When I first started my channel, it was a fun adventure into recording music. I made covers from my favorite video games, movies, and shows. I made these longer videos. Medleys of a bunch of songs put together to tell some overarching story. I really, really wanted to use music as another means for telling stories (because I loved creating stories of my own). And in the beginning, I mostly stayed true to these founding ideals.
The channel started picking up momentum in the second half of 2020, and this momentum lasted to around the beginning of 2022. At some point, the channel changed. I wanted to try and make music into a sort of side hustle. I wanted to be able to make money from my covers, and felt that in order for that to happen, the channel obviously needed to hit some parameters, and I needed to make music that was “better”. Suddenly, nothing I made was good enough. Suddenly. I needed to invest in expensive equipment, DAWs, and really only post what would bring more views to the channel. I didn’t want my creativity to be turned into a product dependent on the expectations of others, but that happened anyway. 2022-2023 was especially difficult for me, and I basically put this whole music thing on pause. Went eleven months without touching an instrument. Somehow made content to post for a little while, until that eventually stopped too.
I came back to music in the summer of 2023, and it was an enjoyable experience again. Still, I held myself to impossible standards of perfection, and inevitably stopped making music again (once more going into the archives of never-posted content and finding anything to keep the channel alive). The summer of 2024 saw the beginning of this cycle again, and I even had more content I scheduled to “keep the channel alive”, but I’ve deleted those videos.
Like I said, I hold myself to impossible standards of perfection, so nothing I ever made was good enough to post, and definitely not good enough to license. People have been asking for the music on streaming platforms and sheet music for years, and I’ve kept putting that off because I never felt like my creations were good enough. I focused too much on how they wouldn’t be “worth” the monetary investment, wouldn’t make back what it cost to license them, and wouldn’t reach enough people. I focused on equipment, DAWs, neglected my instruments, and forgot why I started my channel in the first place.
Way back in 2019, my senior year of high school, I wanted a place where I could have fun making music and share impactful stories in a melody. All this other stuff came later, and overshadowed my original intent. As a result, this channel became like a self-fulfilling disaster, where each upload would guaranteed never be good enough.
Paradoxically, my older covers often seem “better” to me, in that there’s so much more life in them. You can tell the recording wasn’t made with the pressure of a business model weighing down on me. They featured more of me playing my own instruments, often full of mistakes and out of tune, but alive with an energy I can’t replicate if I’m approaching making music from the wrong mindset.
I’ve had so many idea for music to make, and plenty of medleys and stories, but have held them back instead, waiting for perfection that wasn’t going to come. This summer, I stressfully recorded some music but was largely dissatisfied with the outcome. I could tell there was a widening disconnect between me and the music I was making. It didn’t sound the way I wanted it to. The way I really wanted it to; Full of life again. I just sounded like I was stressed and angry at the sheet music, instrument, microphone, and everything else.
If I were to give a story/meaning to this cover, it would be about our common humanity, and the heartbreak we’ve suffered as a collective for years on end. I know that isn’t the content of the original song, but because of the time in my life where I “discovered” it (always years behind everyone else), it’s taken on a special meaning for me. Sometimes this world just seems so hopelessly bleak, and I’m almost convinced there’s no point in trying. Maybe “they” were right all along, and this is it…yet I hold onto hope. For better, brighter, more peaceful days. Even though it seems like the “crazy” position, setting myself up to be hurt over and over again because I haven’t resigned myself to believing the absolute worst in all of this…I’d still do it again. I’d keep coming back to my optimistic perspective. Maybe a million times over, if it means that once, finally, if I kept giving you a chance, you’d prove those awful conclusions wrong. For that chance, that new reality, I’d let you break my heart again.
Thanks for reading this far, and for existing. Seriously. You’ve made a high schooler’s dream come true year after year, video after video. I almost quit music in high school too, so this is pretty surreal.
Thanks again. I’ll see you soon.
-elo bombastic