Today is the anniversary of the 'I’ll Take The Blame' EP. I didn't have the demo for 'I’ll Take The Blame,' written during The Con era, in my iTunes. I looked on a hard drive. Still no luck. I wrote Sara. Her response was, 'I definitely don’t have the original demo.' What the hell! (Note to self: we need to organize our music, demos, and unreleased songs at some point).
I searched online to get the track listing of the EP and was shocked, like SHOCKED at the track listing. What an odd, hilarious, and funny snapshot of that time. 'Back In Your Head,' the Tiesto remix of 'Back in Your Head,' and two demos from The Con. It made me smile. We’re weird. And it’s what I love most about us. Maybe it’s also what I miss about old Tegan and Sara. We used to do what we wanted. Release what we wanted. We worried less. We shared more. Truthfully it was because there was less pressure, fewer eyes, and hardly any attention on us. Which made doing weird ass stuff like this EP… easy. There was plenty that sucked at that time too. Don’t get me wrong. But I wonder sometimes if I’m backstroking toward something like that creatively.
The thought of a proper album launch gives me shivers and nausea. It’s all so contrived. It’s no one's fault. It’s just what our industry, our world, and music have transformed into. I think, yeah, I’d like to make some new music, and then I think of the emails about TikTok ideas we have to do to sell music since apparently, that’s how you sell music now, and I think, Nah. But maybe there’s a way to just make things the way we used to. Release music because we want to. And if the songs are found, great. If it works, success! If it doesn’t... I’ll take the blame.
I included the One Second demo in this post. It’s odd and messy and ridiculous but I can hear how much fun I’m having. I used to love sitting down and writing. I have been open about how hard I find writing music these days. I think I’ve determined that it’s partly because I’m so busy. So many projects, so many things to get to, so many emails and calls, and I just can’t sit long enough in my creativity to finish anything. But it’s more than that. I think the technology that I used to create my first demos has become so advanced that I now feel that everything has to sound ready to drop on Spotify. I don’t want to spend the next year becoming an engineer, but anything I record sounds so low-fi, and so I get frustrated and give up. But low-fi was what I used to love. Where did the love go?
Listening back to this demo, recorded in GarageBand, with an out-of-tune electric and a garbagy snare, I feel... happy... it’s odd and frantic and weird but... it’s alive. That’s what I’d like to make more of. Things that sound WIDE AWAKE!
Ok! Off to do things. Too many things likely.
Tegan
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I'll Take The Blame