The Song
Missed Calls started out life as a conversation between my dear friend, Frye, & me. She & I were in her Burbank apartment studio one autumnal afternoon & were discussing seasonal depression. We each passed anecdotes & experiences back & forth discussing everything from the physical/mental sensations, the way it feels both externally & internally, & the shape & form our respective depressive episodes take. She had this idea written down called “Missed Calls” that centered around the themes that we were discussing as well as the idea of being stuck in a depressive state & finding yourself unable to even go so far as to answer your phone, especially when you know a lot of the calls would be people trying to be you “savior.” Naturally it felt like the obvious choice for a write seeing how we both had experience in the field. I remember her & I discussed at length this feeling of wanting to disappear. I often refer to it as the desire to become nothing, to just sink into a hole in the ground dissipate into the aether. It’s not a desire for an ending, simply the desire to not exist for a while, then reenter life at a later time. Often these episodes take the form of crawling into bed & staring at the wall for a long while, which is exactly where we started the song.
We left the session with only a pre-chorus & a chorus if I remember correctly. We had the following written:
“The whispers in my head, pulling at my threads tell me that I’ll make it. The whispers in my head say I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it but I’ve got missed calls, I’m staring at the wall, crawling deeper cuz I’d rather not exist at all. It’s a free fall down the rabbit hole, spiraling giving into the siren’s call. I promise that I’ll tell you when it’s over, I promise that I’ll stay sober, you don’t need to try & save my life. Got missed calls, staring at the wall, going deeper, yeah, I’d rather not exist at all.”
& a lot of that ended up, as is, being the pre & the chorus. Naturally, over the years (yes, years) it ended up being massaged & falling into place a little better, but for the most part, there it was. And so it stayed for what I think was two or so years. It wasn’t until Jess & I had wrapped Consequences Of My Honesty & were looking for the follow-up single that Missed Calls popped back up & demanded to be heard.
We had spent the afternoon session in Jess’s home studio going through options for the next single but nothing that I played felt right. We even tried to come up with a song ourselves but again, it all felt a bit passive. It wasn’t until the demo of Missed Calls tugged on my brain & said “hey, remember me?!” that we found our follow-up!
At this point Missed Calls was still only a pre-chorus & a chorus so, not wanting to waste the session, we set about flushing out production ideas & figuring out what we thought a depressive episode would sound like. With space for verses inserted I took the track back to Frye via Zoom & we set up a session to finish it out.
For our verses we really wanted to get back into channeling that feeling of sliding into debilitating depression. Verse one was easy because we basically just took the inception of the feeling & injected that into the lyrics. I had this idea that it was somewhat similar to the experience of giving into any vice or altered state experience where you can feel the waves of effect happening but your body & your psyche do their best to fight it off until you ultimately succumb. Hence the opener of “turn on, breathe in, freak out” which is a reference to the saying “turn on, tune in, drop out” about LSD. The lyrics from there continued along that theme going for a “take your medicine” type feel where you don’t want to but you feel its inevitability & it’s more comfortable to give into it than it is to fight it, especially since it’s often fruitless to do so, at least in our case. I had this imagery in my mind of the acceptance of drowning. The weirdly macabre serenity that is often portrayed in movies when someone accepts that they have been met with their fate & they surrender to it. Verse two was a little different, it was a bit more of an uphill battle as most songwriters will tell you second verses often are.
I’m a very analytical songwriter. I view songs like a story & often come up with an outline of where I think the story should go & the beats that I think it needs to hit along the way. Frye & I both struggled to find the beats of the second verse because we felt that it was hard to expand upon the feeling of ‘nothing’ once you’re in it. After all, nobody wants to listen to a story that is all more of the same across the board. So we didn’t try to. Instead we opted to take in the direction of expansion. We expounded upon what was already there, doing our best to demonstrate that sunken place. To us, the middle of a depressive episode feels like drifting. It feels like you’re in an emotional void, not really existing but also not being entirely detached from your physical being; a ‘void of all consuming nothing.’ Like you’re a cosmonaut sheltered in your vessel made of blankets, drifting through the vacuum of space. We also didn’t want to have the entirety of our song be consumed by doom & gloom, so we injected little pockets of hope throughout, like the knowing that the state is temporary & eventually you will ‘resurface.’
