked it. He tensed when he saw he got a message coming from an unknown number and held his breath when he opened it, a part of him wondering what has gotten into him. His heart was beating faster than normal and his eyes widened when he read the message. And he re-read it again and again.

‘It took some time but I’m ready now. Meet me in in three weeks at 8pm at the place you’ve shown me and where the past and present have collided.’

He opened his mouth in shock and sat down, his gaze still lingering at the message.

“Kat-” he mumbled but didn’t dare to speak out her name.

Even if everyone is supposed to be asleep, he didn’t dare to speak out her name, even though he so desperately wanted to. Katerina. For four years and three months he hadn’t heard a single thing about and from her. He had accepted her wish and let her be, hoping that one day she would forgive him.

Sure, the message did nowhere mention her name. Nevertheless he was certain that it was her. Not only because she likes to leave cryptic messages, but also because he knew exactly what place she was referring to. It can only be her.

His Katerina.

He couldn’t help but starting to picture her. Her warm brown eyes, her beautiful laugh, her rich brown curls. For the first time in years when he was thinking of her, he wasn’t haunted by the hatred and disappointment she held for him or by the pain he had caused her. No, all he could imagine was her being happy to see him or rather, her wanting to see him. He didn’t know for sure if she is going to forgive him, if she is going to give him another chance. Given by the location she had chosen, however, he was certain she wouldn’t try to stake him. Although he had to be careful to not turn too hopeful. After all, Katerina always managed to surprise him.

His fingertips caressed the touchscreen and for one moment he was tempted to just call her. Finally having the chance to hear her voice again. She wouldn’t like it – if she had had a desire to talk to him, she would have called. He has to be patient. What are another three weeks? Three weeks are nothing compared to his lifespan, compared to how long he has already waited for her.

He re-read the message again before finally putting his phone away. The initial nervousness has turned into some other kind of feeling. Anticipation, longing and happiness. It is childish to describe it as having these famous butterflies in his stomach, but the sensation of meeting her again, of her actually wanting to see him was overwhelming. He found himself smiling, feeling much lighter. It was like one of those heavy things which used to burden him has vanished.

He stood up and placed the book he wanted to read back into his bookshelf. His concentration is gone and it would have been a shame to just skip-read a good book. Instead, he grabbed another book and opened it on a certain page. That’s where he had kept the only picture he has in possession of them. Safe and unseen for others, only for him to know. His smile grew brighter when he looked at it, at them. Soon enough she will grace his presence again and this time he won’t make a mistake. He won’t hold back how much she means to him, how much he loves her if she let’s him show his affection. He will not lose her again. If she is willing to give him another chance, he will try everything to make her happy.

He carefully closed the book with the picture inside of it, placed it back and starting to hum a little melody. His gaze wandered to the piano in his room, the one he intented to keep safe from Niklaus’s rage because the piano down the hall tends to get destroyed. He wanted to play it, wanted to fill the compound with music. However, he hesitated. Being very well aware of the fact that his sudden high mood would raise suspection, he figured it is the best if he expresses his good mood in a not so obvious way. He reminded himself that he needed to be careful.

Just as he had that thought, he heard steps, soft voices from below. How much time has passed? With a look on his watch he saw that it was already 7am. By now, he should be downstairs, helping his sister with Hope’s breakfast. A heavy sign escaped his lips as he tried to hide his feelings and returning to a calm, controlled appereance. Even though Rebekah knows about his relationship with Katerina and his longing regarding her, it’s better to not let anyone know. His sister would never tell anyone about it, especially not Niklaus, but it’s better to not let anyone have a bargaining chip over him. Things can get heated in this house and sometimes it is possible that things are said out of anger. He wouldn’t want to risk it.

Putting on a straight face, he left his room and went downstairs.

„Good morning Elijah“ Rebekah greeted him and let her brother kiss her cheek shorly before he placed a kiss on Hope’s forehead.

„Good morning sister.“

She watched him leaning on the door frame after he had greeted them. She didn’t mind his presence and continued to watch Hope eating her breakfast. It’s unbelievable how time flies. Elijah watched for a while, placing his hands in his pockets.

„Do you know where Niklaus is?“ he asked, causing Rebekah to lift her gaze.

„He talked about getting some paint and brushes. Apparently he wants to show Hope how to draw.“ she shrugged,

„But don’t ask me where he went to. Why?“

Nik seemed to be in a fantastic mood, so it’s better to let him do whatever he wanted to do. In addition, she thinks it’s actually cute that Nik wanted to bond with his daughter over a peaceful thing. He had changed ever since Hope was born, even though that doesn’t mean he will not loose his temper if he sees so fit.

„Where were you anyway? Don’t tell me you overslept.“

The thought was rather amusing, given the fact that Elijah is as punctual as a clock. When Hope has finished her breakfast, she took the plate and the child’s cutlery and put it in the sink. One of the maids will clean it.

„I received a call coming from my company in NYC. They required my presence for a few days in three weeks.“ he answered calmly.

A lie, but it was necessary. He needed an excuse to go away for a few day without anyone doubting his agenda.

„Your company. Yeah, I remember. What is your company doing again?“ she asked incidentally, ripping of a grape and placing it in her mouth.

„They are involved in health system, working closely together with hospitals and-“

„Didn’t know you have an interest in health care. That’s odd for a vampire.“ but who knows, perhaps her brother has a hidden talent?

Doctor Mikaelson had a nice ring. Not that she couldn’t understand it, given she had worked as a nurse during World War I.

„Contrary to popular belief, I don’t invest all of my money into my suits.“ a little smile played along his lips.

He values human life and didn’t mind giving money to hospitals and other charitys. Perhaps it’s questionable for a vampire to do such thing, but he never intended to be a monster. In addition, he had enough money, why not spend it on something good?

„Ah, really? I think your wardrobe is more expensive than mine“ she looked up and down her brother and shook her head, not understanding why a suit can cost so much.

Okay, the same can said about handbags.

„Anyway, can you have an eye on Hope?“ she asked, because she had to take care of a few things and now Elijah was there, he can make sure their niece is safe and sound. Not going to imagine what would happen if Hope gets hurt or something else.

„I’d love to“ he smiled at his sister and watched her heading upstairs, before he took a few steps towards his niece.

„What would you like to do, Hope? Shall I search for your pencils?“

He never thought he find himself on the floor some day, ruining his suit with felt pens. Or rather, let Hope ruin it. Nevertheless it happened already more than once and he didn’t mind it. He'd gladly sacrifice a few dress slacks or shirts. Hope is a gift for this family and he will be forever thankful for the effect she had on him, on Niklaus and on the family.

However, Hope seemed to have something else in mind.

„Can you play something?“ she asked and smiled at him.

