Singled Out: Andrew Hagar & The Midnight Suns' If Ya Wanna

Keavin Wiggins | Published 02-23-2023

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Andrew Hagar & The Midnight Suns recently tackled mental health awareness with two new songs "Leave It Alone" and "If Ya Wanna", and to celebrate we asked Andrew to tell us about one of the tracks. Here is the story:

"If Ya Wanna" was a collaborative effort between myself and Trev Lukather, who produced the song and wrote the music. When Trev first introduced the idea for the track, he had already written an instrumental demo of the song, and knew he wanted us to call it "If You Wanna." Although Trev had a melodic idea for the "If you wanna" bit at the end of the chorus, we had no idea what those words meant, or what the song was about. Often when I'm writing song lyrics, I end up looking through my journals to plumb some inspiration, which I quickly found. The answer lay in the beginning of my musical journey.

"If Ya Wanna" was lyrically inspired by a period of real-life mental health challenges I faced as I began my career in music. I was fresh out of the worst breakup of my life and was in the midst of an identity crisis surrounding my career move. My self-confidence was at an all-time low. There was a period of time where I wasn't eating or sleeping very well, clearly having issues taking care of myself, and my inner monologue certainly wasn't saying nice things about me. I was rapidly losing body weight and some of my close friends were asking if I was okay. I knew I needed a major change before things got even worse.

I've always been into Stoic philosophy, and thanks to a good friend of mine I ended up doing a writing prompt in my journal asking, "How Am I Not Myself?" Just cataloguing all the ways in my own life I wasn't lining up with my vision of who I really was. Through this exercise and its revelations, I started going to therapy, meditating and journaling daily, and genuinely being more accountable with myself. This self-audit was exactly what I needed to start down the path of regaining my self-confidence, agency and focus.

One thing that helped me immensely, from the start, were mantras of affirmation. And this was the key to the lyrics I had been searching for. Basically, you say nice things to yourself that you either know to be true, or want to be true, three times each after you've finished meditating. It might sound silly, but over time you really start to believe these things, at your core. And as long as you're actually doing the work to make these things truly happen, it can be a powerful neuro-cognitive development tool. Like you're hypnotizing yourself and programming your own brain. And that's where the lyrics from "If Ya Wanna" came from: out of those ideas sprung an almost mantra-like, anthemic song that really captures the journey of conquering your fears and taking control of your own mind.

"And you could have it all, everything in your mind. If you wanna."

"If you're scared of the fall, better learn how to fly. If you wanna."

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself below and stream "Leave It Alone" here