ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (Garbage - Strange Little Birds)

If The Cranberries were my teenage years, I’d say that the band that is currently taking most of my listening to music time is Garbage. I was already a big fan before but it’s now that I am becoming more selective that I can really appreciate their music better. I love their electronic sound and I think that Shirley’s voice is proof that there’s no need to possess a big vocal range or an extremely powerful voice to make it sound beautiful and full of emotion at the same time. I love how her voice sounds when it’s whispered, she’s great at doing that! I also love the spirit of their songwriting, a little pessimistic and generally dark but it is understood that it has to be this way in order to prove that, as they say, it’s always darkest right before the down, and this is what makes it so realistic and full of truth indeed or, at least, It feels much more coherent to me this way. I think that the song Even Though Our Love Is Doomed describes pretty good this thing I’m trying to explain in their philosophy. Their last album, Strange Little Birds, is amazing and one of their best albums and contains some of my favorite songs of their entire career, such as Sometimes, Blackout, or Night Drive Loneliness, to name just a few. I would also like to recommend the song No Horses, which was individually released a year later than this album came out and which I have used to make one of my tribute videos, in this case for The Handmaid’s Tale, a tv show that has completely captivated me for its amazing cinematography and script.

Favorite songs: Sometimes, Blackout, Night Drive Loneliness, Even Though Our Love Is Doomed, So We Can Stay Alive, and Amends.

RUNAWAY FROM THE MASK

If you could look deep inside my eyes you’d see a tear that doesn’t wanna hide

SONGWRITING

I wrote this song when I was 14 years old, back in my high school days. I remember vividly a black folder that I would carry around in my rucksack and in which I usually kept diverse artistic paintings, lyrics, and such. Some of those lyrics were part of songs written by myself and one of them was this Runaway From The Mask, which was originally abbreviated in the title as The Mask. As can be expected, I wasn’t very fluent in English back then, but I already liked to write songs in English, inspired by my favorite artists and, for this particular song, I remember being highly inspired by the band Evanescence and one of their songs, Everybody’s Fool, from their debut album, Fallen, in which a reference to a mask is made.

Extraordinary experiences were not necessary to let the imagination go, a single word could effortlessly serve as a fountain of inspiration to get into a whole new dimension, and that mask was somehow a clear metaphor for the situation I was living in high school and how impotent it was having to hide my real sexuality in order to survive all the bullying situation. But, although that mask symbolized a concrete struggle during a particular time in my life, I realized later that this metaphor could be applied to any other aspects of our relationships with other people as a society or even to our relationships with the outside and the universe as individuals, and that’s something I had very present when rewriting the song for the production of the album so that the message would be more universal.

But what the song really expresses is how difficult being highly sensitive can be and how it can become difficult sometimes when facing the violence that rules the world nowadays still. People tend to associate being sensitive with being weak but I think it’s the opposite thing actually. Being sensitive means being alive, it’s about feelings and feelings are, despite what many may believe, what moves the world, so I feel proud to say that the message of this song strongly represents the way I am. 

PRODUCTION

The demo was pretty different in the beginning. There was a piano arpeggio that sounded like a lullaby and a rocker electric guitar arpeggio in the choruses that ended out for the final production. The instrumental in the verses was basically formed by a pad reproducing the corresponding chords, so the producer has made a great work for those parts, creating beautiful and more complex guitar arpeggios. I personally like the “weird sounds” in some parts, it gives the song a certain mysterious aura that is clearly required for this type of lyrics and melody. I may not like the electric guitars being so present in some parts of the song but I’m generally happy with the final result of the production.

I have to say that, except for two particular moments, I am also pretty content with the result of the vocals in this song. I really feel that I am improving in this terrain. Besides, I’ve quit smoking for 3 months now already and I feel much better and really notice a change when singing thanks to that fact.