Releasing Music When Plans Change

TW: sudden loss of life, loss of parent, family drama, medical terminology

TL;DR - I planned to release a single, and my mother unexpectedly passed. I did it anyway.

In 2019, I embarked on a journey that would test my resilience and reignite my dedication to songwriting.

The timing for the launch of my crowdfunding campaign to fund my next EP was a little turbulent, but I am a glutton for a challenge. While enduring a horrific breakup and being left without a place to live, I spent the summer trying to stabilize my life and using every bit of energy I had left to crowdfund $10,000 to make an EP called OUTLIER.

Going through such an emotional rollercoaster while focusing on securing finances for my project was a crucial experience that helped solidify my resilience as a person and a musician. My friends, my family, my Starbucks customers that I served every day, and even random people I met at parties rallied around me, and they scrounged up the funds to make this EP. My main champion, though, was my mom.

________

Lisa was a born salesperson and an advocate for the downtrodden. A former stockbroker, a real estate agent, an emergency room social worker, a divorcee, and an Italian American mother, she was wired to stand her ground in any situation. She knew you had to grab life by the balls, and that's exactly what she taught me when I was convinced my world was over during that breakup. "You need to want this more than you want to breathe," she repeatedly told me. I thought that was crazy (and it is), but ultimately, it would lead me to fulfill my campaign, pursue my career goals, and create a stable life for myself.

The release of my EP was well received, given my small audience. I learned a lot about grassroots movements, making friends, interviewing, and creating a community around my music with relatable situations that women my age would hear and think, "Wow, she gets it."

Ever since that release, my brain had been engulfed by the idea of putting out my next song as quickly as possible. 

________

As someone who works a traditional job and writes/plays music when she has time, it's often hard to pin down time to meet with my producer and the fantastic musicians who activate my words and bring my music to life. Still, we manage to do it once every 2-ish years.

Writing songs doesn't take more than an hour if I'm just getting lyrics/melody/chords mapped out. I'll work through the "skeleton" of the song a few times and maybe change a lyric here and there, but for the most part, it all comes out in one go. 

Once I've got something, we schedule pre-production, where we build out the arrangement - record ideas and rough tracks for guitar, bass, drums, and vocals to study as we move forward. From there, the guitar usually gets put down first, then the bass, sometimes in one session. Drums come after, then lead vocals, and usually, an entire session is dedicated to background vocals. Then, my producer Bryan, who is so incredibly patient with me and my art, spends a grueling amount of hours tuning and tweaking every single track in the mix. He'll send it back to me and await my feedback before incorporating my notes into the arrangement.

The last aspect in this order of operations is to assess the "final mix." I will fixate on a minuscule issue I've found with the song. I will fight with myself for 2-3 months on how it can be rectified until I ultimately listen to what Bryan initially told me would yield the desired result. Once I surrender to logic, he gladly masters my song, and it's ready to go.

After that comes the release process. Not only do I need to figure out the release date, but I need to ensure I am available mentally and physically to promote the single. Ahead of scheduling the release, high-resolution artwork for the single needs to be created. Once the release date has been set with the distributor, copyrights for the sound recording need to be filed. The song must also be registered with the proper metadata (writers, artists, publishing companies) to the Performing Rights Organization(s).

The question is…do I even have time to do this?

________

I got engaged in February 2024, and knowing how consuming planning a wedding can be, I made an announcement that I would not be releasing music this year.

I frequently play songwriter's rounds in Boston, where I typically only play songs I have yet to release. My musician peers (and my dear friends who come to all of my appearances, even when I have a 9 pm slot on a Monday) kept asking me when these newer songs were going to come out, which I repeatedly gave a disheartened answer to. The more often this happened, and the busier work became, the more I could feel the stirrings of an internal uprising.  

Two fully finished songs were sitting in my Google Drive. I was going to be so angry with myself if I didn't release music this year, as I hadn't released music since my last EP in 2021. 

I knew I couldn't give this release the extensive TikTok treatment it deserved, with upgraded cameras and lighting, dedicated sets, costumes, makeup, hours and hours in editing, scouring the app for memes and trends to relate back to my song. I couldn't afford the kind of visuals I wanted to have. I couldn't play all the shows I wanted or have the release party I dreamed of. It was more important to fulfill my artistic need than to chase a pipe dream.

So I said f*** it, let's go. The release date was set for August 9.

