What’s the story behind “Crime 2 Lie”?
I wrote this at a time when I didn’t really have anything going on in my life worth writing about. It was the first time I wrote something I didn’t experience but was writing based on the feeling rather than the experience. I just made up a story from the feeling of jealousy. I wrote from what I think is a universal experience and from things my friends have said or things that have happened to me before.
How did the track come to life?
I had recorded the song two years ago before it came out, and I wrote it in my senior year of high school. I didn’t record it until the spring of my senior year. I then went back to it two years later when I was living in Nashville last year and worked with a producer named Tony Esterly. I had a different direction that I wanted to go in, and this is the first song where I really got to
dive into my vision and sound.
Has living in Texas impacted your music?
Definitely in the production aspect of making music. As I said, that was the first song where I was fully able to dive into things sonically and set a template for the sound and vibe I’m moving forward with.
How did you come about your songwriting process for this song?
Typically, most of my songwriting process just comes very naturally to me. I kind of just word-vomit, and this song specifically took me a while to write (around three months to finish), which is kind of abnormal.
What did you learn from this writing experience and making the song?
I learned that you can make great music and write good songs even when you have nothing worth writing about at the time.
Was there a highlight moment when you made this song?
Probably when I finished the last chunk of the song where it’s like, “I guess I got away smoother than Michael J.” That line is my favorite I’ve ever written because when I wrote it, it was the missing piece of the song It was just like, “Wow, I’m proud of this.”
What do you want listeners to take away from the track?
That it’s okay to have feelings of rage and jealousy sometimes.
What would be the best way for someone to listen to this song for the first time?
I’ve noticed that my friends love listening to this song in an Uber back from going out. We force the Uber drivers to play it, and my friends have had fun doing that. I think it was really fitting during Halloween – listening to it on the Uber ride back from where we were.
What’s an emerging artist everybody should be listening to?
Cristo Buckley