„Of course, darling niece.“

He helped her get down of her chair before he sat down on the piano which was standing in the entrance hall – the one which had to be replaced every now and then because it got damaged. His fingertips caressed the smooth surface of the piano keys and he couldn't help but smile because just a few moments ago, all he wanted was to fill the house with music and now he actually had the possibility to do that without anyone doubting his intention behind it.

He began playing shortly after, choosing to play Shastakovitch Waltz No. 2 but in a light, more alive version - a happy one. His finger flew over the keyes, letting the melody flow through the room. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to get carried away for a bit. Only for a few seconds of course, because he couldn't allow himself getting too distracted. Instead, he watched Hope; because he didn't had to watch the keys or sheets of music. He had the notes memorized. When he finished, he was having a huge smile on his lips.

A smile Hope noticed.

„Are you happy?“ she asked softly, because it's actually rare to see her uncle looking like he’s happy and loosended.

„Yes, I am“

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`·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.·  Three Weeks later `·.¸¸.·´´¯`··._.·

There is only a slight breeze, playing with her curls as she was standing on top of a terrace, her hands gripping the railing tightly. She wondered if it has been a good idea. Right now, she doubted it. Yes, she had been excited to see him again. But back then, there was literally an ocean between them and she hadn't been sure if he has even gotten her message. She still didn't know if he had gotten her message and if he even wanted to see her, but she was on the rendezvous point. Waiting. Trying to enjoy the sight over New York City. Although that's almost impossible because she is so nervous. Like mentioned before, there's a difference between having an ocean between them or meeting him in person in less than ten minutes.

Four years have passed, four years since she has last seen him and has basically told him to leave her alone. Four years can be long, even for a vampire - it's possible that he had moved on. It's possible that he has devoted himself completely to his family by now - without even having the possibility nor time for meeting her. She didn't know what she should expect, if she should be glad if he won't show up. It would probably save her future problems. Nevertheless she hoped he would want to see her. She had to ease her mind or she will continue to get bothered by illusions of him. She wanted to be free and missing him is not a sign of freedom.

Her grip around the railing steadied even more as she closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath. Since when is Katherine Pierce nervous when she is going to meet a man? The only difference is that he isn't just any man, he is Elijah. Elijah whose fault it was in the first place that she decided to leave the continent and come back four years later - which actually didn't make it any better. The only thought which actually was able to calm her was that she is the one who is in control.

They'll be meeting on her terms and she wasn't dependent on him. Interestingly, it is the other way round this time. She only needed to talk to him and then decide if she can turn the odd feeling of missing him into something else. Elijah, however, is hoping for her forgiveness. No matter how much time has passed and if he still cared about her or not, if he wanted someone's forgiveness he'll try to do his best to get it. She knew he liked to burden himself with things and won't stop until he'll think he redeemed himself. After all, that's the only reason why he continues to stay at Klaus' side.

Five minutes. Time seemed to flow. Her heartbeat increased. She didn't like the feeling deep down which was trying to fight it's way to the surface. She was nervous and excited, there was no way in denying that. However, there is also a part in her which hopes for and seeks his presence. A part of her which wanted to be close to him, wanted to smell him, touch him. A part of her which wanted to claim him as hers. Because deep down, she still loves him. No matter how much she's trying to fight that feeling or telling herself he didn't deserve any of her feelings.

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Elijah has had enough time to organize things - one of the many things he had always admired was Katerina's farsightedness. It would have been difficult if she had asked him to meet her in a day, but she gave him three weeks, enough time to plan his little trip to New York City under the cover of having to attend a business meeting with one of his companys. He had tried his best to cover up his brightened mood in the past three weeks, in which he was successful in doing so. Only his niece seemed to see past the fascade he was putting up, but quite fortunately she didn't sell him out.

He had left New Orleans one day before the meeting and drove straight to NYC. He could have chosen a flight, but he decided it was the best if he could concentrate on something else, if he hasn’t too much time to think. He still didn't know why she wished to meet him, she was barely a person who reached out to someone. Naturally, he hoped the best. He also hoped he hasn't misinterpreted the message - he had been haunted by her for the past years which had lead into seeing things which aren't really there. Or rather, it lead into seeing Katerina even though there was no chance she'll be wandering through the streets of New Orleans. He was afraid that his mind had played a terrible trick with him, but the message was still there the day after having received it and the day after and so on.

Despite having had the pleasure of having a restful sleep in the last three weeks, he couldn't sleep at all the night before meeting her. His mind wandered off a thousand times, thinking of all the possible scenarios. He had made terrible mistakes in the past, especially if it came to Katerina. Perhaps this is going to be the last chance to make things right. He mentally prepared speeches and apologies until he finally had fallen asleep.

The next day has been stressful, mentally exhausting. She wanted to meet him at 8pm and he had to kill time until the evening. Unfortunately, killing time seemed to be impossible. He couldn't concentrate on a book, he couldn't talk to his siblings, he didn't dare to get lost into another activity, fearing he might forget time. Usually he had a lot of work to do, it's rare for him to actually have the luxory to have free-time. And yet he wished he could drown himself in work, because it would stop him from counting down the hours until he'll see her again.

A part of him was scared she might have reconsidered her choice in wanting to meet with him. A part of him already regretted his decision of not replying to her message. Not that he hadn't wanted to. However, that's the way how they had dealt with it in past. silent assent. He didn't know how often he had smoothened his suit or played with his cuff links the hour before he finally decided to leave his hotel room in order to get to the location. It's a blessing that he always invested in quality, otherwise he would have probably torn out his cuff links by now.

Usually, he likes to arrive a tad tardy, making sure the attention is on him. What did Rebekah called it? A dramatic entrance? Nevertheless he wanted to make sure he won't let Katerina wait. Furthermore, he didn't want to have to wait any longer either. He wanted, no, he needed to see her. When he arrived at the building on whose roof terrace she is going to wait for him, he'll took a moment for himself. It didn't happen often that he feels something like excitement, yet that is exactly what he felt in that moment. He - a man of one thousand years - felt excited because he is going to meet with a girl. And moreover, he wasn't only filled with excitement, but also with a tad of fear, because he did not know what will expect him.

He let his hand glide across his tie, smoothing it before he easily entered the building and then the elevator which will bring him to the penthouse. While the elevator set itself in motion, Elijah looked at the mirrored walls and watched himself. He looked calm and he was very glad that he had mastered the art of suppressing his emotions to the surrounding. Otherwise the entire world could see how nervous he actually was.

The elevator moved too slow and yet too fast at the same time. Nevertheless he didn’t hesitate to leave the elevator once it has reached it’s destination. Again, he quickly and easily entered the access to the penthouse, albeit it wasn’t that difficult as the door was not locked. There was a part of him wondering why that is - that part, however, was not big enough to distract him from what is going to come. He only assumed that Katerina had already arrived, given the fact he literally had free access. He quickly crossed the luxurious apartment, his eyes set on the open french doors. Light white curtains danced in the slight breeze and the starting setting sun set everything in a golden color. He hesitated for a moment and took in a deep breath.

