well well well
It took me 2.5 years from writing this song to finally releasing it.
I remember walking home from work at the end of 2020, being fed up with this whole social media, corona and being a musician - situation. I felt like, as a person that performs a lot on stage, is very active on social media and in general a happy and outgoing person, people were often assuming that I must be living such "a perfect life". Which might be true in some way - I love my life and I live a very privileged and amazing life. But there's shitty moments too and I felt like I wasn't being taken serious, whenever I felt really sad about certain situations. So as I was walking home from work, I saw people that I knew, but I didn't wanna say hello and pretend that I was fine - so kept my head down and walked on the other side of the street. Instead of saying hi I started writing the lyrics of "Perfect Life" and as soon as I arrived home, the lyrics were finished. I sat down, took my guitar and finished writing the song. At first, it was based on a voice note on my phone. I imported that recording into my laptop and added vocal harmonies and some pianos. Ever since, this song's been very very close to my heart and I very much enjoyed playing it live at every show. One year after writing the song, I decided to re-record the base of the song. So I went to my parents' house, sat down in my childhood bed, took my dad's old guitar and recorded the song on a field recorder. After recording, I added new vocal harmonies and pianos again. I don't know why, but it took over a year and trying to record many different versions of the song, to decide going for that raw imperfect field recorder version. Now, in March 2023, this song is finally ready to go out into the big big world and be released as my fourth single.
At concerts, I use this song to talk about social media and how important it is to be aware that not everything you see on social media, is the "complete truth". That includes myself. Be aware of what you're consuming online. Social media can be an amazing, beautiful and creative place, but it can also lead to comparing yourself too much and even feeling shit about yourself. Be aware of that.
For the single cover I had this idea of portraying myself in a "perfect situation" - like a prom queen or beauty pageant winner. I wanted to show, that even though everything might look perfect on the outside, not everything has to be perfect on the inside. I am very very happy to have worked with Johanna Lea Lassnig on this cover - she's truly amazing and I had a super fun time shooting these pics!
As always, huge thanks go out to Fridolin Krenn, who did the mix & master of this song! Even though it's based on a very raw field recorder version, it was still very important to blend everything together nicely and Frido did a great job (as he always does).
