The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,15
a one-word reply. After that I didn’t get a second to breathe until after dinner. At 7:00 p.m. Australia time, it was 1:00 a.m. for Sloan.
When I woke up Saturday morning I felt for my phone on the nightstand. I typed in my message, barely awake.
Jason: It’s a new day and I get a new question.
The jumping dots didn’t appear, and when the phone rang in my hand, it was Ernie.
“Good morning, Down Under. I’m guessing by your context clues that you haven’t checked your email today?” I could tell by the wind coming through the phone that he was in his coupé with the top down. “I’m going to need you to not lose your shit. It’s a fifteen-hour flight to Australia and I can’t be there to chokehold you off a ledge.”
Fuck. I sat up in bed and put him on speaker. I opened the email and took one look at the attachment and shook my head. “No. I write my own lyrics. I sing my own lyrics, Ernie.”
“I know. I know you do and this is a giant load of steaming horseshit, but we talked about this.”
“We talked about someone else writing my music?” I squinted at the screen. “What the hell is this? It looks like a pop song. They rhymed sweetie with teeny. I’m not singing this crap.”
A horn blared through the phone, and he told someone to go fuck themselves. Ernie drove like a madman. “Look, you need a strong crossover hit. I like indie rock. It’s nice to listen to while I smoke a joint when I’m hiding from the wife, but that stuff doesn’t go platinum. If you wanna get Don Henley famous like you said you wanted to, crossover hits for mass market is how you do that.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said. “But I was supposed to write the music.”
“Well, we tried it your way. You haven’t written anything in six months and your label’s getting itchy. They wanna know they’re gonna get a return on their investment. You’re in bed with these people now, it’s time to tickle their balls a little. Lie to them. Tell them what they want to hear, that you’ll roll over and sing what they ask you to, then write something that’ll blow their fucking socks off and bait and switch them when you have it. Done.”
I dragged a hand down my face. “Fuck,” I mumbled. “And if I can’t write something that’ll blow their fucking socks off? Then what?”
“Then it’s two songs on an album of ten and you do whatever the hell you want with the rest of it. Look, you and your label have the same objectives. To sell records. If you can’t come up with the material to do that, they’re gonna come up with the material for you. It’s a partnership. I know you’re an artist and this is your medium and the very suggestion that you sing something that you didn’t write feels like picking which STD you want, but you went with the big boys and now this is big-boy time. It’s time to put on your big-boy pants.” Two swift honks. “You grin and bear it, and you know why? Because you are a goddamn professional.” Another long, blaring horn.
I stared at my reflection in the black TV on the dresser at the end of my bed. I couldn’t write. I was having some sort of lyrical performance anxiety. I’d never had to compose on demand before, and knowing they were waiting for it felt like an energy suck. I’d cranked out the soundtrack, but just barely, and the best stuff on the album was the three songs I’d written with Lola Simone—and that was mostly her. I’d taken those two weeks hiking in New Zealand hoping the solitude would kick-start my creativity again, but not even that had done it for me.
I wasn’t opposed to collaborating. I wasn’t even entirely opposed to singing something I didn’t write—but the song had to be great. It had to sound like me, and it had to be amazing. And that’s not what this was.
I pinched my temples. “I hate this.”
“Yeah, well, let the money and fame console you.”
I glanced again at the lyrics and cringed. I didn’t even like the idea of saying I’d sing this. But what choice did I have? I didn’t want to look uncooperative, and it wasn’t like I had anything else to give them.