Finally, for the pre-choruses we decided that the punch of the line regarding ‘death’ needed saving til the last, so we rewrote the previous two with the intention of that inner dialogue getting louder & louder throughout. So we go from whispers, to voices, to screams. Apparently not everyone has an inner dialogue, so for those of you out there without who have no idea what I’m talking about, my apologies. However, we both found that ours tends to be almost ‘guardian angelic’ in its tone during these moments. It’s reassurance & understand but on the flip side you have the undercurrents of self deprecation. The “I understand, take your time” is weighed against the “you’re worthless & lazy” & depending on the state you’re in, often the scales tip one way or another. We opted for the helpful angle I think, again wanted to inject those glimmers of hope & show that the voices pulling you along, tethering you to reality, often also shine the spotlight towards the surface & give you a helpful nudge that says “whenever you’re ready, there’s the exit.”
I want to get ahead of the line about death that reads “the screaming in my head says I’ll end up dead if I don’t face it” & explain away any insinuation of suicidal ideology or tendency. The line isn’t meant to alarm in the way that I think some people who have heard it think it does. Isn’t that always in the question when dealing with topics of mental health? Of course. Have majority of us faced the depths of our respective ends & turned away towards the light & chosen that? Mostly, yes. But I think that what we are referring to here is that delicate balance. When it comes to diving there are two alternating forces at work. You have what is called ‘surface suck’ where you get pulled to the surface because of the expansion of gases (air in the lungs, sinuses, etc.) in the body with the loss of pressure, then you have the opposite where the depth & the pressure over come you & you sink deeper & deeper because the air has been constricted & compressed to nothing under the weight of all of the water above you. A depressive episode often sits in the space of perfect buoyancy, tugging you one way or another. When I say “you’ll end up dead” it’s not overstepping to say mean that you’ll end up leaning clinical, but I mean more you’ll end up sinking into the depths with little to no way of finding the light without help. You will end up worse off if you don’t keep your eye on the exit & rising back up out of the episode.
The last thing that I want to touch on before we move into production was an idea that came from the lovely, Leena Regan. I went to her when I couldn’t seem to figure out where to end the song & she suggested flipping the final chorus, doing a drop out of the ‘missed calls’ refrain, putting that at the top of the chorus & simply ending on a cliff hanger with “I’d rather not exist at all.” Which is where we went & I think it totally has simply the dopest effect!
The Production
With production you often have target songs or specific sounds or effects that you like & use as reference. Even if you aren’t blatantly pulling up a song & saying “that guitar sound,” “that drum feel,” etc., it often finds its way in through “what about a such & such feel with so & so style production.” For us those sounds came from multiple locations.
I had been listening to Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poet’s Department, so naturally that made its way in to a degree. I really liked the sparse yet moving production on “I Look In People’s Windows,” the way it used plucky acoustic guitar, strings, & heavy rhythm which in a lot of ways was also similar to “Satellite” by Harry Styles.
I had decided pretty early on that I didn’t need Missed Calls to be ‘strictly country’ or even lean that direction. I was fine weaving in & out of genres to suit the song & the style that it asked for. I am a genre alchemizing singer-songwriter after all. A few years ago Lizzo says “genres are dead” & I took that to heart & it seems so did a lot of other artists, especially female artists like Taylor Acorn, Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, or Taylor Swift. I’m fine releasing a country song one month, then a pop the next, or a rock song after that. It doesn’t bother me one bit because the through line is still me, even if the instrumentation is constantly shifting around that.
Additional references were “Issues” by Julia Michaels, “A House In Nebraska” by Ethel Cain, especially for the piano, & naturally some of The 1975 with “If I Believe You,” specifically for the choral lines.
