Imagination

Context

I started Imagination almost right after finishing Make Me Feel Alright. The two are only about four months apart. The late nights were still there, and I was still writing about whatever was going on.

This time I knew from the start that I wanted a project. Once I had seven tracks, I said: alright, that’s the album. Funny enough, the first song I wrote for it, “Record Deals”, ended up as the last track.

Direction

The mood isn’t that different from the debut. What I wanted was for it to sound a bit more “normal”, a little closer to mainstream pop. “Record Deals” was basically my “what if I made something like Avicii’s ‘Levels’” experiment. It didn’t become the next “Levels”. Not doing any promo didn’t help.

The Quick Infatuation swap

The biggest last-minute move was “Quick Infatuation”. The original was a completely different song with completely different production, and it sat right in the dead spot of my vocal range. No matter how I sang it, it didn’t work, and in another key it didn’t sound right anymore.

I’d already set myself a release date, 1 August, so I panicked, scrapped it and built a new song from scratch two weeks before release. I’ve regretted it ever since. The lyrics weren’t finished, and it doesn’t hit like the original did. At some point I’ll put the real one out, because that version was really good.

Writing and themes

Most of the songs go back to real things, the title track most of all. I wrote it about someone I wasn’t sure was into me, and in my head, putting the song out would make them come up to me and say they felt the same. Spoiler: that never happened. But at the time it felt like shooting my shot in my own way.

Production

Sound-wise it’s close to the debut, because I started right after it: Logic, loops as a base, lots of reverb. I had learned a bit, so it’s at least a little tighter, and I tried to do more proper mixing, even if the mastering assistant was still on everything.

Looking back

I don’t think Imagination is as strong as Make Me Feel Alright. It feels more like seven different songs and genres mashed together. But you can hear the progress: the mix is a bit better, the production more confident. If I could fix one thing, it would be the mix and master again.