Imagination
Album • July 31, 2024
A quick follow-up where I chased bigger sounds and daydreamed out loud.
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Story
By the time I put this one together, life looked really different from when I made Make Me Feel Alright. I was more settled in, had a friend group, knew people from house parties and park evenings, and felt way more comfortable in my environment. Funny enough, I actually got along better with the girls in my grade than the guys, but either way, I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Still, I had those nights where everything caught up with me and I just needed music as therapy again.
This album started as another collection of songs, but this time I knew I wanted it to become a project. Once I had seven tracks, I said, “alright, that’s the album,” and locked it in. Interestingly, the first song I wrote for it was Record Deals, which ended up as the last track on the final version. The overall mood wasn’t super different from the first album; still personal, still me working through those late-night emotions, but I definitely wanted to make it sound a bit more “normal,” a little closer to mainstream pop than my first one.
The Quick Infatuation Swap
One of the biggest last-minute moves I made was with Quick Infatuation. Originally it was a completely different song with a totally different production. The problem was: the key sat right in the dead spot of my vocal range, so no matter how I sang it, it didn’t work, and when I tried to change the key, it didn’t sound right anymore. Instead of pushing through, I panicked because I’d already set myself a release date for August 1st, so I scrapped the original version and built a new song from scratch only two weeks before release. I’ve regretted it ever since. The lyrics weren’t fleshed out, and it just doesn’t hit the way the original did. At some point, I’ll definitely drop the real Quick Infatuation on like a “The Vault” release, because that version was really good.
Writing & Themes
Like the first album, this one was therapy for me. Most songs tie back to real events or people, the title track Imagination especially, which I wrote about a girl I wasn’t sure was into me. In my head, I thought dropping the song would make her come up to me and say, “yeah, I like you too.” Spoiler: that never happened. But at the time, it felt like I was shooting my shot in my own way. The rest of the album was me trying to balance that deeply personal writing with the idea of making music that felt more accessible.
Production
Sound-wise, it’s pretty close to Make Me Feel Alright because I started it almost immediately after finishing that one. I still used Logic with loops as a base, leaned on reverb, and aimed for atmosphere. But I did learn from the first project, so the production here is at least a little tighter. I still used the mastering assistant, but I tried to do more proper mixing. Overall, though, both albums live in the same universe – which makes sense, since they’re only about four months apart. One influence that snuck in was Avicii. Record Deals was basically my “what if I made something like Levels” experiment. It didn’t end up being the next Levels (thanks to me not doing any marketing for the album), but at least the ambition was there.
Looking Back
I don’t think Imagination is as strong as Make Me Feel Alright. It’s less cohesive and feels more like seven different songs and genres mashed together, even more than MMFA. But I think you can still hear the progression, the mixing’s a bit better, the production more confident, and it shows I was starting to think about what kind of artist I wanted to be. If I could fix one thing, it’d definitely be the mix and master, like in Make Me Feel Alright. Still, for all its flaws, it’s part of my story, and it shows that hunger to just keep going, keep releasing, and keep figuring myself out.
