“Bruises” is my newest song, and it features Abhi the Nomad, who’s insanely talented at producing, rapping, and singing. We’ve been linked up online for years and finally officially worked on something together with this track.
You can listen to Bruises on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube here: https://ffm.to/bruisesthesingle
This release has been exciting for a few reasons:
1. I do a double-time flow in the chorus that I haven’t done in a very long time.
2. We planned this before quarantine from covid-19 began, so I decided to donate and double the Spotify streaming release proceeds to benefit the charity Direct Relief. They’re giving medical supplies to healthcare workers. As some of you reading this might know, my mom is a nurse currently working in NYC, so it feels good to help even if it’s only in a very small way.
3. The song got added to a ton of cool lofi hip-hop playlists by people who love the sound of the track and wanted to support the donation-based cause, like “chill lofi study beats” and “covid-19 rap.” You can usually find them on my profile on Spotify.
4. The song got posted on Earmilk, a blog I’m always excited to be featured on, and we got mentioned on the blog The Word Is Bond for the first time in my life.
Bruises is a track I never would have finished up and released if the timing didn’t work out perfectly. It was one of so many song ideas sitting in the demo graveyard of my laptop, which I make purely based on feeling and inspiration in the moment when it strikes me. Usually, these go to die on my computer and I reuse their lyrics in later projects. Most often there’s one or two things I want to “fix” before working on the track more, and this one was conspicuously missing a second verse. But I coincidentally sent “Bruises” to Abhi that Saturday morning, and he loved it. So we locked it in. Spontaneously as that.
painting by Emma Hanna
So many people have reached out about “Bruises” and have said it reminds them of music I made a few years back when I was working with Kinetics, Fortune Family, Accent, and doing a bunch of spontaneous collaborations. I would agree with that, and I’m so glad it’s hitting people in the right way. Some beautiful paintings and art have been inspired by the song already, and a lot of people had pretty impactful things to say about it on social media, too.
I added a few of my favorite posts about the song to my Dylan Owen Community page, here.
The meaning of Bruises to me is actually similar to a lot of the stories from my There’s More To Life years. I start off the song by saying “this is for all the lonely people” because the vision taking place in my verse is one of me walking through the city, entirely alone, hanging onto memories of somebody who became a crutch and feeling disconnected from the world that’s present in front of me. I see business people in their suits and ties and believe they must be alone in their pursuit of financial success; I see “teenage lovers” or some idealized version of a relationship and feel like that doesn’t represent my own experience; I see students carrying an overwhelming amount of books and assume they are tired rather than passionately learning; and I see a million strangers that I view through a negative lens. “All the broken people.”
In other words, I color everything in my life with bruises. Full lyrics here if you’d like to read: http://www.dylanowenmusic.com/lyrics
Ways you can help with Bruises:
Listen to the song on Spotify, here.
Add it to any playlist of yours on Spotify. This gives Spotify more data to recommend the song to other people who have probably never heard my music.
Send it to a friend who has either never heard my music, or hasn’t heard any of the songs from my newest releases this past year. Tell them you’ve got a cool new rapper you think they’ll like.
Make a piece of art with it. Cover the song, rap the chorus, let it inspire a drawing, write a poem on the same concept. And share it with me through DM on one of my socials.
Some of you may have tuned in live, but last week I debuted a few new unreleased songs on my acoustic livestream on Instagram. The full livestream is uploaded to YouTube so you can now rewatch it if you missed it. It was a blast—my first time performing fully acoustic with just my guitar and keyboard. Played everything from Sandlot Blues to The Book Report to my top-secret unreleased tracks. Everyone in the comments was so cool and representing from such a variety of places all across the world.
Otherwise, quarantine has given me a lot of time to work on new music. I’ve been camped out in upstate New York in a small country house and luckily have enough of my music equipment to make a ton of new demos and start producing my own stuff a little more than usual. Hopefully these demos don’t end up in the laptop graveyard. A ton of people have been writing to me and ordering the Nowhere Kid merchandise which is going to give me a good amount to do as soon as quarantine is done. Lots of love to y’all for supporting so heavily during this time.
peace out, and next time I write here…i’ll probably be back with more new music
much love
-dylan
p.s. I did one of my favorite interviews ever with Brown University this past week. You can read it here: http://brownpoliticalreview.org/2020/04/bpr-interviews-dylan-owen/
I talked with a journalist named Amelia there about everything from my epic night opening for Mac Miller back in the day, to running my own DIY operation and how the fan community building around my music keeps me going, to how I keep my sound consistent across albums and a million other things. We got coffee on a rainy day in Brooklyn and talked in an insanely cool art museum that she had access to. Really happy with the topics we covered reading our conversation back. Hope you love the conversation.