“I Used to Rule the World,” the opening track of my upcoming album, was born in one of my least favorite places in the world, a place I don’t often visit: 

The comments section of the New York Times. 

I had just finished reading an article about some powerful person that had just destroyed something beautiful - again. I took a rare peek at the comments section and was stopped immediately at the first comment I saw: “I used to rule the world.”

The demo portion of the song happened very quickly. Twenty minutes after reading the article, I had a first draft in my notebook, complete with chords and melody. 

I took my notebook to Ableton, the software I use to produce demos, and within a week, I sent the demo to my producer, Nico at Sweet Spot Studio. The note I included with the demo was that I wanted the song to sound like a “sunrise over a dystopian hellscape.” (I’m just fun like that.) Here are the first few bars of the demo I originally sent to Nico:

Nico transformed the demo’s sound into exactly what I was looking for. Listening to the first couple notes of the first draft he returned to me, I knew this song would be something special:

My favorite part is how the third verse, the emotional climax of the song, developed over time. At first, we tried Enya-style vocals, but the vocals sounded distant and almost detached from any emotion:

We needed more intimate vocals to convey deep feelings of grief, regret, remorse - the “what have I done?” moment that I imagined while reading the comments section of that NYTimes article. So we temporarily eliminated the lead vocals (backing vocals stayed) and focused on the instrumentation, with a focus on strings at the end. (Listen for the tympani!)

We added lead vocals; I thought the song sounded complete. I was satisfied, but Nico wasn’t. I woke up to text suggesting that we add synthetic elements as a nod to the rest of the album.

We added another layer of lead vocals on the third verse; Nico added an EDM-style swell, followed by silence, then additional layers of strings. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the subtle sound of broken glass: illusion shattering.

This song, the first song on the album of twelve, is a flash forward. We get a peek into the future with IUTRTW. Songs two through eleven tell the story leading to song twelve, the mirror song to IUTRTW, told from the other perspective.

I love the way IUTRTW introduces the album; we set the stage for more. 

💙