“hapless romantics” (Single) – Official Liner Notes

On Friday, November 7th, 2025, I released a new single, “hapless romantics.” For anyone curious for more context, here’s a post unfogging some of my thoughts, feelings, reflections and details about the process of writing and constructing the song. You can think of it like an analog to the liner notes you occasionally find in the inner sleeve of a CD case or vinyl cover, or a “director’s cut” coming directly from the artist. The benefit is both to myself for archival purposes as well as to You, the audience, reader, cultural scavenger, etc., who might be interested in dilating their lens on the song and its creation.

Songwriting✍️:

The title, “hapless romantics,” didn’t arrive until later, after I began recording. What came first actually was the main guitar part, which itself went through several transformations. It spawned with a nice fingerpicking harmony that I discovered one day playing to myself, maybe two months ago, that resounded elegantly on my dreadnought acoustic. This part eventually evolved into the section that underlies “carry on” in the lyrics. During this incubation phase, everything outside of that riff had a completely different style and direction. At one point, there was an entirely alternative set of lyrics I scrapped out of intuition because they simply didn’t hit right. I needed to sit with it for awhile, sing to the moon, let ideas about structure break apart and drift along at their own pace. I felt like there needed to be more contrast.

Once the ideas began coalescing again, the arrangement and different sections found belonging in the backbone acoustic instrumental that flows throughout the body of the song. As a result of hearing myself practice the whole thing over and over again, the melody gradually appeared, as if eeked out like a genie from the hollow. I wanted to retain part of the lyrical style from the embers of the previous structure and then continue throwing them at the melody to see if anything would stick. After some weeks of doing this, I formed a sort of hypothesis of lyrics that I felt comfortable singing in front of an open mic audience, though the line between intention and words still felt too blurred; intention, in other words, my aim to create an emotional impact or imbue essence, rather than strictly add “meaning.” They needed some time to align.

drive into Nashville

drive back from Nashville

This process occured while I was in Nashville for my cousin’s wedding, where I spent the whole 8-hour car ride back scrawling out what would become the lyrics and cover art in the finished product ♬:

Submarine on cellophane sunsets
Sugar coat your lemon boots and
Dissolve in the rainfall
I was tempered by the tide
You were seasick by the sidelines

People come and people go
Slantwise
Wannabe
I’d rather be
Trying
You send shockwaves through my spine
I might blame it on the fault lines

Carry on
Roll it on and on
To sacrifice the extra mile
La da da da da da da dah
Bah dum bum bah dum
Roses on fire
Whoa, oh

Tethers and towers
Everlasting hours
Hold me
Closer
Whisper
Pistol flowers
Oh, ow, ow, ow, ow

How’d it get common, this dead comedy?
I’m howling at nothing and nobody’s laughing but me
Why does the foreman stay clear of his shed?
I’m missing the foreground and fixing to working instead

Long time gone

Daydream claims my wishes
Fog lights
Vesper sparrow vanishes
You could hardly miss ‘em
In this endless exposition

Sometimes
We float
Wayside
Left alone
Cells divide
Like Gemini
Cast aside
Pilcrow
You know
Nonsense
In context
In context

Recording and Production🎙️:

The foundation of the song was recorded in my bedroom this time (as opposed to the other room where I do my streams) 1) because the acoustics of the room dampen the sound better and 2) because the space itself felt more intimate and fitting for the song. This was one of the few songs I’ve recorded where I never use a click track or metronome to keep time. The guitar and voice are all one take, played intuitvely at the tempo that my fingers wanted to go, which in retrospect felt like a looser approach—freeing in some ways, limiting in others. More importantly, it kept the recording feeling personal and human, which is how I hoped it would come through in the production, though it can be difficult when dealing with perfectionism to refrain from doing one buntillion takes.

Acoustic guitar instrumental recording

Vocals+guitar full take

Bouncing those recordings to FL on my desktop, I then began coloring in the song with embellishments, adding layers of textures, harmonies (extra ooos and ahhs), and effects. Editing gave me the opportunity to scatter in some surprises in the structure and sonics. I realized that there were several caesuras throughout the piece, so it was a fun experiment figuring out how to treat each of them while retaining cohesion. The instruments I used for the song were acoustic guitar, vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar, synth organ, FX, drum samples, real drum kit, and ukulele. The ukulele was a last minute inclusion. You can hear it in the suffusion at the end of the song with those high-end sparkly spacey flavors. In the brief outro of the song, I used an old beat from 2019 laying around in my iPhone memos.

Mixing took place mainly while I was adding parts and figuring out which effects to use. Mastering in particular was a challenge, because Maximizer kept baking down the files with either really obvious limiter/compression volume changes or clipping and distortion. Finding the balance (doing it myself as a novice engineer) between a good loudness and audio artifacts involved a lot of tedium and many hours of acute, active listening.

Cover Art 🖼️:

The cover art is a simple sketch I drew (also in the car ride). The first picture is the original sketch, depicting some of the lines from the lyrics (“lemon boots, pistol flowers, towers”). I then took to MS Paint.NET to add vibrancy, color, grain, and the background photo for depth.

Seeing as we live in an increasingly short-form-oriented landscape, I also like to contribute a fun little looping canvas art for Spotify. Here’s the one I made for this song by overlayering a few video clips with varying degrees of opacity:

Thoughts, Feelings, Reflections🥀:

If I were asked what is the meaning behind “hapless romantics,” I might respond with one or both of the following sentences:
1) For those who are down on their luck and still feel lucky.
2) Don’t trip; you might fall head over heals for the ill of your fate.

These are not strict meanings nor definitions. More like subjunctive descriptions stemming from the prompt: what would hapless romantics mean if it had a meaning? As a whole, the song and lyrics are up for interpretation. Most of us are familiar with the English idiom, “hopeless romantics” as a way of representing a person’s quixotic expectations of love and life. For a song that draws on topographies of the heart, worldview in folly, and expressions of failure in the same breath, “hapless romantics” felt like a fitting title. At the same time, it feels strange to take an outsider’s perspective on my own work, one where I can’t really speak to the meaning. So, rather than analyzing or affirming anything, I prefer to let it stand on equal footing with respect to potential for interpretation. Such is the nature of art 🤷‍♂️.

You may ask, then, where is it coming from, if it isn’t necessarily “about” anything, i.e., a particular topic? All I know is that it’s coming from a place, because when I sing the lyrics and hear it played back, I feel something true. To elaborate, these could be the manifestations of my own experience as a striving artist stifled by industrial cogs, excessively enamored with becoming, sanctified by dreams, while facing harsher realities of those odds being less out of reach than they are continually out of favor. Repetitively falling short at the point of no return. The expectations we hold as hapless romantics might find purchase in the ghost of the Beats, all the spilled milk and meddling cynacism rolled up into one cigarillo, lit, and cached by the star-crossed fancy of artistic transmutation. Go at it once, twice, a million, it seems your spark is still in the hands of the croupier.

In any case, after all the time and effort, I’m satisfied with the result. Moreso relieved to finish another song, live another day, and pick up more experience and skills along the way. As always, one of the most rewarding aspects is the ability to share my work with the world and hopefully communicate something beyond the limits of spoken language by phrasing it in the language of music. Hopefully, providing transparency through these notes yields a level of insight into the intentions, history, and process behind the song. If you’ve listened to “hapless romantics” and have experiences, thoughts, or feedback you’d like to share, I would be grateful to hear them in the comments!

-This track was remastered on 12/1/25.