That’s the border that separates him from meeting her, seeing her again. Although he wasn’t able to see her yet because of the large size of the terrace, he could feel her presence. She’s here, waiting. For him. He glanced at his watch, he’s right on time. Another deep breath, smoothing his tie again and then he crossed the doorstep and entered the roof terrace.

Colorful wildflowers bent a little with the wind, the roses which covered the steel pavillion in the middle of the terrace bloomed. Everything was quiet with the expection of the soft sound of a wind chime. He followed one of the pathes between the flower beds, being instinctively drawn to a certain spot in the corner of the terrace where one has a beautiful overview over the city. Not long until he finally saw her. Katerina. He blinked, making sure his eyes really saw the truth, making sure she is not something his mind had made up to fool him. No, this was reality.

The breeze played with her long dark curls and even though he only saw her backside, she was exactly as he remembered her. Her style hadn't changed, wearing high heels and without a doubt expensive, form fitting clothes. Elijah was certain she knew he had arrived, yet she didn't turn around so he decided to stop a few feet behind her, his gaze laying on her exquisite frame in a gentleman like manner. He couldn't help but smile, his eyes lighted up, even though he tried to appear calm, collected even. He yearned to address her, letting his tongue curl around her beautiful name. Katerina.

He hesitated, however, remembering her anger the last time he had called her Katerina. She forbade him to do so and even though he refuses to call her Katherine, he will not provoke her. Nevertheless he didn't like the thought of addressing her by the anglo version she had chosen as a name. He simply refuses to do so.

Now he had to be careful, almost sensitive with his following words. He had to wait and see in what mood she was, had to figure out the reason for their meeting. He remembered her message, her words. ‘It took some time but I’m ready now.' She had never said anything about being ready to forgive him, even though he hoped that this was the reason why she wanted to see him. On the other hand it was within the realm of possibility that she is just ready to throw him over the railing. He'd deserve it, but he prefers the first option.

"It's an interesting place you have chosen for a meeting."

▬▬

Hyper sensitive hearing had noticed him before he even had set a foot into the apartment. She had heard the elevator moving, had heard the soft 'bing' when the elevator had stopped and opened its doors. Katherine hadn't moved, half expecting him to vamp speed towards her, being almost certain he'd know exactly where she could be to found. Nevertheless he didn’t do it, even though that'd be typcially Elijah. He took a liking into appearing unexpected and out of nowhere. But this time he took his time. Her entire senses were fixed on him, she could hear every one of his slow steps. The closer he got, the more her heart seemed to be jumping out of her chest. He was really there, he really came! Damn it, she thought she was more prepared.

She heard him halting, now almost feeling his presence even though she was certain he was still out of reach. Katherine took a deep breath upon hearing his words, clearly noticing that he remembers everything which had happened here. He could not have forgotten about the history of this place, what it had meant for them, otherwise he wouldn't be here. After all, she hadn't texted him an address or the name of this place. No, it had been up to him to remember what she had meant, to remember their past. And he did - she took that as a good sign. It actually made her smile a bit - what a good thing he couldn't see it.

However, it didn't help with her nervousness. She took another deep breath, closing her eyes shut for a second before she slowly turned around and finally faced him. Of course he was wearing a suit, she would expect nothing less - she'd probably be alarmed if he wore something else. The darkblue color suited him, but it's no secret he had an impeccable taste.

"Elijah" she greeted him calmly, trying to not show any emotion.

She had noticed he hadn't addressed her yet, something which didn't happen often. She knew he liked her name - Katerina not Katherine - and he preferred to address someone with their name. This time, however, he chose not do but she knew it had a reason. Elijah never did anything without having a reason. She took a step forward, away from the railing in order to give herself more room. Even though she still made sure there was enough space between them.

"It really is an interesting place with a lot of history, don't you agree?"

She asked him with the slight tilt of her head, watching him attentively while she waited for a reaction.

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He will probably never be not amazed by her uncompareable beauty and for a moment, he was truly immobilized. It seemed like time stood still the moment she decided to turn around. He felt himself reminded of the first time he had the pleasure to lay his gaze on her beautiful face in 1492. Nothing has changed, her enchanting beauty is still the same, causing him to stop breathing for a moment. The corner of his mouth lifted up into a smile, even though he didn’t intend to. Once more he realized the effect she had on him, once more he realized how lucky he had been to be with her and how foolishly he had thrown it away.

There was nothing hateful in her features, nothing scared or fearful when she finally turned around. His gaze immediately landed on her face, looking into her deep brown eyes. If there had been any form of negative feelings towards him, her eyes would have shown them. Katerina is in some aspects like him, she’s careful with her feelings. But unlike him she didn’t hesitate to show feelings if she saw so fit. She might fool others with words or even actions, but her eyes mostly held the truth. Some things can not be faked and the warmth in her eyes is one of those things.

It relieved him to some part, knowing that she didn't seem to intend to throw him down the building, that his nightmares didn't seem to come true. He remembered those dreams all to well, her ice cold stare, her words - everything this dream vision of her had said was true, nevertheless it hadn't been pleasant.

"How could I ever forget about the days we have spent here?" he questioned softly, now not caring about the tiny smile on his lips.

"It was just a surprise you picked out this place out of all possibilities."

Yes, he still hoped there was a meaning behind her choice. He paused for a moment, his gaze never breaking the eye contact, taking in everything of her.

"You look gorgeous." he didn't try to compliment her, even though she'd deserve all the compliments in the world.

His words were a mere statement because she absolutely did look fabulous, healthy. Her skin seemed to glow even more and that's not because of the setting sun. Her hair looked so soft he wanted to touch it, play with one of her thick curls. He was tempted to just reach out for her, pull her close and wrap his arms around her - even if it was for just one last time. Words can not explain how dearly he had missed her, how he had yearned to be reunited with her. Of course he didn't do it, it would earn him a -deserved- slap and moreover he would never disrespect a woman.

▬▬

She ignored his compliment, being well aware that he meant what he had said. He isn't one to compliment women just like that. But just because she was ignoring it, didn't mean she won't appreciate it. It actually helped her to relax a little bit and her nervousness faded away. Katherine Pierce is back!

"I have to admit I wasn't certain you would remember it. It's indisputable a beautiful place, so peaceful and unexpected in a city like New York. But people tend to forget things which are connected to something they consider as foolish, if they believe the person with whom those memories are connected to has deceived them."

A swipe? Perhaps. She paused because she knew too well that he felt like a fool for loving her, that he thought she had played him. He hadn't believed her, no matter if he had been afraid of the feelings he had for her or not.

