This time around, alone with instrumentals, I found it even harder. Writing sad songs made me feel worse and writing happy songs made me feel like a liar - and both fueled my self hatred.
Well I don’t want to brag but my camera costs like $2500, I can fit all of my gear into a pink suitcase, and we got way way way over 100,000,000 views last year.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been texting people I trust, at random, the same six words. “Have you ever seen a ghost?”
I very distinctly remember one moment when I was 19. My hair was wet and I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom, staring into a wavy mirror from ikea that I had leaned up against a wall, and I was thinking to myself that I was definitely too ugly to ever not wear makeup.
At 23 or 24 I signed a decent record deal with Mercury Records (which then got sucked into Island and eventually spat me out on Island Def Jam). I brought them a handful of alt-rock / rap songs that I’d been working on with a few music industry veterans who believed in me. The songs were good, not great, but they saw my skill and most importantly my potential. I often referenced Weezer and Wu-Tang, and they told me understood my creative vision.