Book 4: WHEN I FALL IN LOVE

I always believed in finding the love of your life. Blame it on being raised by soulmate parents or a childhood concoction of early 2000s romcoms, Disney channel and musical theatre, but I have lived in perpetual anticipation of a fairytale meetcute (oops?).

Turns out, though, that fictional men are just that: largely fictional and devastatingly scarce. So as a little reminder to myself (and potentially a few other hopelessly romantic girlypops roaming the world), I wrote ‘When I Fall In Love’: a song about not settling. :)

To get to the origins of the song, however, we have to jump back to August 14th of last year when I came up with what I thought was one of the strongest chorus melodies I’d written thus far (I still stand by that hehe):

It was fun and it was carefree and it was catchy: very Recession Pop-era that strongly influences all of the music I make.

Initially, I thought this would end up on the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album. So I continued working at it on that same day and wrote the first verse and pre-chorus with the album’s romcom storyline in mind:

But the more I listened to it over the next few weeks, the more two glaring issues with the song became evident:

a) It was just another meetcute song? At this point in the year, I was already in the ‘committing to each other’ stage of the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album / storyline so releasing something that would revert back to the meetcute stage seemed super random??

b) The meetcute described here is super creepy!? I mean, it’s a guy standing by himself on the side of the street at night. MUCH more murder than meetcute lol

I couldn’t come up with anything better for the song so I decided to shelf the idea indefinitely. I went back to finishing the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album and completely forgot I had written this.

Fast forward to earlier this year when I was planning out releases and trying to come up with new song ideas. I found the ‘When I Fall In Love’ chorus in my phone’s voice memos and was hooked on the melodies all over again. I was determined to make it work this time around - that chorus was too strong to just throw it away!

So I started chiseling out the song: what would it be about? Do I keep the original chorus lyrics or switch them around???

I write all of my lyrics ideas in the Notes app on my phone - if I think a certain lyric is good enough, I immediately put it at the top of a song’s page under its intended section (aka verse, pre, bridge, etc.). If I like a lyric idea, but am not sure it’ll fit the song or I can’t decide if it’s super strong, I put it in a section at the bottom of the song, titled ‘Extra lyrics’. I can always tell how tedious the process of writing a song was based on the amount of text under that ‘Extra lyrics’ section.

And let me tell you, this one has a TON:

version 1

version 2

As you can see from these, I was chasing my own tail - trying out a barrage of different themes, topics and storylines that would be able to tell a captivating, cohesive story. I had changed directions and options so many times that I entered an itsy bitsy spiral that became counter-productive.

So I made the decision to step away from the song - this was around the time I was filming the music video for ‘To Tell You The Truth’ so that provided just the distraction I needed.

A few weeks later, I listened back to the original chorus I wrote last year and realized that I won’t be able to beat those original lyrics - they were symbiotic with the melody, all the vowels placed to optimize its catchiness. That’s when I began focusing on placing a twist on the classic romance narrative - what if the song was about not settling when finding the love of your life?

In hindsight, that seems like such a simple, obvious conclusion but it took all of those failed, grueling lyric attempts to arrive at the final, most authentic narrative. :)

It was now time to set out on the production journey of the song! I always try to find parallels between the song’s lyrics and the instrumental so that they complete and strengthen each other’s messages and characteristics. With this one, the common thread was relatively obvious: the chorus likens falling in love with fireworks on the 4th of July and what’s more American than Country music? I had been tentatively dipping my toes into Country Pop with a few of my past releases (most obviously, ‘September’) so it didn’t seem out of place to bring some of that influence into this song as well (AND ‘To Tell You the Truth’ that comes right before this track features a lot of country-adjacent acoustic guitar).

Since my musical instrument skills are limited to the piano, I messaged Victor Balconi (incredible bassist + guitarist I’ve been working with for a couple of years) and asked if he could lay down some acoustic guitar for me to create the production around.

And BOY did he come through!! He messaged m back with layers of tracks and bass that captured the breezy, carefree nature of the song beautifully:

At first, I thought I would keep this song super stripped and relatively acoustic, the main production elements coming from layers of vocals and harmonies. This very quickly proved to be a foolish endeavor as I found myself adding tracks upon tracks of synths and strings and fills aka exactly what I said I wouldn’t do: layers. :)

After all, falling in love should feel overwhelming and all-encompassing and over-the-top and dramatic, right??

There’s these pizzicato strings that feel like little sparkles flying through the air:

some tremolo cellos that grow in volume and help with tension and energy building:

very 2010s Pop strings in the chorus:

layered over this piano motif:

I also added in a bunch of synths for extra texture:

Following ‘The Many Lives Of Juliet’ and ‘To Tell You The Truth’, both of whose creation processes were super straightforward, it took me by surprise just how much of a challenge ‘When I Fall In Love’ was. But to be completely frank, I LOVED every second of it.

It always makes me a bit worried if things get too easy or comfortable - that to me is a sign that I’m not learning anything new (and stagnation is firmly one of my biggest fears). So being hit with problem after problem during this song made me super excited; the little nervousness I would feel along every step of the way encouraged me to do things differently, to learn and expand my horizons.

It’s challenges like this that I’m extra grateful for, especially when the end result isn’t entirely terrible. :)