Gothenburg-based bedroom-pop artist mimi bay recently unveiled her tender new single 'really'. The dreamy track, which is an exploration of unrequited love, showcases the 18-year-old's storylike lyricism. To celebrate the release of 'really', she takes us through the single below.
I wrote ‘really'… in late-August 2018. I was just playing around with some chords and melodies. I think a lot about who I was that summer; how I stayed up all night playing around on my computer making songs just for myself. I’ve always thought of 'really' as a bit of a silly song; it doesn’t say much and it’s cliché – she really likes him but he doesn’t see that she really likes him – but there’s something about the song that I resonated with, which kept me coming back to it.
The story behind ‘really' is… not that long… I just wanted to comment on how we sometimes tend to like and think about people we’ve only seen online and how they probably, most likely, aren’t even aware of our existence. I also wanted to say something about how easy it is to idolise these people because you don’t know them; sometimes only knowing that ‘He’s kind of tall and he plays guitar’ is enough…
My favourite lyric is… “She wishes she felt differently, her mind is kind of messy” It’s a waste of time thinking about this person that’s not in your life when you’re so occupied with everything else going on; a feeling of wanting to be present and focus on reality.
It was made… through experimentation, to create chilled, smooth soundscapes.
My main inspiration was… I’m not sure I was consciously inspired by anyone, the song just kind of happened. Musically, I took inspiration from the feeling of the chords and harmonies I’d been experimenting with, then just went with that. I listen to and get inspiration from a lot different artists but I find it hard to make things sound anything like what I listen to. This might be a good thing but it’s almost frustrating since I like the music I listen to.
It sounds best when… you decide to slow down for a little while.
Listen to 'really' by mimi bay below:
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