Singled Out: Aloud's Live TV
LA rockers Aloud just released their new single and music video, "Live TV," and to celebrate we asked the song's co-writer and lead vocalist Henry Beguiristain to tell us about the track. Here is the story:
Saturdays are important days in Aloudworld. They have been ever since Jen and I began writing together at the ripe old age of 16 in her parents' converted garage in Coral Gables. Be it school, work, or whatever other nonsense occurs Monday through Friday, it's consistently proven itself to be the perfect day to finish working out a tune. Truly, the MVP of days. (The exception to this is extended periods of unemployment, where every day is Saturday.)
Typically we'll get the coffee going, take a seat across from each other, and one of us will ask, "Okay, what've you got?" Someone will reveal a piece of a song, or even most of one, and we'll take it across the finish line together. Or, if not the finish line, the circular file.
This time around, what was revealed was a pair of shrugs. We're sandwiched between albums at the moment and find ourselves searching for another mountain to climb. Much of the conversation of late has revolved around shifting our boundaries as a band-broadening them in some parts, restricting them in others. A writing session without any preparation is as enticing a personal challenge as any.
Worst case: down the memory hole it goes, never to be spoken of again.
All well and good, but the fact remained: we were already 15 minutes in and needed a starting point. At this rate another pot of coffee might need to get made, and Saturday waits for no one. We flipped through our respective notebooks for any spark of inspiration.
I landed on some ideas for a song title I'd jotted down the previous week. All I'd written was "Live Television, Live TV, or Live From New York." I'd been reminiscing how, when I was growing up, I would stay up late every single weekend to watch new episodes of Saturday Night Live. Mostly it was because I just loved the show, but it was also a way for this music-obsessed hermit to see a band each week and talk to my friends about it at school on Monday. Now that we're firmly entrenched in the era of time-shifting, VOD, and scrolling through an infinite stream of dog photos on Instagram, I couldn't tell you the last time I did something like that.
It's interesting enough subject matter for a late-night conversation with good friends and edibles, but not much to go on for a tune. A thing like that could quickly become maudlin, preachy, or-worst of all-boring as f***. You may as well write a song about the last time you used an answering machine or a paper map. So we kept talking, batting things back and forth, telling stories, and letting the conversation meander.
Something began to take shape in that opaque region of spacetime where the fictional and the autobiographical are the same. We thought back on far too many lost days and nights (and Saturdays) spent with the wrong people. Not necessarily bad people, but bad for you. It got way more personal than we anticipated that morning, but we kept digging until we hit on something that felt good: the freedom you feel in that moment you've had enough-when you tell yourself, "I deserve better than this," and believe it.
Lines like "that was no kind of life", "the future looked good", and "it was the right time to get out"-the chorus-came spilling out. The television motif took a different form. Its warming glow was no longer a fixed point of nostalgia, but a monolith bearing witness to a toxic friendship finally crumbling under its own weight in the final hour of 2011. We poured so much of ourselves into "Live TV" we found ourselves appreciating the people who are in our lives by no less than one order of magnitude.
We celebrated with another pot of coffee. Ever wistful, I even declared a desire to watch the new SNL episode that night-you know, for old time's sake.
That didn't happen, naturally. That's the sort of thing you do on Sunday mornings.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself here and watch the music video right here!
Singled Out: Aloud's Live TV
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