Singled Out: SJae's Acid Rain

SJae (aka Sammy Jay) tells us about her song "Acid Rain" featuring Hilaire, a single from her new collaborative EP "First". Here is the story:

Acid Rain was initially written on piano in my old apartment off the sunset strip in LA, with one of my best girlfriends, Hilaire. At the time she was completely haunted by memories of her ex and the song became a cathartic process to try to articulate all those insular feelings that get triggered off the smallest things, even when you think you have moved on from a person. It's almost like emotional PTSD, where you keep reliving experiences, you get that awful tightness in your solar plexus, like a deadweight rock in your gut that you can't shift.

Just when you think you are over that person, you run into them, or see a post about them, and you get so overwhelmed by a rush of feelings ... and then the ensuing compulsion to keep going over things in your head, imagining what they're doing and hoping no one else could compare to you. It's torturous, but we all go through it right?

Musically, the song didn't start out as an 80s synthwave vibe at all. It went through a few different versions before I got to that. I started off with piano and vocal, then tropical house, then I had to leave it alone for a while because I didn't know what to do with it! I was experimenting with programming 80s style tracks and considering making it a theme for my record and it suddenly hit me that if we change the tempo, we could rock Acid Rain in this style. Sven Atterton, a super talented artist and producer in the UK, helped me mix it and added some guitars and we landed here. I think the chords and the 80s synth sounds all fit into that emotional 80s pop feel that used to grab people so emotionally in those days. Now if I can only get hold of a genuine Yamaha DX7 lol!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself right here!

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