Her words probably made it clear she is still hurt, but there is a different meaning behind them as well. She wanted to forgive him, but she didn't want to show weakness. She doesn't know what had happened in the last four years since the last time she had seen him, if he had forgotten about her and just came here out of conscientiousness, if he had found someone new. She wanted to make sure he deserved her forgiveness. His reaction to her statement would tell her. 

Elijah tore his gaze away and focused his vision on a few tiny red flowers which are gently swaying in the breezes. His siblings often called him foolish, sometimes even pathetic for having hope, for never giving up, for unconditionally caring about the people he holds dear.

And yet that was exactly what he had not done with her. He gave her up, pushed her away, even made her fear him again. He had hurt her. He only saw the worst in her, the woman who would do anything to get what she wants, who manipulates, uses and deceives. There had been a timespan where he had fallen for the lies, the ones which had been told him and the ones he had told himself. Like a coward he had not faced the feelings he had for her after he finally had realized that she indeed loved him. He had chosen the easiest way for him, believing it would be better for Katerina but in reality he just had been afraid, had not considered what his actions would do to her. How can he call himself a man if that's how he deals with problems and difficulties?

He was in fact a foolish man for so many reasons, especially when it came to her. His wrongdoings exceed the fair value of all the good things which he could offer and he once again asked himself, why she had chosen him in the first place. He had failed her multiple times, treated her like an enemy. He was part of the reason why Katerina had been destroyed, why she lived in current fear of a gruesome death. He had broken his promises of wanting to have a future with her, his promise to protect her, never let his family harm her ever again. He failed her in everything.

So yes, calling him foolish, even pathetic is justified. He deserved it and once again he wondered why she wanted to see him when he saw his actions as unforgiveable. Of course he still had hope even though he saw no reason why Katerina should forgive him. A hopeful fool is what Niklaus often called him. And perhaps his brother has been right this time.

"I could never forget it, neither the good nor the bad things." he admitted, making it clear he will never forget anything which had something to do with her.

On the contrary, he clung to those memories. His finger caressed the red blossoms and a deep sigh escaped his lips.

"I fear calling me foolish is only justified and well deserved." he raised his vision, his gaze landing on her face. "I am deeply sorry for everything which has happened. It was not your fault but mine."

His mouth opened again but closed a few moments later when no sound left. He wanted to tell her what a stupid fool he had been, wanted to tell her how much he had missed her, how sorry he was. But he couldn’t. It felt like he had lost the ability to speak.

He shook his head, now letting his vision roam over the roof terrace and the beautiful garden. He wanted to, needed to apologize, but he couldn't do it properly if he didn't know how to address her. His gaze returned to Katerina once again.

"May I ask for permission to address you by your given name?"

He asked formally, making it clear he respected her wish to not call her Katerina again. He hadn't had forgotten any of her words, no matter how much time has passed.

His words calmed her down, let her worries fade. Apparently he hadn't forgotten about her. There's no need to mistrust his words, Elijah is not a liar when it came to something like this. Nevertheless she expected more, anything. But nothing left his mouth and that seemed to surprise him as well. When he asked for her permission to call her Katerina, Katherine raised an eyebrow, always amazed by his choice of words. Civility suits him, she would expect nothing less, even though it came as a surprise he actually remembered her forbiddance to call her Katerina again. A proof he really meant what he said.

Given him the permission to call her Katerina again wasn't difficult, she had already made up her mind. Truth is, she missed him calling her by her birth name. She liked the way he says it, liked the way he put so much warmth and love in it. Nevertheless she took her time, not allowing him immediately to call her Katerina. Yes, she had already decided that she wants him to call her Katerina again, but he didn't have to know this. She didn't want to look desperate or look like she has waited for him to say it again. He had to earn that privilege and he did so by accepting her wishes of letting her go and not calling her that name again.

"I am not used to be given a choice. Usually you call me the way you want it." she stated, watching him attentively.

His gaze laid on her, waiting for her to answer his question. She could tell he was interested in getting a honest permission.

"I allow you to call me by my birth name, in private." it was barely there, but she noticed the tiny, relieved smile on Elijah's lips.

Elijah took it as a good sign Katerina gave her permission. It didn't only relieved him, it also allowed him to apologize properly. An apology can’t be taken as serious if it's not addressed directly to the receiver.

"Katerina"

His tongue curled around her name and he enjoyed the feeling of her name on his tongue. His eyes are on her, looking into her chocolate brown hues.

"Katerina, I fear apologizes won't make up for the pain I have caused."

He had at least ten speeches prepared but now that he needed them, not one of them seems to be fitting. He thinks of himself to be good with words, yet nothing can express his sorrow, his deep regret. Moreover, his thoughts seemed to be swept away. Everything he had prepared was gone, was lost the longer he looked into her eyes.

Suddenly he had the feeling it is probably the best thing which could have happen to him. He would be free to express his true feelings, let his intuition and instincts speak.

"Nontheless I do want to apologize.” at first, he started hesitantly 

“I apologize for abandoning you when you needed me, I apologize for betraying you and breaking my word I gave you. I apologize for putting you through so much pain. I apologize for my childish behavior, for not taking the time to hear your side. I apologize for my foolish assumptions, I apologize for not being honest with you. I apologize for my weakness and my blindness, for my ignorance."

He apologized loudly and clearly, making it clear he meant every syllable, every letter. Every words came from the depth of his heart and presented the truth. But he wasn't done yet, his misdeeds are far worse, more wide-ranging.

"I am terrible sorry for the role I had in your story. The regret I hold for the dark doings which were commited against you by my brother will never go away. I apologize for not being able to stop him, I apologize for all the years you had to live in terror. I apologize for my inactivity, for not finding a better way to protect you, to save you. I apologize for my blind loyalty and obedience. I apologize for my silence, I should have never allowed it."

He had never apologized for these things before, at least not that directly. Of course he had been sorry for all the things which have happened to her, for all the things he and Niklaus had done to her. However, they had both kept quiet about this the last time they were together, an extensively apology never seemed to fit. The relationship between them had developed slowly, it had started as a buisness-case and a win-win-situation for both and had developed into genuine feelings.

But it was long overdue. He owed her an apology - more than one apology. And for once, the calm, stoic Elijah was gone, has vanished, that version was replaced by a compassionate one. Emotions are gathering in him, letting his hands shake in the progress. All the guilt, all his wrongdoings, all the love he holds for her is overpowering him. Tears gather in his eyes and he had to clear his throat before he was able to continue.

A thousand years of never putting himself first, of dedicating every second to his family; a thousand years of hardly letting emotions in, of hardly letting anyone in. Fivehundred years of wondering what it would be like to be given the chance of finding happiness with Katerina, fivehundred years of having the knowledge there had been someone who made him feel, care enough. A short time of actual happiness and love. And then he lightly threw everything away because of his mistaken assumptions, because of his own fear. For four years and three months he had to live with his guilt, with this terrible mistake and the realization that she had indeed truly loved him. Four years and three months with having to endure the longing, the pain which came close to torture because of the increased senses of a vampire, which only made it worse because he was more than just an ordinary vampire. It finally takes its toll.

