Singled Out: RODERIK's American Dream

Keavin Wiggins | 03-03-2022

Single art

New York alt-rockers RODERIK recently released their new single and video, "American Dream", and to celebrate we asked Jake Salazar to tell us about the song. Here is the story:

Prior to writing American Dream, I had written a bunch of songs that felt like we're stretching the boundaries of what I traditionally wrote as a songwriter. In that timespan, I wrote a few songs that had a more angsty and driven vibe to them, one being our first single, Save Me. That's why when I sat down to write American Dream, I felt like I wanted a bit of a return to my pop punk, alternative roots. Something with an old school emo, pop punk feel but with a modern twist. That's how I came about working in the electronic elements into the verse.

When it came to the vocals, they kind of just wrote themselves. The vocals in the verse follows the instrumental vibe quite closely with more of a reserved tonality, while the chorus picks up relatively similarly to the instrumentals. One thing that didn't come quite so easily was the third line in the melody of the chorus. For quite sometime, I felt like it needed a change as it originally followed the same melody as the first two lines, but once I incorporated the lift in the second note of the third line, it felt like it was leading up to something. That's how I built up the rest of the chorus. Line by line until the final breakthrough of the second half of the chorus.

All in all, I'm so proud of how this song came out as it still remains to be one of my favorite songs I've ever written. It embodies just about everything I've ever learned about songwriting in all my years of doing so. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here