Pop songs, tardigrades, and vulnerability hangovers

Several people have asked me what my newest single, Higher Ground, is about. In a recent radio interview, I described it as a ‘sort of’ love song. To delve any deeper felt painfully cheesy and so I settled on the ‘sort of’ to soften the sentimentality of it. The truth is, Higher Ground is a love song in its purest form.

After a hiatus from music that lasted over a decade, I found myself easing back into songwriting. I was being gentle about it. I was noodling on my guitar and I thought: maybe I should remove the pressure, have some fun, write a pop song? about love? which is what all pop songs are about, surely, in a roundabout, circular way? I have to laugh about it now because I really really tried. I tried to be playful, to write in a major chord progression, to be cheeky and loose and channel my inner popstar (turns out I don’t have one). After a few attempts, Higher Ground emerged.

I write love songs in the morning
I write love songs in the day
I’ll sing to you tomorrow if
I make it through today
I’ve been holding out for you baby
my arms a solid arc
Tell me you don’t believe it?
Life’s gone and fucked me up
So I’ll say it loud
You bring me to higher ground

Many years ago I suffered a devastating blow that left me so emotionally fragile that my partner had to pick up the pieces. It’s hard to express how much kindness, patience, and love he showed me over the years it took to put myself back together. I’m not sure what the biggest surprise was… that I had the ability to break so easily? That I would never be the same again? That Andy has the resilience of a tardigrade?

The writer in me needs every other writer to know that I spent an hour trying to find the perfect metaphor for Andy. I googled patient animals (they’re all predators). I googled long lasting, reliable, ‘forever’ objects (cast-iron pots aren’t interesting or romantic), and then I began to search up things that are resilient. That’s when I stumbled upon the tardigrade, which made me laugh out loud (photo provided below). Apparently they’re among the most resilient animals known, able to survive extreme conditions, the highest or lowest of temperatures, air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, starvation. They can even survive in outer space. I don’t mean to be so self-deprecating, but I have often felt like outer space: big and black and hard-to-reach…

2024 was a big year for me. I’d made a decision to be vulnerable, which meant a lot of things, but mainly it meant getting on stage again, writing music again, sharing my life on social media. It meant dealing with my vulnerability hangovers (these are ever-present and consistent, a great paradox of my life, showing up every time I do something meaningful). Before any gig I am a total brat and not in the cool way. I’m the kind that lies horizontally and can’t get up, that talks incessantly because I’m in a state of expectant panic. I make Andy carry my guitar case, my leads, my drink bottle, and also fistfuls of toilet paper so that I can shove them in my armpits to soak up all my nervous sweat. I even have the nerve to give them back to him, totally drenched, and then get up on stage to sing a love song about him. Once, when I forgot the lyrics, Andy shouted them up at me from the crowd.

See my mother in the kitchen
Her daughter by the door
And you, baby, were in the backcountry
Our baby on the floor
I’m a thousand different women
Dressed in shades of red
And we won’t win this race we’re in
Just like I always said

The second verse is so much harder for me to write about. But I’ll think about it… maybe next month? For now, I just wanted to double down on my ode to love, to tardigrades, to vulnerability, and to my husband, who lifts me to higher ground.

xx MT