It Started as a Ballad
I woke up one morning with the hook stuck in my head. Don’t know where it came from, but I immediately started workshopping it on my piano, which meant it originally sounded more like a ballad. I had been in a rough place emotionally when I was writing this song. But instead of writing about how I felt, I wanted to write a song that reflected on positive moments from my past and manifested joy for my future. Once I had the chords figured out, the rest of the lyrics came quite easily. From there, I started the ProTools session and increased the tempo right off the bat. Within a few hours, the composition was something pretty close to what it is now. I had never said to myself "I want to make a dance track". It just kind of happened, and I'm so proud of what it became. Dance music has always resonated with me, but I had never felt inspired to create in that genre until now.
Primary Colours and Bowie
I take as much pride in the visuals that represent my music as I do, the actual songs. I feel like since so much time, effort, and attention goes into my songs, it only makes sense to do the same for the artwork. I couldn’t tell you why, but I have an aversion to adding text to my covers, so every cover you see from me will probably be just a photograph. Yes, there is of course some re-touching and colour correction, but other than that. It's one layer.
The inspiration for this cover mainly came from two images. The cover art of “Aladdin Sane” by David Bowie, and “Applause” by Lady Gaga. Both Bowie and Gaga have had a huge influence on me and I wanted to honour them in my art. The day we shot the cover, I was covered in acrylic paint for over four hours. Yes, I know it’s not good for your skin, but I had a vision and facepaint was useless. I was covered in five layers of acrylic paint from my hair to my mid chest, plus my whole left arm. I couldn't move very much with the paint on, because it would crack, which sucked. But we ended up getting an amazing shot. The colour smear on my face was done in one take with the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) which nodded to Gaga’s “Applause'' cover, but I decided afterwards that the original photo looked too “clowney”, so I swapped it for pink in an editing software later.
Getting the paint off afterwards was a PROCESS. I lost a good chunk of my left eyebrow. *Sings "Pretty Hurts" by Beyoncé*
