?? The Official “Astronaut” Virtual Experience ??‍??

Day 6

Meet, ‘Part Time’

Behind The Song

I’d like to take you with me into the writing room…

Before we walk in to the session though, I want to tell you about how I approach the craft in general.

Everyone seems to approach writing music differently but the way I approach writing songs depends on what inspires me first. Usually it’s a lyric or a melody. As you can tell, I get inspired about all kinds of different places and feelings, but I’m also inspired when I’m in different places too. Driving down the road, walking down the street, in the middle of a conversation…though I try to hold on to those for later. You never know when inspiration will strike!

I’m sure you agree that the beauty about art is that you can take any experience and express that in your own way. For me, that’s through song. You can do this with instrumental music, but I love that there is an extra layer of gravity with words. I think feelings can be expressed in layers, one on top of the other – or stripped down to nothing at all – and the music supports how your story is told.

That being said, there are many things that inspire me, but living in Nashville taught me that crafting a song is a whole other process.

That’s where cowriting comes in!

While I had cowritten many songs while living in Nashville, I ended up writing all of the songs on this album by myself because I was away from my songwriting community in Nashville while on tour at the time. Some of the songs/ideas happened to be fully realized without the need for collaboration partly because I wanted to express my perspective about my travels in a personal way.

But this song you’ll hear today was cowritten with a friend of mine, Jesse Isley when I was home from touring. He and I met when I was at school at University of South Carolina studying music. We were living in the same city and decided to move to Nashville around the same time.

The idea sparked when I was driving in my car and I thought of this melody in the chorus: ‘I, I, I don’t even wanna try/Not gonna be your nine to five, if you wanna be with me full time.’ I pulled over, pulled out my voice memo app and sang it in the phone acapella. It felt like in needed to have an upbeat soulful vibe and I thought of my friend Jesse, an amazing guitar player and songwriter.

I called him up and said ‘Hey! I’ve got this idea, would you like to write?’ He was in on it so we met for the session with our acoustic guitars, and we started with my chorus melody idea.

From there, we started talking about one of my songs “More Than Maybe” (from my previous album ‘Lady with a Rocket’) and the story that inspired that song – a relationship that ended with a frustrating ‘maybe’ after a ‘do you want to be with me?’ We decided to continue from this perspective of someone talking to their partner, expressing their frustrations, and landing at ‘Not gonna be your 9 to 5/If you wanna be with me full time.’

We wanted the song to center around the catchiness of the chorus, so we kept the verses like a personal conversation and let them flow as naturally as possible into the choruses.

In the bridge, Jesse played the chords going into the bridge that I wouldn’t thought of, had we not collaborated, and I started singing the melody over those chords. We started jamming out at the end singing harmonies when it comes in with ‘Not gonna be, not gonna be…’

I don’t remember it being a very long session. Sometimes writing songs can come to life in 30 minutes, several hours, days…or even years. But this one came naturally to us in a couple of hours. So we were thankful because it doesn’t always happen that way!

Ultimately, we worked together to figure out the best ideas we could think of that would support the song overall and I really enjoyed singing it. I had a feeling I’d want to continue singing and performing this song.

I enjoy collaborating, and I love this beautiful part of the creative process. ?

Listen

Lyrics

You say you wanna have a conversation
But you don’t have a thing to say
You’ve been running out of words and money
But you still want me to stay

You try just hard just to get it
Right now when you want it
Do you love me for me
Or convenience of my company

Chorus:
I don’t even wanna try
Not gonna be your 9 to 5
If you wanna be with me full time

You could use your imagination
To try and meet me halfway

You try hard just to get it
But it’s your fault, cause you won’t admit it
Do you love me for me
Or the convenience of my company?

[Chorus]

Bridge:
When you tell that you’ll love me but you just need a little time
So I tell you baby that my lovin it’s not part time