Alien

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The Story

If you’ve ever felt so misunderstood, so ‘alienated’ from someone you care about, I know exactly how you feel. It’s painful, confusing, and isolating. I wrote “Alien” about feeling really disconnected from my mom.

Sometimes it feels like we’re so different from each other that I’m from another planet…

“I wanna know you but being from different worlds makes it hard.

When i try to hold you, you look at me like i’m from mars.”

We’ve had our ups and downs over the years and at times I just could not talk to her. She wasn’t understanding what I was saying, what I was seeing, and it made me feel crazy!

I always want so desperately to connect with the people I love but when I try so hard and get nowhere, I’m heartbroken and it makes me feel like I’m running out of oxygen.

This song is about those disconnected moments I’ve experienced in my relationship with my mom.

✎ How It Was Written & Recorded ♬

I started writing “Alien” at my childhood home on my upright piano a couple years ago.

I needed so desperately to write this song. It was burning in my chest. I felt so alone and like nobody understood me. And the only way I knew how to feel understood and untangle the mess in my chest was to write about it.

I hummed melodies over a chord progression and the chorus started coming together. I found the right words to explain what I was feeling and immediately felt relief.

I wanted to challenge myself by diving deep into a ‘lyrical key’. A ‘lyrical key’ is essentially when you stick to a specific theme when writing a song. So for “Alien” I wrote down a bunch of different ‘space’ words to be able to pull from while writing… astronaut, gas, planet, orbit, mars…

Having a list of words right there in front of me was really helpful while I attempted to explain feeling like an outsider in your own family.

The verse lyrics, however, were not there yet. I took it to Jordan Sherman to produce out what I had. We recorded the song with those verse lyrics (that I hated lol) and I sat with it.

I fell in love with the production — the two intertwined guitars and the cascading piano… ugh it melted me!

Jordan and I had a session scheduled in a few weeks to re-record the final vocals with the final lyrics. In preparation of the session, I re-wrote the verse lyrics for “Alien” at least 5 times. And it still wasn’t right.

I was getting anxious. The session was approaching quickly. I had to record the final lyrics but did not like what I had written for the verses!

The morning of the session, I sat down on my guitar and re-wrote all of the verse lyrics one last time.

I got it! This time it finally felt right! So excited to put it all together, I walked over to Jordan’s studio, in North Hollywood at the time (we were neighbors!), and left at the end of the day with what you now know as “Alien”!

photos I was deciding between for the artwork

Voice Notes

Below are a few imperfect voice recordings of “Alien” as it was being written. Just a little sneak peek into what it might be like to be there while I’m writing a song :)

Alien

Recorded At Poema Studios

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─── ⋆⋅The Credits⋅⋆ ──

Written by Madi Rindge

Produced by Jordan Sherman + Madi Rindge

Mixed by Jordan Sherman + Jaime Estalella

Mastered by Jaime Estalella

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