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  • Kai Straw

Once Upon a Time..

Alright, so, my new song drops this Friday (tomorrow!), and I wanted to drop some random thoughts about the song, where my head was at – all that.


It’s called ‘Once Upon a Time in the Suburbs’ and it’s probably the most experimental track I’ve released since going at music full time. I’m not expecting everyone to love it, but for a few of you, it may be really special. It’s about my time living in Fairfield, CA, right before I moved to San Francisco. I partied a lot. I was insecure. I sought validation from everyone but me. My memories of that time are bittersweet. I love the friends I had, but my state of mind was so screwed up. I was such an open nerve.


Fast forward to now – for the past few months or so, I’ve had a pretty difficult time due to issues in my personal life. Though I still made music through it, I was just struggling. That can happen, and will happen again, because that’s life. I was going through it when I wrote ‘Bleeding Out in the 415’, and ‘Show Them Who It Made You’, and this one. And I felt the most torn up while writing this one.


That’s probably why it’s the most scatter-brained of the three. It leaps from genre to genre, influence to influence. It’s fractured. It’s soothing. It’s explosive. It’s ugly-beautiful. It’s a love-hate letter to a period in my life where I had to grow or die, essentially. And now I see that I wrote it because that’s what these past few months were for me. It’s like I was expressing my current struggles and using my past as a prism.


Every time I feel deeply challenged, when I feel lost and out of control, I see it like I’m being given an opportunity to grow tools within myself that weren’t there before. If I was never as lost as I was in Fairfield, or had I not struggled these past three months, I would be lesser for it. So if you, right now, are going through it. If you’re in the dark. If you’re lost. Know that on the other side of all you’re going through is a clearer, more resilient version of yourself. Don’t give up. Every struggle is a cocoon.


See you Friday. 💀 🐛 🦋

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