Last year, I told a friend—half-jokingly but half-quite-seriously—that I wanted to try my hand at writing a breakup album someday. Despite it being a relatively offhand comment, the idea’s stuck with me, and while that project certainly won’t be my first album, it may not be as far out on the horizon as I’d imagined. That said, I don’t really write love songs.

Like, ever.

It’s not that I’ve never wanted to—I’ve tried my hand at it before this project—but the format in which I was putting them together plus the generally blasé, isn’t-love-overused-as-a-concept attitude of some of my friends and peers ensured that for a long time I deeply felt that my heart did not have a place in my music. My serious, sophisticated heart? Sure. Program that. But my twentysomething, still-falling-in-love-with-the-world, too-big, too-sensitive heart? Lock that away. Pretend it doesn’t exist.

So, in all honesty, I did. And when I did, I found that I struggled to communicate the special little hey-I-love-you-just-because moments I had with my friends not only musically but in real life. Sure, I could use other people’s song lyrics, but how could I put it in my own words, from my own perspective, if I made myself promise never to try?

don’t call it a love song is a product of this decision to pivot, to let the mushy emotional side of me have her share of the steering wheel from time to time. I laughed when I finished it, because in my eyes it’s a love song and a breakup song and a song about the crazy messy journey of adoring the people around you just because. And, oh yeah, the words aren’t anchored by proper singing. So it’s a little bit everywhere, just like me. And I think that’s the way I like it.

Notes about the album cut:
I pretty tightly control where this song goes. I only perform it with Kaili Otsuka, who did the original voiceover, or by myself with her voice as my track. For WEAKNESS, though, I wanted it to be me, in a version that would only ever exist for this purpose. However, as I recorded and mixed, I found I really liked letting the voice be less prominent, a line you can pick out if you hunt for it but that mixes a little more naturally with the rest of the timbres in the track. I also had fun mixing my flugelhorn into a more lo-fi sound. Yes, these are sonic artifacts that might not have happened if I hadn't been recording and mixing in a pandemic, but to me, they're just as valuable as the rest.

This is also the only song on the album that's not either about or inspired by Nick or John. It's dedicated to a dear friend who, once upon a time, was almost more. He knows who he is.