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I feel like I don’t talk about music, that thing I actually do, very much? So I wanted to start changing that by talking about a song I wrote the lyrics for that’s meaningful to me - the opening track of @CrystalFurs’s 2020 album “Comeback Girls.” (1/11) https://crystalfurs.bandcamp.com/track/comeback-girls
So, “Comeback Girls” is an important song for me because it pulls double duty - it’s about the band, and me. The release of “Beautiful and True” was a big deal for me, and us. The band as it had been before felt shaky and I didn’t know what was gonna happen. (2/11)
We’d come off of an unpleasant breakup w/ a prev. member that hurt me personally. Our second album “Pseudosweet” hadn’t done what I’d hoped it would do. I was depressed, and we’d split the project up and Steph and I moved across the country. For a while, things were scary. (3/11)
And, like…I didn’t know who I was at this point? I was wrestling with my barely-concealed gender issues and was still closeted, and miserable. I wasn’t even sure personally if I could write anymore. (4/11)
After moving to PDX, things started turning around. We got settled, we met Rowan, and I came out. So many weights felt lifted from me. And I started writing again. It felt like maybe we *could* take the band back from the dark place, make it our own, make it fly again. (5/11)
I sat down at a coffee shop down last year & started banging out the lyrics that would become “Comeback Girls.” On one level, it’s absolutely about the story of the band up until then. It’s about a group of girls coming back from a sad place and reclaiming their happiness. (6/11)
Shout out to the back / The lonely ones / At the end of the world now / Their time has come
We were gonna make the music we wanted, gonna finally find our scene…the girls at the back of the club were gonna take the stage now. It felt empowering to write those words! (7/11)
We were gonna make the music we wanted, gonna finally find our scene…the girls at the back of the club were gonna take the stage now. It felt empowering to write those words! (7/11)
And at a small level, it’s a song written for myself. It’s me finally ending 38 years of pretending to be someone I’m not. The girl I was finally gets to be whole and alive. She exists!
Call me broken like a vow / It’s not a lie / An apparition made whole / And I’m alive
(8/11)
Call me broken like a vow / It’s not a lie / An apparition made whole / And I’m alive
(8/11)
And at the end of the day, whether you’re a girl band finding their way or a queer person coming out…we have each other’s backs. You’re safe and free at last.
When your day is new / You don’t know what to do / They will see you through / The comeback girls will be there
(9/11)
When your day is new / You don’t know what to do / They will see you through / The comeback girls will be there
(9/11)
(Also, fun? fact: the lyric “Canvass the cul-de-sac” is a direct reference to a fav song of mine, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’s “Surf’s Up,” and its lyric “Canvas the town and brush the backdrop” which is itself a play on the words “canvas” and “canvass.” Language!) (10/11)
So, “Comeback Girls” was (lyrically) born & then given life by Steph’s music & the arrangement that Rowan, she, and I did for it, and the mix that Rowan did. It flies just like I hoped it would, and it was the natural way to kick off an album that brought us roaring back! (11/11)
