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I don't know if you saw the video I posted on facebook but i just broke the toilet.
I've been trying to make this video for like two hours. It did not work out.
And the toilet's been making noise, so I went over there to fidget with it and I destroyed it.
I thought maybe the reason is that the song is so happy and I'm only good at talking
about things when they make me angry. Now I'm pissed off. I just bought this wrench, and this thing, I broke this.
A gigantic sponge. I don't know why.
Bourbon. Red Bull. I am so angry right now. You don't even know.
It's probably appropriate that I just broke the toilet because
this whole song begins with a story about e-coli.
The best summer of my life i was living with this french girl
who showed me how to take life less seriously, a lesson which i have apparently forgotten.
So at the end of the summer the entire water supply was
contaminated with e-coli. So i figured I would start writing some music and this
is what emerged. One of the first things that i knew the song needed was tap dancing.
We got a tap dancer, and rigged up something so that she could dance around the room with headphones on.
The other great part of the song is that this whole group of
people all sing. Lalalalala
It was so much fun.
The solo is whistling. I put the solo off to very last.
My siblings have made fun of me my whole life whenever I whistle.
They say I make a stupid face.
Because I don't like making stupid faces, I don't practice whistling.
Consequently, I suck at it.
The lyrics were a collaborative effort between me and Nathalie Depose.
I wrote the original lyrics, which you can hear in the demo, which apparently are not
just wrong, they also make no sense whatsoever. Oh! They're in French.
She rewrote them for me, and then she taught me how to say them.
I apparently sing with a south-west French accent. Hah!
This is made at the end of period when I did everything in real-time, and allowed
imperfections into my work. Now I do everything perfectly.
The disagreement we had was that we'd accidentally left a gap in the drum tracks, something I absolutely loved.
Michael was really displeased. So Michael fixed the drums.
And later when he wasn't looking I broke the drums again. And that's why there's a gap.
Finally, the cover design and the artwork is by Bosnian artist Irma Ibric.
The links to her work are down here and you should go check it out.
It fits precisely the sort of mindset the song is about.
I remember very clearly sitting in the kitchen with my uncle, who was telling me I really need
to settle down. And I did what you're supposed to do:
nod and say "I see what you're saying
I *should* go get my master's." And then promptly hop on a jet, fly to France,
and hope that your friends are going to feed you because you have no money.
This is about happiness. I may not believe that it's possible anymore but
this song is proof that it existed
at least one summer. Just simplicity, some books, and a piano, and some good friends.
And food poisoning. At its heart this song is about navigating what you need to be happy and
the expectations everybody else imposes on you. I'm pretty sure there's a way to
reconcile the two of those and I think it's by lying. At the end of the day you just want
to get to a place where you feel like: okay, everything's great.
Now all I need to do is have, like,
a hundred babies, and die peacefully in my sleep. And I think that's how you'll know
that you're living right. You can hear this on Deezer, Spotify, iTunes.
If you really love me, go to Bandcamp and download it. The links are down below here.
So wish me luck on fixing the toilet. And I hope your Valentine's Day sucked. See you in three weeks!
weeks