Don’t Come to LA

Spirits

palindrome is a summer, roll down your windows bop that will have you singing the chorus over and over hours after the song has ended.

Palindrome

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BLOODRUNSOUT

Teenage Boys

Garden of Eden

Modern

Atoms

California

Prescriptions

a satirical banger about my need to be dramatic over everything. i dropped my coffee? i wanna die. a customer was rude to me? plan my funeral, i'm done.

i have spent my entire life dealing with mental health issues that have sprinkled their way into my adult years, and i find now that the only way i can deal with them is to admit to them and write my way through them (re: my previous song 'prescriptions' being about my struggle to accept that i had to take anti-depressants). 

and mental health is... well. it's hard. it's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people. the reality of my brain can't only be traumatizing to me, and that's a really tough lesson to learn especially when you are going through a crisis and it hurts the people around you. i have always found a way to talk about it in a way that makes it feel light even if it's the darkest thing i've ever said. that's what this song is for me.

DEAD!

this song is many things for me. for one, it's the most fun i have ever had experimenting with lyrics and writing. i had so many visuals, so many things i wanted to show that i feel like i did a really good job doing. 

this song is about the importance of music in our culture, especially on lgbtq culture. throughout the pandemic, one of the only ways i felt connected to anyone was through music. i spent the first few months of 2020 working on my sophomore ep, 'garden of eden' and that, i swear, is the only reason i made it through. music and the demand my mind had to make it kept prevailing through massive bouts of depression and anxiety dealing with the world around me. i had no one in la except teddy and my fellow other co-writers who worked on that ep with me. i found a lot of comfort online, especially in watching queer creators and content, and connecting with so many of the queer fans i have whose support helped me through my insecurities around releasing music.

so when i met dee, in 2021, and we were experimenting with writing crazy shit, and really starting to get what we were writing, i wanted so desperately to write about the impact of music on our society. how music in every form connects us all in one way or another. in november of 2021, i got to experience my first big concert since 2019: the harry styles tour at the forum. i cried that entire show, not just for my love of harry, but because of the space we were in. 50,000+ people, a lot of whom were lgbtq (a girl came out to her mother as lesbian during the talking portion harry does at his shows which made both my partner and i cry a lot). when i was writing apollo, THIS what was i had in mind. people of all ethnicities, all shapes, all sizes, all different backgrounds, all gathered for one thing. it made me realize how lucky i was to have the means to create something as beautiful as that. (side note: when i went to the eras tour in glendale this last march, i felt this exact same way. cried my entire way through 'you need to calm down', especially when everyone screamed 'shade never made anybody less gay' louder than any other line.) it made me think of my childhood, all of my queer friends and i in choir together, singing our hesrts out. or when i participated in theater. we all got each other, and music was the way we did it.

i think now, more than anything, the queerness we have around all of us is something we need to hold on to, desperately. the laws being passed right now in this country terrify me as a queer adult. i think of the 14 year olds in those states, the baby gays who are experimenting in college, the closeted trans kids who are going to be and have already been killed by this. i feel ashamed of the world we are creating. 

that connection music gives us is a more important outlet than i think a lot of us realize. that's what apollo is. a celebration of how we are human. i didn't even realize the majority of people i was describing in this envisioned party were queer people, of all backgrounds, of all versions of queerness, and of all levels of acceptance. this song for me is now about a celebration of it. of drag queens, of the word gay, of pride. 

and of course i had to name it apollo. i did a lot of research during the initial writing session and tried to incorporate as much of his legend in as possible. the god of music was also bisexual :-). 

a fan asked me once if i was going to write any more songs on greek mythology. i was like "omg i should" and hadn't even connected the dots that i had written two songs for the upcoming ep that were based on greek mythology. one didn't make the cut, but apollo was too important to me and i had to keep it. i'm glad i did.

