Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Everett. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Everett, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on so far is definitely my EP, “THE FRUIT WAS NEVER AN APPLE,” that I just released on SoundCloud on December 3rd. I wanted to write without an end-goal, but I knew that I wanted to tell a story in a way that felt unique and interesting. From there, the project started writing itself under the umbrella of moving on from heartbreak, healing, feeling lonely, and finding confidence, and I found myself having a lot of fun stepping into new personas and styles of storytelling. Everything I do creatively is an experiment to some extent. I love when people love the things I create, but I also love making stuff that brings out some form of distaste in people. This EP taught me what I love, and hate, about making music and just how much potential there is to bring a vision to life, a phenomenon I’m seemingly always talking about.
Top to bottom, the story begins with an interlude using a voicemail from a past manager of mine, getting upset with me for being sick twice in a two-month span, I felt like that kind of summed up my whole attitude on this project. Sick and tired. The first official track is “DON’T SAY SORRY,” which was originally written about a pretty brutal breakup I went through when I was seventeen, and then I went back into the song and added some background vocals once I’d gotten my life back together a bit. It sounds to me like a tug-of-war between past and present self, I think it adds a cool texture to the song.
The second track, “WITHOUT ME,” was actually the first one written, you can tell I was at the beginning of my healing journey there with the level of disregard for others in those lyrics. It’s a self-indulgent story of being the light in the room, being the person on everyone’s minds, at all times. I really just needed to play a character that only cared about me, but it’s honestly still one of my favorites, ego aside.
The third track, “YEARN4ME,” is an overstimulating track that sits somewhere in the cross-section of pop, electronic, and rap. I wanted to emulate the overwhelm that can come with having new feelings for someone, since my brain tends to run wild in those situations. It’s obnoxious, but that’s why I love it. It’s a demonstration of how much I can care for someone, which I felt was needed after two tracks of speaking poorly of people, and more to come.
The next track, “PHANTASY,” tells a story of feeling trapped, directionless, and robbed of joy, a real upper if you ask me. I found out about a historical, debatably real, story of an ancient Egyptian woman named Phantasia, who is thought to be the author of the works which were used as the blueprint for both Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. I wanted to explore this story of a woman being behind one of the greatest-credited works of literature of all time, intertwining it with my own story, showing gratitude for Phantasia’s story inspiring a new way for me to tell my own.
The final track, “FORBIDDEN FRUIT,” is the most recently-written, which I think is pretty evident in the production and songwriting. This song acts as the project’s title track, being the first and only time that the EP’s title is mentioned, stitching together my inspiration from the painting “The Fruit Was Never an Apple” by Max Svabinsky, and my own story. The “fruit,” in this case, is a gay man, such as myself, who experiences attention from men who have no intention of showing them off, or showing genuine care. “FORBIDDEN FRUIT” is a declaration of choosing to only gift your love to those who prove they deserve it, not those that refuse to look inward before trying to claim you. The title can be taken multiple ways, the forbidden fruit can be a person you grow feelings for that doesn’t reciprocate, or you can be the fruit whom people wish to have without doing the work to climb the tree. As watered-down as the term has become, I’m an empath to my core, so this project is me teaching myself where it’s okay to put my foot down, and where my own wellbeing trumps others’ feelings.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started with an interest in content creation, and I’ve been doing that for about eight years now, on-and-off. I taught myself how to light, film, and edit videos for YouTube, then moved into learning about Photoshop and Lightroom, playing with photography and graphic design. When it came time to make a decision about whether or not I’d be going to college or art school, I decided to take a gap year to further explore my likes and dislikes, find new skills, passions, etc. I operate on the belief that passion should take priority over everything, so I wanted to give myself the time to discover what that truly meant for me. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved music. I was raised in a house with Frank Sinatra and June Christy constantly playing, and different musicians always coming over to rehearse with my dad, who’s a baritone guitarist. Being a musician was always a dream of mine, but it was one I had yet to explore. When I got to the halfway point of my gap year, I decided it was time to move in a musical direction. I had been writing poetry for about 5 years at that point, so I was familiar with rhyme schemes and storytelling in a near-lyrical format. I opened up GarageBand, downloaded some beats from YouTube, set up a recording studio in my closet, and got to work. It was in those first couple weeks that I wrote my now-released songs “WITHOUT ME” and “DON’T SAY SORRY.”
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I honestly still don’t, but that’s how I’ve always taught myself in the past. I knew I was on to something when minutes began fading into hours on end, and things just started clicking for me. I started noticing places in a song that needed an adlib, or a background vocal, or a formant shift, and after a few weeks, I was able to sit down with a beat and hear an entire song come together in my head. I couldn’t stop, so I decided to keep going. After about six months, I decided I wanted to release a song, so I texted my friends that I needed help shooting a music video, borrowed a wide-angle lens from a neighbor, and everything continued falling into place. Come July of 2024, it was go time. I released the song on all platforms, finished the music video, and thus began my journey of building a music career. Since I took a gap year, it technically ended in August, so I decided that I’d give myself goals and a structure, and work on a semester system, as if I were actually taking classes. My goal as of the beginning of the year was to release a song, and my long-term goal was to release an EP, and both of those were checked off as of December 3rd. As my first semester comes to a close, I’ve completed the goals I set for myself. It really had nothing to do with the amount of streams or attention it garnered, it was more so about proving to myself, and a little bit about proving to others, what I’m capable of creating on my own.
I’m very proud of the progress i’ve made thus far, and I’m very excited to see where I can take it as I continue. Since I’m operating on a “college” timeline, my goal is to have established myself as an artist by the time I would’ve graduated if I had chosen to go to school, which would be May of 2028. So for the next three and a half years, I’ll continue nurturing my musical abilities, I want to start collaborating more, and soon I’ll be checking-in to see what I want to accomplish next year. I feel like I’m in a great place at the moment, and just feeling ready for the next opportunities that come my way, whatever they may be.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist, to me, is the final task of checking a box when a task is completed. I’m someone who takes a lot of time to sit with my ideas, letting them grow and pull me in different directions. I got this idea for my EP’s concept back in September, and I was just recently able to go back through my journal entries at that time and mark them complete. I like to really expand upon my own ideas, and I’ve always been inspired by musicians who are able to create their own worlds. Music, specifically, has been really cool for me because I get to incorporate my love for graphic design, photography, and video creation, into my love for writing and newfound love for producing. I find myself feeling the most fulfilled when I’m able to incorporate many facets of my creativity into one cohesive, complete project.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I would say that the overarching theme of all of my different ventures has been to demonstrate that you can do anything you want, by yourself. I’ve always disliked the idea that you can make music without a producer, or shoot photos without a photographer, or post on YouTube without knowing how to edit. My main goal has always been to show people what they’re capable of accomplishing with their mind, and I think it’ll remain that way for a long time. It’s not always met with the most positive responses, but that’s something you come to terms with. When people are taught that creative careers don’t count as “real” or that they don’t possess the ability to do something that they dream of, it’s hard to unlearn that stuff. I try my best to come from a place of empathy, but I’ve found that it’s easiest to retract from being too present, and saying too much, to allow the projects to speak for themselves. I don’t want to come off as a motivational speaker, or as a person trying to change another’s mind, I just do me, and I think that says enough to others. It’s very much a “those that get it, get it,” type-scenario.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/everettmadeit
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@lossofeuphoria
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/vqWNqhSbHB2qEbEL9
Image Credits
Everett Gordon / Loss of Euphoria