Singled Out: Key Flight Captains' Heart Strings

Keavin Wiggins | 04-03-2023

Video still

Key Flights Captains recently released a new single and music video called "Heart Strings.". To celebrate we asked Ryan English (lead vocals/guitar) to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"Heartstrings" was inspired by a failing relationship I was in. You're attached to this person, but deep down you know they're no good for you. It was a toxic situation. A toxic relationship. Right off the bat, the lyrics, "Fear in love, some would say, she kills me more and more each day." You're scared of the love you're giving and receiving because you're attached but you know you're not in love anymore. When I sing, she kills me more and more each day- it's about the person constantly making me feel small and putting me down but it kills you because you're comfort with this person, but you don't want to deal with the trauma anymore. It's a pulling of your heart strings, and you're slowly but surely realizing that you're "all I am, is all I'll be." Meaning you are who you are, and you refuse to change for anybody. You eventually have enough, drop the dead weight, and you find your happiness again. Which that plays in when the part, "Keep pulling on me, pulling on my strings, now I've had enough." It's similar to the saying, don't poke a bear with a stick. You get to a point you're pushed past the breaking point. You either lose yourself, or you lose the person who really doesn't love you.

"How did I know this wouldn't last?" I literally asked myself this when it was towards the end of the relationship, I was in. I asked myself How did I know this wouldn't last, because honestly, I did know it wasn't going to. I kept ignoring the red flags. I told myself many times I was never going to amount up to what she wanted me to be. I also think everyone who has been in a bad relationship can relate. We all get that thought of "should I leave, or should I stay?" It sounds horrible to predict that this wouldn't work out but it's more of a last straw, not you giving up or putting in effort into it. You put your all into the relationship, they try to change you as a person, and you just wish you would've followed your gut instinct. I took on constant small jabs to my self-esteem daily. Eventually I told myself I wouldn't be able to handle it much longer.

We took this song to Jim Wirt as a demo of a riff. We had one line which was "How did I know this wouldn't last?" That one line blossomed and we constructed the whole song around that. We didn't have lyrics prior to seeing Jim Wirt. We come home with the lyrics and more of this song now that we got some advice from Jim. Though, we didn't like it. We started putting verse lyrics together that were very hard to come by once it was written beforehand a different way. We started re-recording all the instruments. We did it fast honestly because we had to edit it super-fast for a contest, we were in. It was 94.5 The Buzz's Hometown for the Holidays. We were 1 out of 11 that got air play. We quickly did a video for it too, but we eventually didn't like that either. Truthfully, nothing seemed to give this song justice. We re-did the song another time after the contest- which is the version you'd hear now. We also re-did the music video for it two more times. We combined the two music videos together and added more into what the video is today. I would say I'm happy now with where the song and video are at. It feels right. I am proud to show off the work we poured our all into, and we can't wait to share it with the rest of the world.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here