Jess & I also decided pretty early on that we wanted to “Hey Ya” or “1975” the song where in you take a song with pretty deep, serious subject matter & make it more palatable for your audience through the use of ‘fun’ instrumentation & production, opting for a more upbeat feel instead of sliding into the dirge-y ballad feel that the song feels that it should be on paper.
I’m also someone who really likes throwing real world sounds into songs, not just in the form of acoustic instruments, but also using sampling or interpolation. With the theme of calls & phones throughout we used that to our advantage. At certain points we inserted our own versions of iconic iPhone sounds (sorry Android users, we weren’t deeply familiar with your sounds like we are with the Apple library). We didn’t want to run into copyright issues so we opted for recreating the sounds using slightly modified melodies, tracing the ‘themes’ of certain sounds, or flat out having me mimic them in a microphone. There’s one such instance at the end of verse two in which I make the ‘email send’ sound & another in a pre where I ‘pop’ like the key tones used during texting. Additionally, in the second verse, during the section that talks about giving into the void we immolated the sound of a black hole like the one NASA released a few years back.
Being a vocal major, I also often get to annoy Jess with my insistent vocal stacks, this song was no different. With Consequences we opted for more of a “Avatar: The Last Airbender Closing Credits” feel for the bridge, here we went with “Grassland Chants” from The Lion King in addition to the multitude of choral stacks used throughout the verses & the chorus refrains.
With most of the song finished we both felt like there was something major missing from the production. I decided to bring in my cello & try a few things out on it to see if they filled in the gaps & I honestly think it made the song. We almost treated it like a vocal (cello is the closest instrument to the human voice) & layered & stacked it as well, alternating between plucked notes & sweeping bowed bass lines.
We ran into a unique issue when we felt we’d wrapped principle production. It was unique because neither Jess or I could hear it, but those under the age of 28 all seemed to hear it almost instantly with laser precision. There was a frequency in one of my vocal lines that only Evan & a few others could hear, all of whom are under 28 years old. We actually had to bring Evan into the studio to pin point where & what the sound was, because no matter how we tried, we couldn’t hear it at all. It seems we found it & took care of it though…hopefully.
Another thing that I’m sure drives Jess up a wall is that I am a meticulous mixer. I know how I want the song to sound in my head & I am obsessive until it gets there. The annoying part of modern mixing is that it has to sound good across a multitude of speakers. It has to sound good in proper speakers, in car speakers, in headphones, in earbuds, in phone speakers, so finding that balance can often be a pain in the ass. You’ll think you have it entirely figured out then you go listen to the song from a different platform & it suddenly sounds like garbage. We struggled for a minute to get it right but I’m so glad we took the time to & I’m grateful for the patience it took from others to get there. Additionally, a special thanks to Max Hurrell & Joshua Gleave for their help on it!
Finally the song went off to Adam Grover for master where it was boosted, leveled out, & returned as a completed bop!
I feel it may be helpful to help people who don’t know understand the difference between a mix & a master. A mix is individual tracks; track volumes, track equalization (turning up & down bass/mids/treble & everything in-between), panning (left & right stereo placement), automation (volume fades, pans, etc.), & any effects applied there within. Mastering then takes that overall mix & polishes it. It makes it consistent volume wise with other songs on the market & also adjusts levels & equalization of the song as a whole. It’s the top coat of the song. Don’t skimp on either.
The Visuals
I had this idea, unfortunately, a little too late of shooting the artwork & other digital assets in a pool. In my mind I was fully clothed with flowing clothing on & there would be a light from above shining down into the water. Additionally I had the thought to bring in a blanket with me to wrap up in. My initial idea was very much in line with “The Fall of Icarus,” having the blanket & the clothing being like the wings that had burnt by flying to close to the sun.
My initial idea came to me while Evan & I were in Kansas which would have made the perfect photo location as I could have asked for access to the fourteen foot deep pool at Midwest Aquatics. I wouldn’t put Evan in dive gear & used an underwater rig to shoot. As I stated, unfortunately I thought of it while we were in Kansas, on the second to last day of our trip there. All of the clothing I had in mind was back home, as was our lighting rig, & dive gear. So unfortunately, it didn’t get shot where I’d planned.