APOLLO

in a lot of ways, i think depression robbed me of a lot of my childhood and my teen years. i think it stunted me emotionally at the same time it excellerated it. i could've sworn at 16 that i was an adult, and that i could handle the world on my own, but that was self destruction and anxiety speaking for me, finding a way to fantasize about running away and doing it on my own and 'not being depressed anymore'. as i found out in outpatient this last year, depression never really goes away. it's like grief, like a scar. 

and that's ugly. that's an ugly realization, especially when you're used to it coming and going. when it's going, my god is it gone. the sun is warm on my face. i can see tomorrow behind my eyelids. and then, like an innocent creak of the wind pushing a door open, depression seeps back into you like water into a rag. 

before probably 2017, mental health conversations didn't really exist in the way they do now. in this past year i've watched a lot of tv shows from the early 90s to the mid 2000s that involved a lot of conversation around mental health (pretty little liars, law n order, etc) except the conversation that was had was about how crazy you were, about how much of a nuisance you were, how your mental health was a weapon and that you needed to conceal it to better fit in. all media is a representation of culture at that time, and it makes sense to me as a person who grew up with those kinds of messages that those beliefs were things i held for years. people around me enforced those beliefs too. in 8th grade my counselor was convinced i was faking my panic attacks. 

i hit my breaking point in silence my senior year of high school with the boyfriend i had during that time. i was the most depressed i had ever been.  i missed a lot of school. i had to go on medication for depression. 

and i tried to talk to him about it. all of my friends had moved away for school. i tried telling him about what was happening with me. and every time i tried, i was met with things like "i don't know what you want me to do about it", "i can't hear this", and the biggest one "just don't tell me about it". 

this kind of language from someone i had an intimate relationship really broke me down. i was terrified to let anyone i loved into what was happening to me out of fear that i would be met with the same kind of coldness and apathy. it also meant that my friends and other partners of mine carried the weight of my mental health with me because i had no concept of boundaries or how to speak of it without setting unreasonable expectations around their support of me.  it set me back and even now i believe that my mental decline destroys everything i have. not that he should have been my therapist, if your trauma begins to traumatize someone else, you need to find another way. but it wasn't that. it was me needing someone in a way he wasn't ready to be needed. 

when him and i broke up, i made a goal to to never let anyone into my space who did not have empathy for me for what i was going through. someone who did not care whether i went to bed believing that i shouldn't wake up didn't belong in my life. 

so when i say, "i couldn't keep the face of a doll when i was unhappy", i mean it deeply. i want to yell it from rooftops. i want to scream it in the faces of everyone who made me feel like i was broken or horrible for needing to speak, even if it was a lot to hear. i never learned a proper outlet as a kid, because it didn't exist for me. i knew it hurt others, but it hurt me.

the reality of it is that everyone is capable of being sick in that way. the best thing we can do is be honest about it, to speak up when we need help, and be open to others when they are hurting. 


when we wrote this, i think it was the third song we wrote for this ep, i knew it had to be the title and the focus song. i had a title previously picked out, but this song was just begging to be the center. this song was the sun.

UNHAPPY

for almost my entire high school career, i was in a tumultous on and off long distance situationship with a guy in a band. it started off as mutual yet unaware pining that lead straight into a toxic wastepool of confusion and manipulation on both sides. looking back at it now, at almost 22(6 years after it started), the fallout between us had been a duel effort. i would like to put a positive spin on it and say it was a period of growth for both us - when we entered new relationships with new people, we knew didn't want what our... 'thing'.. looked like, but in reality, i don't think we grew at all. i think every time we started talking again, we would both end up worse people than before.

on an off period we were in, i started dating the boyfriend i dated my senior year of high school. when that relationship ended, my rebound instincts were to go find comfort in what i knew, and him and i were back to where we started. 

we started talking again, facetiming again, getting really close. he had told me his relationship too had just ended, so we were both in the same place. it felt natural, like this time it was gonna work out.

till i found out that they were still dating and had never broken up.

