CALIFORNIA FOREVER - OUT NOW
After 6 months of hard work, countless hours spent engineering, social media campaigns, big budget expenses and field work, my song California Forever finally came out and has been released on all major streaming services.
Since the song doesn’t have any lyrics, I kind of saw it necessary to accompany it with a music video that reflected my journey of healing (I’m not gonna delve into this, as it’s mentioned in my past blogs): gotta say, the video looks professional and intense, thanks to Tom Villarreal (the videographer)’s vision and some acting (had to dust off my old theater chops) on the end of all parties involved.
One thing I’m a big fan of is how in such video, there is a constant contrast between the “beauty” and “grit”: you see flowers and aerial views of Long Beach and its palm trees, but you also see blood and violence. It was necessary to use such means to depict the struggle I’ve been through: such contrast is reflected in the music as well, as many elements such as orchestra, piano and electronic drums are somewhat “polished” but I kept the bass somewhat “metallic” and “naturally gritty”.
I do need to give credit to all the people who worked with me in the making of this piece though: Mike Post from MooseCat Recording (who I tracked and mixed the single with), Sebastian Chang (who transcribed the orchestra parts into score sheets), Felipe “Milk” Santana (who rendered the orchestra parts I composed and made them sound alive) and Evren Göknar from EGM Music (who mastered the song in stereo).
For the video: I want to thank Tom Villarreal (director/videographer), and the actors: Lily Misfit (bar girl one), Addie Alonso (bar girl two), Dave Castillo (bartender) and Jabe Amato (fighting punter). I also want to thank Chris Sweeney from RightMealz and Phil Trani for allowing me to use their locations for filming. It was a lot of fun shooting such an intense bar fight scene, and I’m very happy it turned out super realistic, so much in fact I had to cut it from social media posts, as various Community Guidelines found it not appropriate for the platform’s audience. The video is still fully available on YouTube and on this website.
What happens now?
As aforementioned, a lot of resources and expenditure went into the realization of this project, and as expected, I will need to recover financially through some hard work, since as I’m not a signed artist, I had to pay for everything out of my pockets, and I’m pretty drained as I write this entry.
What will follow will be promotion through third parties and possibly some collaborations with magazines, radio stations and other media partners.
All of this to maximize the attention on this song, I worked so hard for it to get out, I want it to be heard, but again, I don’t expect any miracles.
In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy it, and you’re all more than welcome to get in touch with me and leave some feedback!
Love
Simone
