don't trust a perfect person and don't trust a song that's flawless

"lane boy" by twenty one pilots & career choices

For some reason, in the last week I’ve really gone back to my Twenty One Pilots era. Sometimes I like to listen to all their albums in chronological order, and sometimes I like to shuffle all the songs up, and just listen to them as they come.

Blurryface was the album that got me into Twenty One Pilots, and one of my favorite songs off it is “Lane Boy.” It’s a song that strips away some of the storytelling and characters from the rest of the album, and is just about the band addressing their career and songwriting directly, which is something I always love when artists do. Get meta about the experience of creating music, of having crowds of people look up to you, of dealing with industry politics! I want to hear all about it!

In general, I love hearing creative people talk about their careers, and really get into the nitty gritty of why they made certain choices or how different factors influenced the direction they went in. I want to open the books. I want to know about the projects they took just because they needed the money; I want to know about the thing that blew them up that they didn’t expect; I want to know about the missed opportunity they still regret. (This is another reason I love celebrity memoirs, when they get into this kind of stuff.)

So, I thought I’d write out a few of my own thoughts on creative careers — not just mine, but in general — using “Lane Boy” as a frame.

They say, “stay in your lane, boy, lane, boy”/But we go where we want to/They think this thing is a highway, highway/But will they be alive tomorrow?

A big thing you hear a lot about is “typecasting,” or basically being put into a certain box as an artist. It’s hard, because you’re creating art but you’re also creating a product, and the fact of the matter is that it’s much easier to market something that stays consistent. And consistency isn’t always a bad thing! I think of Sarah Dessen’s books, for example, where they do stay in a certain lane and there’s something so comforting about that. When I want a summer coming-of-age story, Sarah Dessen always delivers.

But then I was really inspired by Silvia Moreno-Garcia when I read through all of her books last year. The way she seems to just do whatever the fuck she wants — horror? Noir? Crime? Speculative? Gothic? Romance? Historical? She can do anything. There’s a consistency to her approach that feels so good, so like YES I am reading a Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel right now, and yet she seems to constantly branch out into new genres or cross genres in ways you might not expect. When I had that chance to attend that group dinner with her this was what I MOST wanted to interrogate her about, every single choice, any time she got pushback, how she’s made the journey to where she is now. But I was on my best behavior lol.

The “but will they be alive tomorrow?” line always gets me, because one thing that’s kinda WILD when you think about it is that a lot of these top-level, “this is what the market wants” decisions are made by . . . a select group of people. Their tastes can dictate SO MUCH of what gets greenlit, what gets support, what influences our culture. (This is a big reason why discussions of diversity at EVERY level of any industry are so important, because if there isn’t diversity at those top levels then it’s easy to see how those biases trickle down.)

If it was our way, we’d have a tempo change every other time change/’Cause our minds change on what we think is good

Sometimes you want to do something a little different, or change things up, because that’s part of the playful joy of creating art. But sometimes your audience doesn’t make that leap with you, or the people in charge don’t want you fucking with the formula. One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as I read various books is how many times I’m unsure if I like the way the author approached a certain thing, or if I understand a character’s motivations, or if I would’ve vibed with the book better if it had been written in a different POV or with a different structure or what have you. And yet I truly am so fucking grateful that the book was written the exact way it was. I don’t need every book to be written the way I would’ve done it. That would be boring as hell. Many books were not written FOR ME and yet I’m grateful that I had the chance to read the story the way the author wanted to tell it.

Which is to say, I guess, that’s it totally valid to listen to a song and say, “I don’t like that tempo change every other time change; it’s confusing.” And yet I love the idea that someone would do that, I love thinking about how that choice affects the song.

If it wasn’t for this music I don’t know how I would have fought this

The current WIP I’m working on is very much about the creative process, and about that tension between creating something for yourself and creating something for other people. (It’s about music, not writing per se, but a lot of the experiences and emotions are the same.) The act of creating in and of itself really does mean a lot to me. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s pulled me out of some of my darkest times. And consuming other people’s art has DEFINITELY saved my life multiple times. Pop songs, romance novels, TV shows, I don’t care, this shit matters.