"I do not deserve your forgiveness, I am beyond far from deserving any part of you." his voice wasn't as loud and clear as it had been before, in fact his voice is shaky.

"My decisions are not always comprehensible and sometimes I choose the wrong path. I have chosen the wrong path with you. I should have never let you go. I- I love you, Katerina." he didn't break the eye contact, instead he got lost in her deep-brown eyes.

The last time he had admitted his love for her, the last time he said those three words to her was when they had been here, in this penthouse before their ways had separated and Katerina went to search for the cure. 

"You made me feel, believe in love again. With you I felt so... alive, I could be myself. You made me so vulnerable, you opened my heart and got inside me...you messed me up. But I wouldn't want to give up that feeling you gave me for anything in the world,  I- I don't want to lose you again."

A small tear found its way down his cheek, but he couldn't care less. What kind of man can really call himself a man if he is afraid of showing emotions? He is very well aware of the fact he gave her all the power over him right now, a power with the possibility to hurt him like nothing else by admitting his feelings to her. He swallowed, his gaze still focused on her face, on the warm expression.

"Katerina, I am not worth your forgiveness or love, nontheless I am a selfish man and I hope I will gain it back eventually if you see so fit."

And with those words, he slowly reached out his hand for her, hoping she will take it, give him another chance to make things right.

▬▬

Katherine is shocked by his words, her mouth opened and closed, searching for words. Her heart skipped a beat, even more than just one. Yes, she had a reason when she asked him to meet her, but she hadn't expected this. Elijah admitting a mistake is rare, but Elijah apologizing, showing what he feels deep inside under his calm and controlled exterior is almost impossible.

And it touched her. Touched her deep in her soul. Elijah’s love is a pure one, a genuine one. For a vampire, every emotion is heightened, for an Original it must be almost overwhelming. And yet he decided to confess his love, confess his feelings as well as confess his sins. She knows about the impact, can understand what he must feel like.

"Elijah..." she whispered, tilting her head while never letting him out of her sight.

She had never seen him this vulnerable and he had never been that open before. Her heart ached as she recalled every one of his words.

No one has ever apologized to her before. No one had cared before. Everyone seems to believe she deserved everything which had happened to her, everyone seemed to believe she doesn't care about anyone but herself, that she's not capable of feelings, of love. But Elijah did. He believed she deserved an apology.

They didn’t start this century on the best terms, she wouldn’t forget the fact he had compelled her to stay in a tomb and threatened her to hand her over to Klaus. Today she knows he didn’t intended to hand her over to Klaus, he did it because he wanted to punish her for running. Not because she wanted to escape Klaus, no, Elijah did it because he was hurt. He was hurt she hadn’t had faith in him and his efforts to find a way to save her.

But despite their differences he agreed to help her. He chose to listen to her when she asked for his help. She can remember too well how scared she was to make that step. But if one wanted to make a deal with the Mikaelsons, it is the safest option to make a deal with Elijah. They had worked together and eventually developed feelings, which came surprisingly. After all the years she had feared him and Klaus, she had forgotten that she had once thought of Elijah as a very charming, obliging and attentive man. She had liked to be around him and yes, she had developed a soft spot for him back then. What she hadn’t known was the fact Elijah had fallen in love with her as well - it came unexpected because he had made it clear that he didn’t believe in love, so she had interpreted his attention as an act of kindness. He had said it himself that he took pity on her looking lonely in the castle.

She stepped closer, resisting the urge to caress his cheek. The absolute broken look on his face, his obvious pain triggered something in her, it saddened her. There had been a time where she would have gloated about it out of hurt feelings, but all it caused now was pain.

Katherine didn’t know what to say, he had already said more than she had expected, more than she had ever dreamed off. He had admitted his feelings, had declared his love for her.

And it meant something. Actually, it meant a lot to her. He gave her a second chance when no one else had. He didn’t saw her as the selfish, manipulative and ice-cold bitch everyone else sees in her, he saw her as a person, someone worth loving. Elijah believed in her, cared for her and revived something she thought of having lost a long time ago: being able to put faith and trust into a person. She has never, not at any point, faked her feelings for him.

That they even came this far is almost impossible. For her, it’s not easy to forgive the things he has done and there was a time when she had been so angry at his recent actions that she wanted to see the world burn. But there is a reason why she chose to message him, why she wanted to see him. The reason why she messaged him is because she has made up her mind. It took a lot of time, but she found herself being able to forgive him.

She would say she has had a diversified and fun life in the past four years but eventually it didn’t fill the hole anymore. When Elijah left, he left a hole in her heart. She had done everything to ignore it, because she didn’t want him in her life anymore. She burnt everything she had of him, left the country and the continent, started a new life, tried new things and enjoyed herself. But eventually all those things couldn’t conceal the fact that she still loves him. She loved him and she hates it because it’s so pathetic. She would love to admit this to him, would love to confess her feelings but at the same time she just couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not after everything which has happened. She needed time, had to see what the future holds for them. If he finally chooses her or -at least- find a good solution for the situation.

Perhaps it’s stupid, but prevention is better than cure. Nevertheless she’ll hold his words in her heart, in her memory. It’s incredibly to know he still choose her, that he hadn’t replaced her like some others would have done. It touched her heart and it touched her soul.

Finally, she raised her hand and took his, his touch sending warm chills all over her body because it felt so good. Even more so, she longed for his touch, wanted to be in his arms. However, now was not the right time, she needed more security to truly enjoy it.

"You might not deserve my forgiveness now, but this time it is me who gives you another chance, the opportunity to re-earn my trust."

Her voice is soft, a whisper. She didn’t had to say he was forgiven, he’ll know. And he’ll also know her forgiveness doesn’t mean she’ll forget. No, she will never forget what happened. But her forgiveness meant something else: A chance to start new. A chance to prove himself. A chance for happiness.

Elijah smiled at her words, the words which managed to ease his mind, his heart. A second chance, that’s all he had hoped for.

His thumb softly and carefully caressed the back of her hand, making sure she wants his touch.

“I promise you, Katerina, I’ll prove my worth. As long as you want to have me, I will never leave you again.” he is serious with his words.

He will never leave her again. She is the woman who makes him happy, the woman he loves. And perhaps - for the first time - he needs to be a selfish man in order to protect the things which are important to him, and only to him. He knew that loving someone gives them the power to destroy you and trusting them not do. He also knew that Katerina already held that much power over him. It is worth the risk.