I then spent then next couple of weeks searching high in low in Nashville to find a deep pool that we could shoot in. I asked friends who I thought may have access to pools, looked into renting one for an hour or two, but all roads came up dry…Eventually Evan decided to reach out to our HOA & see if they would allow us to use our neighborhood pool after hours. Which they agreed to!
We shot the album artwork for Missed Calls on a bit of a time constraint. The day we had planned to shoot, there ended up being a thunderstorm, & the day after we ended up shooting we were headed out of town for a week & still needed to wrap up things at home. We also basically had an hour window to get in & get out before a rain storm rolled in. The artwork was shot in five feet of water with Evan using my iPhone 15 Pro Max inside of my Oceanic Dive Housing, in the midst of a rainstorm all while I had an active ear infection & my phone kept overheating. I held my breath as long as I could, as did Evan, & I used dive weights hidden in the pockets of my pants to hold me down under the water.
The rough images we got from the pool session & the finish product are two wildly different things. I have Evan to thank for that. He took these often very plain looking pictures & made them extraordinary. We Bob Rossed & “embraced the happy little accidents” & those ended up being some of our favorite pieces from the shoot.
The image for album art itself was an instant love of mine. Evan expanded on a very cropped image, a shoulder to shoulder frame with only a little space above my head & down to around my upper shins, & made it a marvel. I sent him a picture of a field of coral that looked similar to the way the blanket was wrapping & he nailed the execution of the addition.
We actually bickered back & forth about the artwork itself. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted from it in mind & so did I. In the end we took the best of each version & combined in into what it is! Which is something that I know both he & I are very proud of.
All in all, the photo assets came from a tight squeeze, a long shot, & a shoot that Evan was very nervous to do & ended up with some honestly incredible art on his part.
The canvas & the promo video also was a bit of a collaboration. I took a video that I had taken while diving in The Philippines that we both loved & that we felt encapsulated the feeling of the song. I had my camera set at the wave line & was allowing them to wash over the lens all while it rained. If you look closely at it you’ll actually see a massive bug fly into frame for a total of two shots. Evan then color graded it to match the artwork & I went in & learned how to do a mask dodge in Final Cut Pro to make the title & the information for the single wash in & out with the waves. It took me far too long but I’m so happy with the results!
Final Thoughts
If you are reading this, if you have made it this far, then Missed Calls is out. It’s available to you! You can go listen to it, share it, express your feelings about it, & make it your own! I am incredibly proud of this song & am beyond grateful for all who helped bring it to life. They say it takes an army & this song surely did. Missed Calls is a piece of me, it’s a very honest expression of my life & reflects the feeling & the experience that I know a lot of people out there share. I hope that this song finds a place in your life, even if it’s just from an empathetic level, or even just because you find the production fun. I don’t know how far this song will go, but that doesn’t matter. I have put it out into the world & if even one person connects with it, then I have done my job.
You can find links to Missed Calls below the credits, there will be an embedded link that should then link you to the streaming platform of your choosing & allow you to access the song!
Thank you all so much for reading this, for pre-saving the song if you did, & for listening to it! Creating music is one of my great joys & I’m so fortunate to get to share that with you all!
Credits:
Written By:
Charlie Rogers & Frye
Produced, Engineered, & Mixed By:
Jess Grommet
Performed By:
Charlie Rogers
Keys, Guitars, Rhythm, Synth, & Programing By:
Jess Grommet
Cello & Additional Voices By:
Charlie Rogers
Mastered By:
Adam Grover
Photography, Graphic Design, & Digital Assets By:
Evan Michael
Distributed By:
TooLost
Publicity By:
Trend PR
Special Thanks To:
Joshua Gleave, Savannah Hitchcliffe, Max Hurrell, Leena Regan, Ethel Smallmon Ford, & Jenna Vitolo