1. It took me the better part of a year to write this one. Who knew it would be so hard to write about something that I deal with every single day of my life? I ultimately had to set a hard deadline for myself to get it done.
2. When I only had a couple fragments of lyrics, this one started in my head sounding like a big-bandish, loungey sort of classic swing song. One of the things about writing music, though, is that you have to write the type of music your band can actually perform - and a song in that style wouldn't sound right without several instruments backing it up, and we just don't have that, unfortunately. Not only that, I wasn't sure my range/vocal talents were up to the task of a big, rich, sweeping jazz song.
3. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of another melody that would work with the song, and with my self-imposed deadline looming, I decided to make it a parody instead. I looked around for folk songs that had a frenetic pace, and I remembered performing "Chicken on a Raft" with Pirates for Sail. Once I figured that out, the lyrics came together pretty quickly. (I find lyrics a lot easier to write when I have a rhythm in mind first.)
4. The concept of this song is that the song itself is a long, anxious overthink of a concept - in this case, being in love with someone who tends to ease your anxiety when they're around, but being conscious of the fact that you can't rely on them to ease your anxiety (co-dependence is never a solution, kids!). As someone pointed out, sometimes being in love increases your anxiety, and that's VERY true, but I decided not to work that into the song because I didn't think it was as interesting or complex as the idea that sometimes you have people in your life who decrease your anxiety just by being around, but knowing you can't get dependent upon that effect, that you have to manage your own mental health and be able to do it independently.
5. I did a songwriting stream on Twitch for this song - the first and only time I've done that. It was really fun and I want to do that again sometime.
6. The song was written by the end of June 2018, but we didn't actually start rehearsing it until early 2019. One of the delays was the need to learn a couple of new songs that were written specifically for Dragon Con, and then we focused on other music we had to prep for studio recording first, and then we had a bit of a holdup where we were trying to find a version of "Chicken on a Raft" we wanted to emulate for the purposes of building harmonies.
7. I wish we had a good recording of us performing this at the Limerick Pub a couple weeks ago - Saber added the cajone (drum) to it, and it makes the song even better.
8. Yes, the song will be on the new album coming out this year (and it will include the cajone).