The smile on Katerina’s lips filled him with happiness and he slowly lifted their hands up to his lips in order to press a soft kiss on the back of her hand just at the moment when the sun kissed the horizon goodbye and delicate fairy lights which covered the pavilion and the entire railing, as well as the ones which covered a part of the giant roof terrace, began to glow.

His eyes never left hers, entirely fascinated by the different shades of brown, as he spoke the following words.

“I love you, Katerina. Always and Forever.”

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A/N: This was chapter 9! I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I hope you liked the Reunion. The next Chapter will be about Elijah trying to prove himself. It will also have more information about the setting aka the penthouse with the giant roof terrace (did anyone recognize it?). I think the next Chapter will be a cute one. What would you like him to do? I already have a few things in my mind but I’m still curious about your thoughts.

I’m also curious about something else: Do you listen to the piano pieces Elijah plays on Youtube etc. or does it not matter to you if it is a certain piece?

If you like it, hit the ♥ - or come into my askbox, I’d love to hear your opinion. Your messages are also the thing which keeps me going.

[lycorogue]

Marinette’s Song: Chapter 2

You can read Chapter 1 here.

UPDATE (2/15/20): You can also now find this story over on AO3, on FFN, and on DA.

Summary: Whenever Luka creates music it affects people. He can’t handle having to hide his music anymore, and so he goes to the Tom & Sabine Charms and Potions shop for some help. Can Marinette’s witchcraft allow Luka to finally share his music with the world? Witch and Mythological Magic AU

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 10,943 Words This Chapter: 1324

Status: Completed; 7 chapters

Disclaimer: I wanted to anchor Marinette’s magic in Wiccan as opposed to “Hollywood witchcraft”, but I’m Christian. I tried to do my research, but I also know I’m taking a lot of creative liberties. If you notice any glaring misrepresentation of Wiccan, please let me know.

Luka regretted leaving his bike behind about four blocks into his run. He only managed to spur himself forward with the promise of two things: finding a way to dampen his power, and the prospect of seeing Marinette. She was one of Juleka's friends and classmates. A sweet girl that always treated his sister with kindness and appreciation. It kept Luka quite some time to officially meet her, due to the awkwardness even two years age difference caused when one was young. Once he did though?

His fingers twitched as if he were playing strings on his guitar. He concentrated on his breathing, pushing himself to run faster; fast enough that he had no spare breath to hum, no matter how many notes sang in his head whenever he thought of Marinette.

Focus on a solution instead, he reminded himself. Any way to suppress this curse has to be priority.

It kept him nearly ten minutes, but soon the Place des Vosges came into view. Shortly after, the little charm shop at the end of the encasing terrace houses peeked out from behind the park fence. Tom & Sabine's Charms and Potions was probably the greatest magical establishment in all of Paris. The greatest one Luka knew of, anyway. It was pure luck that it happened to also be owned and run by Marinette's parents.

Either that, or perhaps Fate?

He skidded to a stop in front of the store's door, bracing himself against his knees as he took in a few panting breathes. Slowly raising his head, he looked through the glass storefront, and his lungs stilled. Leaning on the check-out counter as she doodled was Marinette, oblivious of Luka watching her from just outside her family's store.

She leaned heavily on her left arm, propping her head up as her right hand scribbled in a fury across the paper before her. The rest of the store was still. Even Marinette herself was like a statue, her eyes already so heavy lidded Luka barely noticed her blinking. Her hand, though, never paused as it danced across its canvas.

Luka no longer knew if his heart was pounding from his run, or from watching Marinette. His throat still burned, but his breathing evened out; mostly because it was hard to re-catch it. Notes buzzed loudly in his mind, frantically scrambling into the perfect formation to play out the aura that shone from Marinette. His fingers again twitched on their own as they bent to the guitar chords best fitting the melody singing inside him.

He needed to hear it; to make sure it truly was Marinette's music serenading him. Despite the fire smoldering behind his Adam's Apple, Luka softly hummed his Ballad of Marinette. It wasn't quite right, but the proper base was there. It was plucky, a little clumsy, but somehow moved gracefully, as if the clumsy bits were on purpose. It was strong, with powerful notes hummed loudly, but also held meek movements that were soft and sweet. It was simple enough to hum, but would be so much better once the true complexity could be played on his guitar.

Luka desperately wanted Marinette to hear it; to know how he saw her, and what he thought of her.

Behind him, a couple of kids squealed with delight as they sprinted down the sidewalk towards the park. There was the quickened pounding of their little feet, the high-pitched chime of their tiny laughs, and then the loud screech of tires skidding to a stop.

Luka whipped to his left. A car was partially in the intersection separating the little charms store and the park, barely stopped a meter from the four children who were carelessly still laughing as they played tag in the street. They didn't seem to even notice the car, despite the driver's window now down so she could shout at their obliviousness. The children ignored her, too drunk on the joy Luka poured into the world with his song.

Burning from guilt, Luka stumbled his way into the store, ringing the single bell that hung above the entrance.

“Luka?” Marinette was already on her feet, racing towards one of the store's side windows. “Is everything okay out there? I heard the car-”

“The kids are fine.” He wasn't sure if he was informing Marinette or reminding himself.

She pressed a hand to her heart, heaving out a sigh with closed eyes. “That's good to- Luka? Are you okay?” She jogged to his side, and rested a hand on his chest. Her eyebrows knitted together as her eyes scanned him. “You're shaking, and you look pale. The car didn't almost hit you, did it?”

“No, I-” His fingers twitched once more, so he calmed them by wrapping them around Marinette's hand. A soft blush stained her cheeks, and the world became alright again. “I'm better now that I've had a chance to talk to you,” he cooed.

Marinette whipped her hand away and took a step back, her blush deepening as she broke eye contact. A hint of a smile teased at her lips, and her arm jerked towards her ear so she could play with her crimson studded earring.

Luka didn't bother fighting against the smile stretching across his own face. He kept his distance though, not wanting to rattle her any further.

Marinette cleared her throat, and shook her head to help clear that too. “Good. I'm glad you're okay. Is- Was that why you came here? To, uh, to talk to me?”

Luka's smile vanished. “Actually, no. Well, maybe yes? I was looking for something that would negate hereditary magic, and I hoped you might be able to help.”

“Hereditary magic?” Marinette's eyes grew wider each time she frantically blinked at him. “You have hereditary magic?”

Luka nodded.

“Juleka too?”

Nod.

“Your mom? Or was it inherited from your dad's side? Oh!” Marinette slammed both hands into her mouth to shut herself up. Slowly lowering her hands back down so her lips were just barely visible, she softly spoke. “S-sorry. I know you two don't really talk about him. I didn't mean to bring up a sore subject, I just-”

Luka held up a hand to stop her apologizing. “It's alright. I know you need to know so you can better find a solution for me. It's alright. I'm not offended. Truth is, we're not entirely sure who we inherited it from. My mom seems to know a lot about it, but doesn't have our power. So we're not sure if it came from our dad, or if it just skipped a generation. Maybe both parents had really thin bloodlines, but combined it was enough for a power resurgence?”

