When I was making this song, I couldn't find a way to justify keeping it tucked away until it was ready to roll out with another set of music that I have been working on for quite some time. I was talking to my friend Carlee about it; I was genuinely conflicted. This was back in about late March when I told her - and a few other people - that I had "a really great song" that I was working on.

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I had went on an 8PM run, showered up, enjoyed dinner, and then went to bed. But I never fell asleep. I was feeling really down. I really just wanted someone to hold onto for the night. And whenever I can't sleep, I always just go and I start to write some music. But I went and I began to dig through my notes - dozens of songs, lines of lyrics, small little voice notes that I have recorded over the years (there's probably well over a couple dozen - HAHA) and I remembered a song I wrote in 2020 amidst the mania of the pandemic. That was a really tough year. I had left California and returned to Colorado right before the outbreak of COVID, and I wrote some really heavy music. I think a lot of people were going through a really rough time, and I think a lot of musicians wrote some really depressing stuff. I know I did. And I found a piano melody that I remember writing in 2020 about four years later, and it had this weirdly romantic, dancelike essence to it. But it was assigned to a separate, heavy song.

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But, fuck it. I played it back and forth on the piano, altered the key of the song, and then came up with the opening piano of "The Feeling", my second song.

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I remember playing the opening chords several times and humming the melody. "I'm standing in the corner, staring at my baby," and I'm instantly flashed to a nightclub, completely trashed, and completely enamored by the dreamy stature of a man that becomes the most beautiful creature in the room and, possibly, the world. He walks over to me, completely trashed, but so equally consumed by my presence.

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It was a really conflicting concept to me. I'm not huge on partying or clubbing. I literally enjoy going home and watching a movie with friends and sharing a few drinks and a pizza. That sounds heavenly. But I remembered this feeling, in 2021, where I wanted to go out and dance on my 21st birthday, when I first began writing music outside of what I was originally intending to do as an artist. And I rode with this thumping house beat that was drowned out by a synthesized vocal and a really gorgeous, ethereal synth just sitting in the background. And I recalled a clock ticking from my original 2020 demo of the opposite song I wrote that I began to steal concepts from.

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"I'd go 'round and 'round with him forever" is the lyric that sticks with me with this song. It's the same melody from the song I wrote in 2020 with significantly different lyrics. It was the night I wrote this song, back in March, that I knew that this song was something special to me. It became less of a song about myself and more about the general idea of what it's like to be gay in your 20s. It's confusing; it is really, really confusing, and even a bit demoralizing.

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I created my original vocal demo and sent it to a collaborator of mine (more on him another time) and he said that he enjoyed it. I shared a snippet with a few people, and they liked it. I sent the first recording to a mixing engineer and he liked it a lot. I re-recorded the final vocals and sent it to another mixing engineer - and he rejected the song. He said that the song went against what he found "moral and right", and then continued to say that I was "allowed to make whatever I pleased, but that it will always have an impact on others" - essentially revealing that the song made him uncomfortable because it is an incredibly gay song.

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I reached out to my previous mixing engineer Gastón Loizeau, who did my horrendously engineered song "You and I" (which I have re-recorded, by the by because it is a bop) and he took the song in with grace. We worked back and forth and finished this cut. He told me that the production and the engineering was a monumental leap in quality compared to the other songs he had heard. I felt really proud right then and there. Haha!

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I shared the final version with my Mom. She loved it - but she didn't love the explicit lyrics. She's a bit prudish when it comes to music, I discovered. I told her "You're not ready for Jersey Club Stephen" and she shook her head, perhaps a bit entertained by the idea of her son making more explicit music.

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I've learned through this song that I don't care if a song is 7 1/2 minutes long. If it has to be, it has to be. It has two halves and I cried every time for months whenever I played it or heard it. The very first clip I posted about it on Instagram in April was recorded at my sister's house on her piano (horridly out of tune), and I cried then, too. It feels like a story; it is a story - at least to me. I see so much of myself in that song.

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I don't anticipate anything from my music. I don't anticipate any sort of applause or acclaim; I don't anticipate a lick of it even bleeding into the general consciousness of the public at all. I made it for myself.

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I've talked so many times over the past few years about the big project. I've reminded myself to be patient with my growth and with my creativity, because the universe's timing is always right. This song came together, miraculously, in a moment when I needed to believe in myself and see myself for who I was. I hear this song now and feel full of pride that I conceived something that I think is so heartfelt, sexy, intimate, and fantastical; I am not a polished pop musician, and I don't have to be. But I have really been chipping away at this project that has been a very, very long time coming. It ties together with work I conceived all the way back in 2019. But since then, I've just wanted to dance.

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"The Feeling" is out this Friday. I hope you'll give all 7 1/2 minutes of it a listen. Specifically the explicit version. That's the original version with a glimpse of "Jersey Club Stephen".

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XO