Regardless, all these songs I’m hearing are so heartless/Don’t trust a perfect person and don’t trust a song that’s flawless

I’ve probably said this before, but there’s nothing I love more than something that just feels a little . . . off. It’s not even a flaw per se. It’s just a rough edge on something that’s otherwise smooth that makes you stop and go, why’s that there? I feel like I can see the humanity behind the creation in a way that’s really endearing. For example, I will tell you that there are technically FOUR Third Eye Blind references in The Art of Catching Feelings, including one that is very obvious, I promise if you’ve listened to the radio in the last twenty years you’ll catch it. I went back and forth quite a bit in edits, like — should I keep this? It was just a way for me to have fun as I was writing. I can practically hear the voice in my head of someone saying it is extremely weird and cringe for me to have these random Third Eye Blind references in this book. (They are all in sex scenes — haha!). But honestly, I had a lot of fun putting them in there, they spark joy for ME, call them my rough edges if you want but I’m happy they survived.

Honest, there’s a few songs on this record that feel common/I’m in constant confrontation with what I want and what is poppin’ in the industry/it seems to me that singles on the radio are currency

This kind of lyric will always make me pore over the track listing and try to figure out which songs on the record feel “common” to Tyler Joseph. (“Tear in My Heart?” It’s a good song, but maybe a bit more “typical” so it could fit the bill. “Ride?” Or am I just a little biased against that song because for a while my local alternative station was like, “What if we played ‘Ride’ or, in the alternative, ‘Ride’?”)

But that line about singles on the radio being currency is so true, because often you don’t get to do the innovative and interesting stuff and put it out for a mass audience if you haven’t proven yourself to that audience by releasing more palatable, popular stuff first. This is where I could give you my essay on Paramore’s career and how they’ve successfully managed that kind of creative growth alongside mass appeal but THAT’S FOR ANOTHER DAY.

Forget sanity, forget salary, forget vanity, my morality/If you get in between someone I love and me/You’re gonna feel the heat of my cavalry

This part of the song is hella earnest, which is a quality I like about Twenty One Pilots’ music. It’s also the part I’ll play over and over in my car, trying to practice to get all the words right. It feels like such an accomplishment when I do! But for me a lot of it comes down to — at the end of the day, a lot of this shit doesn’t matter. I mean, it does. It’s our careers, it’s our livelihood, it’s our reputations, it’s important!!! But sometimes if I find myself getting too overwhelmed by all the big picture stuff I try to take it down as small as possible, and just think about my actual real daily life. My family. My health. My league in Duolingo (Obsidian right now, MOTHERFUCKER).

Currently reading . . . NOTHING holy shit!!!!!!!! This has never happened to me!!!!!!!!!!! The problem is that I’m trying to write an absolutely WILD amount of words per day right now, and so I just literally don’t have time for much else. I am down to the wire. My romance book club is talking about That Time I Got Drunk & Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming this week, though, and I’m excited to dive in because this book looks SO fun and is also a slim little volume (*a line of thankful praying hands emojis*)

watching . . . As a person who CLAIMS to be meh on a lot of sci-fi . . . I am watching not one but TWO space shows! I am two episodes away from finishing all the For All Mankind that’s available, and then we’re watching The Expanse as a family. (A rewatch for the adults, technically, since my husband and I got through every season except the last one.) A niche way I love to enjoy shows like this is to talk about the civil litigation I think would arise out of various things that happen on them. With what’s going down in For All Mankind I cooked up a full multi-party lawsuit with cross-defendants and counter-defendants and personal liability versus indemnity claims and WOW this would make for some nerdy fanfic.

listening to . . . I really have just had Twenty One Pilots on shuffle the last few days! Today I rode out on my bike with “Johnny Boy” in my earbud, and rode back with “Ode to Sleep” playing. Perfect soundtrack. (Also, by the way, a bike update! I officially made my 2024 goal of biking to the grocery store for coffee creamer all by myself! I know, I know, it’s the smallest possible thing, but it felt good. I also totally WIPED OUT the other day when my shoelace got caught in my pedal and I didn’t swear off biking ever again, which felt like an accomplishment that was even bigger in a way.)

preordering . . . Next Tuesday, January 30, Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday releases. One thing about being more “plugged in” to book news sometimes is that you can hear about books WAYYYYY before they are even close to being available, and that’s what happened to me with this one. I remember reading a tweet about it FOREVER ago, like maybe when the deal got announced or before that even? And I was like OMG WHAT AN INCREDIBLE CONCEPT and ran to Goodreads to make sure I added it to my “Want to Read” list only to find that it wasn’t there! Then I randomly thought about it a year later and was like, wait, was that a fever dream?!? Isn’t there a book where — And I had to look it up all over again. Which is all to say, it’s finally going to be here, it’s going to be on shelves in a form that can be read, no I haven’t read it yet but I have been anticipatin’.