Singled Out: Pierce Alexander's Stain Feat. Coco Camp

Keavin Wiggins | 05-02-2023

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Pierce Alexander just released a brand new single called "Stain", and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"Stain" is the first song from a project I've been recording with my friend Corey Campbell (Coco Camp). I actually wrote Stain back in 2020, but the song has had an interesting recording journey since then. After I recorded the original demo, it ended up being one of the leading contenders for the final set of songs to appear on my debut album, "The Minutehand". But I couldn't help but feel it needed more time so that I could really hone the arrangement a bit more. I'd written about 50 songs before choosing the final 10, and there were actually several songs where that didn't make the cut. Fast forward a year, and I ended up making recording plans with my friend Corey (Coco Camp). We ended up deciding to re-record Stain and take a new approach. During that time, I finally felt like we'd figured out how we wanted it to sound.

Shortly before writing the song, I'd been hanging out with a friend of mine one day and they started telling me about how they were pretty sure their partner had been cheating on them. They continued on to tell me more details of why they had the suspicions and how things had gotten worse in their relationship since they'd had a kid together. But the wild part about the story was that despite all of the negative things their partner did and said, they were still trying so hard to see them in a positive light. We had several more conversations like that and even long after, I started to really empathize with the situation and found myself still thinking about it. Before that point, most of the songs I'd written had usually been autobiographical, but during that time I started to experiment with more narrative songwriting.

I remember when I came up with the guitar chord progression and melody, the rest came to me in just one morning. I wanted the lyrics to seem more dreamy at first, as if the narrator was looking back on their relationship and only remembering the more positive things about their partner. By the time the second verse comes around, the lyrics and instrumentation become a lot more aggressive and guitar-forward. I really wanted the song to depict that sense of anger and betrayal you feel when you've given yourself fully to someone and they turn out not to be who you thought they were. Corey (Coco Camp) has a really unique approach with music and was a blast to work with, so when we put our heads together to record the final version of the song, I think that's where a lot of the sonic magic happened with finding synth sounds and processing the guitars in ways that I hadn't done before.

Though the story of "Stain" doesn't ever really lyrically get resolved, I think of it more as a window into the life of someone experiencing betrayal. But just like when someone tells you what's going on in their life, you have to wait until next time to hear how things turn out.

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