“Like a non-dominant gene activating? Yeah, I can see that being possible. Come in, let's figure this out.” Marinette started walking towards the back of the little shop and wove for him to follow. She laced around the check-out counter and snaked towards the back room. Luka stopped at the register, assuming she had to fetch something and then return.

While he waited, he took in the doodle Marinette was so fixated on a few minutes before. It was a cocktail dress design: thin straps, squared neckline, and close-fitted bodice that then flared at the hips. The design also had sleeve fingerless-gloves that attached at the middle fingers, and matching thigh-high stockings. Also included were designs for round-toe heels and a headband with flowers and a ribbon bow down the one side. Luka admired the skill Marinette had in design, and pictured her wearing the outfit. Maybe on a date.

Realizing Luka wasn't behind her, Marinette jogged back, and grabbed his hand to tug him behind the counter. Her hand never left his as she led him through the dark curtain separating the back room from the rest of the store.

And the whole time, Luka's heart belted out Marinette's song.

Read Chapter 3

@discoveringmiraculouswriters​

[alexandrasavior]

Alexandra Savior AMA !!

COMING IN HOT BITCHES!!!!

Hi Alex! How much of the instrumentation was figured out before heading into the studio? Did you just bring in bare minimum demos and then fleshed them out in the studio? Or did you have most of it prepared and just recorded it? I really loved the album by the way!

Thank you! It was different for each track. A lot of the songs I had full fleshed demos that my band and I had recorded in Portland, and Sam Cohen and I worked around those. Some of the tracks like "But You" I had some Garage band demos I made on my own that we worked around, and some of the tracks like "Soft Currents" were just raw iPhone recordings of me playing and singing, and Sam and I worked out together in the studio.

Your music has some really interesting chord progressions and melodic phrases. To what extent do you consciously apply music theory to your songwriting, and how much just comes naturally from ear and instinct?

To no extent :/ I am not super skilled in music theory, I just play around until it seems like it makes sense to me

You described your desire for Belladonna of Sadness to sound "murderous", and I thought that darkness and dangerous feeling really shone through. What adjectives would you powerfully ascribe to your sophomore album? What tonal differences were important to you while recording?

I like this question! hmmmmmm. “honest"

I'm pretty new to your music, but, everyday I can't stop myself from liking it more. My two current favorite songs are “The Phantom” and “Bad Disease”. I've seen that many people prefer other songs from the album, so that made me think. What is your personal favorite song from your new album? Thanks!

“But You”!

Hypothetical: You’re making a new album and need to assemble your dream band. Anyone dead/alive. Who are you choosing?

My best friend Emma, my boyfriend, Mel, and like my therapist

Is there anything that you do in terms of practice when it comes to vocals/guitar/songwriting to improve yourself? Interested to hear

Try to play everyday

I'd love to know if you've got any cool, hidden talents that you haven't shown in public. Also I badly want to know who's done the cover for both “Saving Grace” and “Crying All the Time”.

ME! I painted them

What are your tips for marketing your music and getting more people to stream/buy your music?

I am lucky because I have a team that guides me through social posts, and a publicist. But don't post pics of your butt

Your music and music videos have so many cinematic elements to them. Does an affinity for film influence your music? If so, do you have some favorite films you can mention?

yes! Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, Fargo, Daisies

I've seen a few people comparing your latest work with Lana del Rey's. Do you listen to her? Was she really an inspiration for the record?

I like Lana she's talented, I understand the comparison in some ways , people tend to compare things naturally. But, no she wasn't my personal inspiration in any conscious way

Did you make a conscious effort to distance yourself from the sound of Belladonna of Sadness with this new album?

No, I have gotten mixed feedback some people say its the exact same sound, some say it is different, I just created what came naturally to me and used sounds that I am personally drawn to.

If you were to try to make someone a fan of your music, but could only show them three of your songs, what songs would you show them?

oooooh! hmmmmm. “But You”, “Audeline”, “Crying All The Time”.

Excuse me Ms. Savior - I fell in love with your duet "We're Just Making It Worse" many moons ago. What can you tell us about that song?

Thanks! Well my homie Cameron Avery wrote that tune, he just asked me to sing on it and I was glad to!

What do you think was the biggest difference between writing The Archer and Belladonna of Sadness?

i was alone

What advice would you give to up and coming musicians in the LA scene? Any Dos or Don’ts? Thank you :)

Don’t be gross and creepy! Don't worry about that hipsta shit. Do be nice and make your own shit!

What is the most unusual thing that you do to help you write or to help you get some inspiration?

Stalk all my exes’ new gfs on insta and then eat an entire chocolate cake

Will we ever get to hear your version of “Miracle Aligner”?

probs not

When does the vinyl for The Archer ship? I am hoping to get one of you drawings with mine!

First batch tomorrow 1/17/2020. Second batch Tuesday 1/21/2020. Thank You!

I saw a clip from a concert you gave recently. It was you with a couple of bandmates singing something acapella. What's that song? Is it yours? It was gooorgeous. Any chance you're coming to Barcelona?

"The Oak and The Ash", an old celtic song. I will be playing Sala Nau May 13th!!!!!!!!

Can you talk about the differences in recording your first album while signed to a major label and this album while signed to a indie label? I know you’ve spoken about why you left Columbia, but I was wondering how your personal process differed this time around, especially with different resources and personnel?

Yeah it was a lot less pressure making this record, I had more say and more freedom of expression.

You said in an interview that you wrote the songs for The Archer on piano or guitar and brought them to the studio recorded on your phone. Would you ever consider releasing these as bonus tracks? 

I might ya! They’re probably a lot less interesting than you think

Do you have any tips on how to overcome writers block/find new ways to approach writing ? I've been struggling a bit lately... Have you been reading lately? If so, what books would you recommend ? :)

Just be kind to yourself, do what is natural, don't beat yourself up. I just re-read "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" by Otessa Moshfegh, now I am ready " Conversations With Friends" by Sally Rooney. I would recommend any Joan Didion, also I enjoy Salingers "Nine Stories"

This album feels a lot more personal than the first one. How would you say it compares in relation to how you expressed yourself as an artist?

I was very insecure while writing my first record, and I was co-writing so I used a lot of techniques to shelter my own opinions and feelings, in The Archer it was just me, so it was more of a journal entry than a big fancy record

Which artists did you grow up admiring, and inspired your style? Also, do you have any poetry recommendations, seeing how all your lyrics are poems in their own right?

hmmmm. ok Hilary Duff, Elvis, The White Stripes, Billie Holiday. Poetry: I don’t read much poetry but I like Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath

How did you feel when you found out “Risk” played on True Detective?

