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When Was The Last Time is a song I wrote in the summer of 2020 when everything had started to become quite overwhelming – not just because of the pandemic but also because in 2019 I had sort of re-started my journey as an indie artist after having been on hiatus for two years and when I came back, I was so fortunate to find the most wonderful community of other musicians along the way! I have met amazing indie artists on this journey and the vast majority of them are really kind and supportive and also extremely talented! I started to discover new music every day and loved every minute of it! There was a whole new realm of music just waiting for me to be listened to! And yet, with listening to new music constantly and trying to catch up on every new release, playlist, video, radio show, and other stuff I felt a bit overloaded, and at times I thought my head was going to explode, even if everything was just fantastic.
So, after a while, I began asking myself when WAS the last time I deliberately listened to a record? I also thought of my teenage years when I bought records and CDs and had them on repeat and really got familiar with them before I moved on to new music. So that memory sparked the first line of the song.
I then wondered when I had last done other things that really matter to me, like reading a book, writing a letter to a friend, just being still for a moment, learning a song by heart...and I realized that while neglecting all of these things, I had stopped feeling myself. I felt burnt out and needed a break. And as wonderful as the indie community is, social media can be distracting and you need to find time for yourself sometimes. All of these emotions found their way into the song. That being said – I haven't lost my passion for discovering new music whatsoever! I just need to take a break from time to time knowing it's ok when I get to it a bit later so I don't burn out.
I am so happy to present three versions of the song on this Mini EP. First, there is the pop-rock version which was arranged and produced by my friend Nathan Peter Illes and honestly, it makes me feel like a rockstar! It is very different from what I have released before but I really like it and I hope you do, too. However I can't really forget my folksy – or rather chamberfolksy roots – so I decided to also release a chamberfolk version of the same song and I am so grateful that my friend Alison Reynolds wrote such a beautiful cello arrangement for this one and recorded it. Both versions are very different from one another and I couldn't say which one I like better. And just for the fun of it really I also recorded an unplugged version of the song. I think it is interesting as you can compare the raw version to the produced versions and see how the song took shape.
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