________

I noted that August 9 was smack in the middle of, you guessed it, mercury retrograde, amongst a few other murky astrological transits (I know, I’m one of those - sue me for having a hobby). When choosing dates for music releases (or, yknow, my wedding), I go with the date that feels right without digging too deep into the happenings of the cosmos. Still, I had a weird feeling in my gut about picking this specific day. Why did it feel strange? Why did I have such a potent sense of urgency to set a date RIGHT NOW? This unresolved curiosity catalyzed a rabid need to complete tasks for the release, even though it was still months away.

Balancing a rigorous work schedule with a musical life, a social life, and being able to show up as a good partner and friend takes up a fair amount of time. Ursula the Sea Witch once said, "I'm a very busy woman, and I haven't got all day," so obviously, some release-related work needed to be outsourced. I emailed my publicist to get her on board to do a playlisting campaign for me on Spotify and reach out to her press contacts (and mine).  

Without the time, money, or resources to hire a photographer to take new photos for me and make high-quality videos on a professional set, I scoured through all of my photos to find something to use for the single cover. Sifting through all of the videos in my iCloud library, I found adequate footage for my lyric video for Crime of Passion, which I spent 40 hours in Capcut and Canva making and then converting to be smartphone-compatible for viewing so it would work on any platform (not just YouTube). 

Though I was several months ahead of schedule, the pressing need to finish all my tasks in advance would not dissipate. I reached out to podcasts and booked some time slots. I queued up all of my "coming soon," out "August 9," and "OUT NOW!" banners for my social media platforms. I designed my email newsletter and drafted friendly Direct Outreach statements to get people to listen to my new song.

I had most of what I needed ready to go. Until then, I would plunge my head back into work and planning my wedding.

________

My engagement party was in late June (about 7 weeks before my single release). All of my family and close friends joined us in celebrating our upcoming wedding. I was so thankful to see everyone and felt blessed to have this many people in our lives who were so happy for us, uniting for a purpose without reservations. An overwhelming sense of gratitude wrapped itself around me. 

My entire life changed on July 18, three weeks before my release.

________

The medical examiner explained that even if my mom went into this cardiac event in a hospital, there was no saving her, as she had an exceedingly rare heart condition that was untreatable at the time of her death, called ARVC. Her right ventricle was just GONE, and her heart was abnormally enlarged. Considering my mother was the life of the party at every party, even ones she wasn't invited to, making it to 62 and not knowing she had a super rare genetic heart condition is astounding. She was strong as hell.

Inexperienced with grief and death, I did not realize how long it takes for funeral arrangements to be scheduled. I was enraged. What I thought would be a five-day stay turned into a two-week residency of pain and agony, sunshine and saltwater, documents and ashes, reminiscing and laughter.

My mother's death shook me; my broken family dynamic loomed like a deep black smoke over a still lake. People outside our usual circle began to notice that there were individuals who should have been around for this and were not involved for one reason or another. Being on the receiving end of both "I'm so sorry" and "Where is so-and-so?" when you know the answer is not something discussed in polite society is something I would not wish on an enemy. My aunt, who is my mother's best friend of 51 years, and I had to remain stoic throughout the process so as not to disturb anyone else's emotions, as some folks decided to act as if it was their mother who died and not mine. It's still an incredibly heavy load to carry.

________

The mantra throughout my mom's services was WWLD (What Would Lisa Do). 

My mom took me to every audition, every talent show, every restaurant gig I had growing up and through my early 20s. She drove all the way from Long Island to Boston (and further!) to see me play empty bars, packed clubs, small breweries, and crowded local music festivals. She would show up in bright red lipstick, a ripped jean jacket, and her infamous red cowboy boots everywhere she went. Lisa peddled tickets to my shows to all of her friends, family, business associates, people she met in line at the deli, people passing the money basket around in church, cashiers, mail carriers, and the guy who fixed her pool, amongst others. She was the only person who ever did more Direct Outreach than I did. She even led my first giveaway!

I realized I was supposed to announce the single soon. Lisa wouldn't have stopped her projects for anyone (and she never did!), so why should I?

Through tears and sorrow, I prepared to send an email blast to my mailing list. Admittedly, roughly 40% of my email list is solely people my mom knows. The rest is comprised of family, friends, and some people I've met through music. I decided to keep it short but mainly dedicated to her; everything was (and is) so raw, and there was absolutely no way I was trying to eclipse my mother's legacy with my three-minute pop-punk song.

My community was incredibly supportive and responsive. I secured about 100 organic pre-saves (a lot for a "baby" artist like myself). Many of my family and friends forwarded my emails and reposted my content without me having to ask.

________

When it came time to promote, I knew I could not force the stamina to create aesthetically appealing content after literally sending my mother out to sea. It wasn't going to happen. I lamented about lost opportunities and did what felt authentic to me. I cried on TikTok.