I cried

On Belladonna, what inspired the lyrics and melody for “Till You're Mine”? That song is always on repeat in my household.

Thanks! I would say my own insecurities and jealousy towards a specific woman in my life

Do you write the melodies as well as the lyrics or is it a collaborative effort?

For this record I wrote the melodies, lyrics, and chords for every song aside from "The Phantom" which was a collaboration with Sam Cohen.

What inspired you to make this new album?

I just make songs, and each song was inspired by something different, but mostly I needed to show people I WRITE MY SONGS

Do you have plans to sell more merch? I would really love to get my hands on signed stuff or one of your drawings/crafts.

yes workin' on merch now! <3

As a budding songwriter and musician myself is there any advice or wisdom you could pass on when it comes to making a career out of it?

I think writing as much as you can and trying to write honestly is important. I was lucky in a strange string of events that started my career, and every dream is different, but I suppose just keep writing and releasing your songs wherever you can

Often when I listen to music I tend to relate the song to places I've been to or places I'm at while listening. Is it the same for you when you write your songs? Do you think about a specific place for each song?

Yeah totally!

Would you ever be interested in collaborating with another artist on their record?

Yeah! Depends on who, I have always wanted to sing on a rap song.

Collab with Weyes Blood coming anytime soon?

i wish brah

Any tips on staying sane with dating apps?

don’t do dating apps

Romance is a topic which you touch upon in both of your albums. Do you have any words or phrases that have helped you through a difficult time, both in dealing with or exploring relationships past or present, if so what are they? What is your favorite set of lyrics ever, i.e. phrases etc.

"fuck hem he's a deck", "Kathy's Song" Simon and Garfunkel, "I Remember" Molly Drake

Do you use more real life experience or do you use more imagination/creativity when writing lyrics?

Depends how boring my personal life is at the time haha

What's your favorite Beatle, favorite Beatle album and favorite Beatle song?

Georgie boy <333333333

Are there any plans to record/release that “political song” with the violin that you played at Homiefest last year? For a third album maybe? Thanks, loved you since 2015 when I first heard that “Risk” demo for True Detective. The Archer is a masterpiece no bullshit.

maybe! lol

Where is the love for Chicago? How come we haven't had any shows yet?

Give me a break homie I don't plan this stuff! Would love to come to Chicago! It all depends on timing and $$$$

What was the most challenging song to write on this record?

maybe bad disease

Will there be more music videos?

I dont think so :/

I noticed for both of your releases, theres been a decent amount of time.. between when they were recorded and released. Have you found this frustrating more than anything or is it nice to have time to sit with the album?

Well, sometimes it is hard to move on and write more, with so much time between the final touches of the record and the actual release.... But, it ebs and flows and its out now so its no difference to me now

Who are some artists/bands that you personally enjoy listening to?

Jessica Pratt, The Jhamels, Molly Drake

You also seem like a prolific painter, who would you point to as inspiration/muse? My best guess would be Picasso.

Alice Neel 100%

When you feel like you’re stuck when you’re writing a song, what do you do to get around it?

I stop writing for a while, don't force it. Everyone's process is different so I try not to beat myself up too much about it

When Kevin Parker hit reddit someone asked him about if he can upload a new song and he did so... Can we hear a new song ?

If Kevin Parker jumped off a bridge WOULD YOU ?!

Who's your dream musical collab? If you were to make a soundtrack what director would you work with?

dream collab: Snoop Dogg, director: Quentin

Can you say a little bit about the creation of the album art? It's understated but there is definitely a mood there!

my dear friend Dana Trippe took the photos, and my dear friend Aaron Mitchell did the fonts

Noticed your music has a very “old horror movie/spaghetti western” vibe to them. Any films/soundtracks that inform your sound you’d recommend?

ooooh Anything Coen Brothers or Wes Anderson

How much was growing up in Portland an influence on your music?

I would say the rain had a lot to do with my melancholy, but also the music scene in Portland has always been very DIY and rock-based so “ guess that influenced me in some way.

What’s your favorite song of your’s lyrically and your favorite song to perform?

fave lyrically: Bad Disease, fave to perform: But You or Mystery Girl

The whole record was amazing but “Soft Currents” keyboards are really something else, are you planning to write more on the piano?

thank you! yes been writing a lot on the ole ivories

I love how a lot of your songs sound very cinematic - would you like to get into movie music in some capacity? Either scoring or soundtrack?

Awh hell yeuh

Is there a particular song that you're most proud of?

But YOu!

What would you say is your favorite guitar that you own and what is your dream guitar to own?

I am not much of a gear-head though I would love and old nylon string

Do you think that “Risk” will ever be made available on Spotify and Apple Music?

Unfortunately, because it was released on T-Bone Brunette's label, there was a legal situation that made me unable to release it separately. :/

Will you be making more of those amazingly weird embroidered underwear for your new tour? Obvs need some Savior swag on this tush.

I wish! I don’t have a sewing machine anymore but I will be selling my lil boxes online soon

Any chance for a show in Toronto? I'm a big fan, and I introduced my mom to your music and she absolutely loves you (her words) so I'd love to take her to one of your shows

hahah awh <3 None planned at the moment :(

What song on The Archer was a struggle to finish? Or were they all easy?

easy peasy lemon squeezy

Don't want to take away from your latest release (because it is an amazing album) but was there a reason you decided to not work with Alex Turner or James Ford for any of the new songs, writing or producing?

-__-

Since both your albums have been about relationships mostly, would you ever consider making a political song/album? What is your stance on that old debate?

I write what comes naturally to me

What should I name my snail stuffed animal?

gail

Why didn’t you get a proper promotional run from Columbia for Belladonna? It’s an amazing album but I just found out about you through The Archer (which is equally amazing).

I can't really say, but I don’t think I was ever gonna make the kind of $$$ Columbia wanted

Would you like to tour South America at some point in your career?

awh hell yeuh!

Is there any particular era/motive which inspires your music visuals (album covers, music videos)? All the best from Split, Croatia!

70s!

Based on your Spotify stats, what are the countries that listen to you the most?

IDK! France seems to be very supportive

Any artist that you like that you could recommend?

Jessica Pratt, Sudan Archives, Vagabon

What's your favorite thing to draw/paint?

women

Who is your favorite artist / what is your favorite album at the moment, and how would you say this impacted on how The Archer sounds? Also please come to the North of England 😂

I AM!!! CHECK MY TOUR SCHEDULE AND COME BB!! favorite album rn "The Colour Green" by Sibylle Baier

What’s playing in your head now?

the click clacking of a mac keyboard

How do you like your coffee?

a lil bit of almond milk

Will The Archer be getting a cd release?

no :(

That's all folks! Thank for all of the questions, and most of all thank you so much for listening to my songs, it is a dream come true <3 Come see me play at my upcoming shows ! Can't wait to see you there <33333 amour my homies