This Friday I’m finally releasing a new, 7-track DIY acoustic album called Broken Heart! You can pre-save and pre-order it now.
This is a bit of a different direction for me, because I write a lot of songs about my relationship with music and following my dreams, because that takes up a lot of my time and emotions. Broken Heart, on the other hand, is a collection of unapologetically intense songs about unrequited love — pretty much crushes.
There are tons of relationship and break-up albums out there, but not as many about unrequited love. There seems to be a cultural belief that unrequited love isn’t “real” love and we shouldn’t feel too strongly about it, we don’t need to talk about it, we don’t need to care for people going through it the way we would for someone who’s gone through a break-up. That if you like someone who doesn’t like you back, you should just get over it. That you can’t truly have feelings for someone until you’re in a relationship with them. We view crushes as something childish that should only happen to preteens and teenagers. It would be great if that were true, but real life doesn’t always conform to expectations, and everyone’s experiences are valid.
For me, crushing and the daydreaming that goes along with it can honestly be a fun way to channel romantic feelings when I’m not looking for a relationship. Sometimes it’ll be a crush on some distant person, and sometimes I just choose not to express my feelings. But then there is that darker side, where you can catch more intense feelings. They can come on imperceptibly and really sting, and it can be difficult to move on from that.
I actually wrote these songs over a few years and they were always the songs that got put on the back burner because I wasn’t feeling them. I recently realized this was because I was embarrassed to have such strong feelings about unrequited love. But why? If we’re honest, all love and break-up songs are overdramatic – no relationship should be the end-all be-all that songs often make them out to be. But that’s human life. We have strong emotions about our experiences, and within our own story in our mind, they always loom larger than life. And no emotional experience should be viewed as more valid than another.
I still feel a little weird about releasing it, but I like the songs, I stand by the honest expression of my emotions, and who knows? Maybe I can inspire others to be just as open on the subject.