I blubbered all over social media about my mother because it was the only thing I had the energy to do. My signature black wing eyeliner was nowhere to be found. My hair was barely brushed. My voice was gone from sobbing. I spoke aloud the words in my heart: that my mother was gone and that she would want nothing more than for me to put out a song about burning down a cheater's house (it was her favorite subject). 

To my surprise, my small following responded with kindness and compassion. The videos found their way to people who had lost their mother or a parent, and it made me feel less alone. 

My mother lost her biological mother at 5. She could not have a relationship with her biological father, but she still wept when he passed in her 40s. She lost the father who raised her four years ago, and we can't get into this conversation without bringing up her beloved dog, Franklin, who died about five years ago. She never stopped talking about him - we even included his name in the mass.

Knowing that my mother walked around with so much grief weighing on her shoulders and knowing that people in my comments are leading whole and fulfilling lives in the wake of loss reassured me that I could keep moving.

________

After taking two weeks to tend to my mother's arrangements, dealing with the emotions of all 300 people who came to her services, literally walking into the ocean to send her out into the water, and traveling several hundred miles home, it was time to go back to work. Nothing prepares you to cry four times a day at your desk. My office mates were incredibly kind (they all belong to the same one-parent club I do) and didn't bat an eye when big fat tears stampeded down my face during easy lunch conversation topics.

Showing up in the way I needed to for this job was an obstacle course. Commuting into the city, working, crying, faking enthusiasm, commuting, falling apart when I stumbled in the front door, and repeating that process several times a week dulled my spark. I strategically planned my bouts of sadness and quickly learned to suck it up when I felt water prickling up in my eyes.

Executing a music release according to my original vision was not in the cards for me, but I also knew my mother would be furious if I didn't put the song out on account of her… ascension.

________

Individually creating conversations with people to connect them to your music (AKA Direct Outreach) is how I've made so many friends and bonded with my musical peers over the last five years. However, with this new gargantuan set of emotions the universe handed me, I was not my usual self (I'm still not). My ability to scream from the rooftops that my song was at long last out in the world was canceled out by grief.

My release ultimately "suffered" for it. So much emphasis is placed on impressions, first-day plays, pre-saves, content engagement, etc., which are of note if there's a particular ladder you wish to climb as an artist or a specific trajectory you’re aiming at. I had a complete vision of what I wanted to do before this release, but I was depleted and couldn't function.

Thanks to my publicist, we landed on about 40 playlists and secured roughly 20 press spots. I was in no condition to spend my one remaining brain cell trying to make that happen. Though I had podcast interviews lined up, I felt compelled to keep rescheduling due to my fragile state. That didn't reflect well on me, but I wanted to avoid showing up as something other than the best version of myself. 

Of the 40 playlists I landed on, about 8 of them played me consistently. My impressions from Release Radar, Daylist, and Spotify Radio increased by around 15% since my last release three years ago, and my song has since reached 33 countries (my previous releases reached 6-8 countries). I've gained a decent amount of Instagram and TikTok followers from this release (totaling ~50 on each platform) by using my grief as a vessel for this song.

94.3 The Shark is the biggest rock station on Long Island, NY, where my mom and I are from. DJ Orlando had played my songs before, but it had been a few years since we'd last connected. He offered to play my new song twice on the station to honor my mother. She would have LOVED that, so I was down. DJ Orlando gave a lovely speech about my mom before playing the song, commemorating her wild, unstoppable nature. People began calling into the station to play it more often, despite it’s original air time at 10 pm on a Saturday. Watching her become a hometown hero on the radio warmed my soul. Whoa-ohh oh oh, on the radio…

________

This isn't necessarily an underdog story, a tale of pushing through insurmountable emotions to have a breakthrough hit or reclaim power. This is about normalizing that it's ok to do what you can. When working on your own timeline, you get to define your path. There is no right way, no one way, no one age or period of time where you must accomplish certain milestones. Prioritize your well-being, then reassess when you've got the energy.

Could I have done more by voraciously playlisting, hunting down every podcast that would take me, doing live sessions, and making flashy content? Yeah. Was that a reasonable approach, given the circumstances? No.

They played Crime of Passion on the radio in my mother's honor. The song was heard on every continent (except Antarctica). My coworkers walk around the office singing my song. Random people on the internet tell me they've listened to it five times today.

My point is, sometimes you have to do what feels best. It may not be exactly how you pictured it, but going with your gut is so much more important than fighting an algorithm.