Singled Out: Eleyet McConnell's Gettin' By

Keavin Wiggins | 12-23-2023

Eleyet McConnell (the duo of Angie and Chris McConnell) recently their debut album "Crazy World", and to celebrate we asked Angie to tell us about the lead single "Gettin' By". Here is the story:

Ten years ago, if anyone had asked Chris McConnell or Angie (then Eleyet) McConnell if they'd end up working together on an original music project, they both would have laughed and called them nuts. The two hardly knew each other. Since then, they've written enough songs to fill at least nine albums, married, and just released their debut album "Crazy World" on December 1, 2023. The first single from the album, "Gettin' By" was released in October and has already logged over 18,000 streams on Spotify alone. There have been many magazine reviews, radio and podcast interviews, and a lot of zooming just off this one single. The song resonates with so many people from so many walks of life and tonight, singer Angie McConnell explains the story that brought this song to life.

All of our songs come from our experiences, and we haven't shied away from sharing all of them in detail. We talk about our lowest lows, happiness and even our silly moments of reflection when you laugh and think, "how the heck did we get here?" Anyone can relate to these things and music is the most common vehicle people use to get through something. "Getting By" was no exception.

The pandemic just wreaked havoc on the universe. For us, we saw and experienced job losses, cuts in pay, getting laid off work, sickness, loss of friends and family, isolation-it felt like we would never recover from everything happening. Chris and I were doing our best to stay as normal as possible, despite the world putting up roadblocks at every turn. One night Chris and I were at home sheltering in place like everyone else and our long-time friend, Rick Schutte, called. He lives three hours away from us so we didn't get the chance to connect in person all that often, but we love when we do see him because we always end up writing a ton of music. The pandemic wrecked Rick's universe pretty hard, and he was telling us all the literal crazy crap happening where he worked. Finances were more than tight, and things were just really rough. He said, "Hey guys I'm sending you this audio clip of some song guts and I think you can do something with it". He went on to talk about how in his mind he was thinking of being flat broke, paying bills, not being able to pay all the bills, worried about groceries, kids costing a lot of money-everything we all struggle with on the daily but really felt when the pandemic unleashed.

The clip was cool. The audio clip started just like you hear the song on the record. Chris and I grabbed a bottle of tequila, sat down at our "kitchen table" (it was a 4 x4 piece of butcher block) and a few hours later, the tequila was gone, and we had the lyrics to "Gettin' By". All through the song you can hear about the struggles, the regrets, and the feelings of uncertainty. You can hear that plea to understand why all this stuff keeps happening. I mean who doesn't or hasn't felt like you have all these dreams and plans but only manage to pay your rent, eat ramen noodles and dream about what could have or might have been? We've all been there.

One of my favorite lines in the song centers around that urge to find a fit and feel like you belong. "I'm tired of spending my time where I don't belong and it hurts when I'm coming down".......that line unapologetically describes all the things many of us do or have done to try and find happiness and a feeling of belonging and acceptance. Man, I know I've woke up from a couple rough nights thinking, "What have I done?", or "how the heck did I get here?". The song confronts those feelings head on and acknowledges that we are just normal people trying to do something good, but many of us get sucked into that vortex of doing things we regret later in an attempt to get something we thought we wanted.

I'm a glass half-full kind of girl though. I have come to a place where even when things are really difficult, I try and find the positive and think about the lesson that I can take from it. The lyric video illustrates this really well because life goes on, the world keeps turning and my goal is to come out of whatever it is as good or better than I was....even if I look and think a little differently. That's growth and that's good.

I'm positive I'm not alone in this. There are people all over the place who go through a lot worse things than we have or will ever, but we just need to remember that we are strong, resilient humans worth forgiveness and a lot of chances. Sometimes things might feel great, and you think you are sitting on top of the world. Other times it seems the train is coming off the rails, bad decisions are a dime a dozen, and nothing makes sense. Whether taking things day-to-day, or even minute-to-minute, we are still "Getting By"-that's the message of this song.

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