Old to me. New to you. You know what that means. Story time!

I made this track in 2019, my first year in the army, before I married and divorced and retired and was hopelessly addicted to nicotine, back when I had no bills, lots of anxiety, and lots more money. Jesus Christ, where does the time go, and can somebody please, please take me back?!

The idea came to me not entirely against my will, but the occasion was one for the books. See, I was maybe 6 months into DLI's Russian one year to fluency course. We were having an immersion shindig. And a talent show, the participation for which was mandatory.

This is relevant, because at the time I thought the only thing I was good at was showing up with dark circles under my eyes, taking naps over lunch, and gelling my hair like a page boy. I complained, and my teachers said: I don't care how shy you are, find a talent, or fail the course.

I REALLY didn't want to fail. Luckily, I had an epiphany. What did I do in almost all my spare time, that I really missed doing now that I spent soldier-scholaring in California?

Music.

But my laptop was half across the country, and so was my (gross) Snowball. So I had them sent to me, which took 2 weeks, and during those two weeks I was VERY BUSY, cause we did 7 hours a day class, homework, military stuff. At one point I had pneumonia and double PT (which is like forced gym rat time at 5 AM and 4 PM). Wasn't sleeping much either. Barely had time to shit-shower-shave, lol.

Once I got my laptop, I drafted the drums, guitars, and synths (meowsynth ftw), found a pryda snare out of a bigroom house sample pack I don't even think I have anymore, and practiced vocals in my room, annoying the fuck out of my neighbors. Found out I REALLY struggled to pronounce NYE and D'YE, as you native speakers can probably hear.

Finally my mic arrived, and it was almost time to turn in my project. I had 30 minutes during lunch one day to record, and in those 30 minutes, the magic happened.

Because it had to or else.

As I screamed these vocals on my knees into a shoebox of button up T-shirts surrounding that terrible, awful Snowball sitting on my nightstand, the last two takes were interrupted by my alarm. I had just enough for the verses, the chorus, and patching my mistakes before I ran back to class and up 3 flights of stairs. Phew! But it was done.

On the last day, I added harmonies in O-Vox, mixed and mastered, downloaded the music video, and slapped it all together with the lyrics in iMovie. PRESTO.

Next morning we got on the bus to the compound, our teachers ran us through RUSSIAN CUSTOMS (and by that I mean planted "flour" in my bags and shook me down for bribes), and I played my new single to my captive audience following a game of frisbee with the staff. I was shocked. Not only did my teachers like it, but the department head kept my video on the school servers for a couple years after I graduated! So that was cool. Way cooler than failing class because I was too shy or unimaginative to think up something like, I dunno spinning plates on a stick or making sock puppets (actual things people did.)

So it goes without saying this song means a lot to me. Yes, it's a simple metal cover of a Russian translation of a pop song about being mad at someone who broke your heart, but it was and still is one of the most awesome things I've ever done. It opened a lot of doors for me: to talk to people, to show what I love and care about, and most importantly be more confident!

Lyrics from masterpiece here, which I played on repeat for MONTHS ON END prior to the wall of text above. Как эта песня КРУТО звучала на русском, and memorizing helped me SO MUCH, because the lyrics were translated closely to the original English. I just enjoyed it a lot, everything about it, and as for why I chose metal, I think that's just how I like to cover, flipping the emotion, the timbre, the natural order. I wanted to bring out the frustration, the you make me so mad, I could punch you in the stomach, but I'll settle for verbal violence.

Other than that, my version is nothing special, but the pure EMOTION of the process... As I'm showing this now 5 years on, I'm feeling it all over again, the pressure, the excitement, the eyes and ears of my classmates eating (slack-jawed) blinchiki and herring jelly, my department director catching me in the parking lot a year later to tell me she still listened to and loved my work (enough to save and show it off!), loading the mp3 for my Latvian speaking partner in a quiet study room across the world months later, throwing the video up on YouTube for my tutoring students to scoff at when I got back from overseas.

I'm a little nervous, but that's why I remastered and de-essed it last week LOL.

It just, it has a lot of memories attached! Because without this track, I never would have the balls to do what I do now -- the Russian and English rhymes, t.A.T.u AI songs with vocals I actually record myself, tracks ENTIRELY in foreign language that native speakers think are okay! It's unbelievable to me even today, to think, I owe it all to a really hard Russian class, a talent show (more like hostage situation), and a karaoke channel of all things. I guess truth really is stranger than fiction.

Anyway, I've gone and written a novel again. That's nothing new, but here's an album cover with a picture from the same-ish time and my trademark cowlick, somewhere in I think San Francisco. Yes I still have these pants. Think my ex-wife has the shirt but I probably just tossed it to good will.

Just so you know, shit's personal.

The cover licenses for this and future releases cost me a chunk of dough (curse you DistroKid). If you want to help keep this song and projects like it on the net, you can donate here or subscribe to my Patreon!

Thanks to all my supporters: @MATRVG, @MariogD, @Cyberdevil, @JimmyTheCaterpillar! Love y'all!

See you next week with a new release!