now this is the part that i hate; i was not a good person. i was not a saint, and if there's anything you learn about me, is that I'm a coward through and through. i hide behind the songs i write, i let my writing say what i want and forget that i have to deal with the repercussions. i point the finger forgetting that the rest point back at me. i was disrespectful of boundaries and even though at my request our communication went down to almost 0, there were a few occasional drunk and high reach outs on both ends that lead to my anger being revamped and my revengeful fist wanting to slam itself on a table. i wanted her to know what was happening.

so after a lot of long paragraph exchanges between us three parties, social media post call outs, and some other completely fair reactions, i just hit block on everything and tried to pour my focus back into music and writing about the love i was just starting to develop then. a few months in, i had a nightmare about that situationship that lead me walking into my first session with dee lilly wanting to just write another song that would be a final nail in the board. i let time calcify but found a mine in the anger i had been withholding, and wrote the first line of the song: "why would you tell me that you're over when you're on the floor next to her bed?".

to be an acid tab, in this case, is to be something that a person leans on when they want it to feel different. when they want to add something to their life that is going to change how they feel. an alter in perspective, an alter in attention. to tell you that i can't be the acid tab in your throat is me basically saying that i can't be that familiar mode you turn to when you're feeling self destructive. after all, an acid high is temporary, and you come down to exactly where you were before. 

i don't wish revenge anymore. i think we were both really sick kids who unfortunately put an innocent bystander in the middle of our sick tirade against each other. we both needed help. you might listen to this song and not believe that i feel regret, and i have to be honest, up until 6 months ago i didn't feel any. i do now, as i sit almost 3 years into the love i have now and having gone through the worst part of my personal growth. i made whatever they had infinitely worse, and watched as for years they tormented each other over me. and i tormented back. i wish them both well; that is the truth coming from the deepest part of my soul. 

unfortunately i wrote acid tab before that conclusion, and it's just now coming out. i hope that we all can look back at the past with the eyes i have now one day. at 19, sometimes you just don't have that.

ACID TAB

the idea behind this track is that i liked my partner so much i'd crash my car into him, like a very strong cuteness aggression. i wanted to capture the feeling of falling in love with him and the very early stages of our relationship. this was unlike any other relationship i had been in. it was around the same time i had a dream where i thought a song called 'car crash dreams' would be really cool. at that point, it wasn't very often that i thought of a song title before i had even written the song, so it was a really cool developmental moment for me. it involved around building a concept for one single song instead of an entire project. and i wanted to write a true classic pop song, one where the chorus is addicting and doesn't leave your head.

CAR CRASH DREAMS

bubbles is one of the most experimental things i have ever done. 

something about me that i think is obvious is that i don't write a lot of love songs. i never have, most of the songs that are in my vault are about heartbreak, depression, or political/cultural commentaries. i think there are artists who write amazing love songs and that there's always room for more, but it's not a strong suit of mine by any means. they're hard for me to write i think because the mental illness comes out in writing and shows my anxieties in each line, and i think if you love someone, especially in a public space, you don't want to give the whole world a glimpse into your love. I'm very private with it now. it was just like that until i wrote car crash dreams. before that, the song that i had written that i thought was the most romantic/lovey was BLOODRUNSOUT. then it changed. 

i went into the studio wanting to write something fun, something bouncy, and it just so happened that the lyrics i was writing were about my partner and the things i loved about them. i loved that they were goofy, i loved that they were messy, i loved that they were there for me in a way that no one in my life before had shown up, and that it felt like we were tied together with an invisible string. (fun fact: invisible string by taylor swift was the inspiration for this song because i wanted to write something that showed every part of our love building and that it felt like we were always supposed to end up together. isn't it amazing how inspiration works? these two songs would never be on the same playlist). 

bubbles is fun, it's glowing, it's aggressive, it's thoughtful, and it's a song that even on my worst day, i want to sing it. it's a pleasure to do live, it's a pleasure to show my friends, and this song has had me excited since the first day we made it.

BUBBLES

Goldstar

The Year I Lived as You

Nevermind - Single

nevermind

Cherry Bomb

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Mouthes

Carbon Copies

Posiedon

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JULIANNA JOY

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