"Why I Passed the Torch to You" is my most emotional song so far.  The lyrics and story behind the track are based on my experience giving myself away to a one-sided friendship.  The emotions I had after coming to terms with being used, manipulated, gaslit, and emotionally drained by this person was utterly devastating, and this song is the most raw, brutal, and blunt version of that emotion. I conceived the main motif and lyrics during my songwriting class at Frost.  The assignment was to write a song based on an image given to us.  The image was two people in a field holding a flashlight into the sky with the lights of man-made structures lingering in the distance.  I was fortunate that this image resonated with me because it was the perfect catalyst to write this song.  When coming up with the song structure, I wanted to hammer in the lyrics of the chorus without making it stale.  The song has four choruses where the first three continue to build in instrumentation and intensity.  The fourth one is the biggest of them all, but changes that lyrics slightly to start with a question instead of a statement.  Because of this, I was able to find a satisfying way to ultimately answer the question: "Why I Passed the Torch to You".  With this long structure, I used the choruses to ask questions and the verses/pre-choruses to give context to the story, and the bombastic outro ends with the answer to all of the material presented.

 

The track starts out quietly with piano and voice, growing in intensity as I begin to question the verity of the friendship.  It all erupts into a finale of fury and passion with pounding drums, shrill strings, harsh guitars, and powerful vocals sung by the incredible PK Greenwood and Vale Peñaranda.  The piano was performed by myself and features an abundance of classical influence.  Composers like Rachmaninoff that were known for their big piano parts with large-spanning chords were of major inspiration to me when writing the piano part.  To play into the classical influence, I included a small string orchestra along with the piano.  This paired with the heavy metal guitars, bass, and drums gives the song a strong symphonic-prog vibe.  Ultimately, I define this song's genre as alternative, but it is truly a mix of many genres like progressive rock, pop, metal, singer/songwriter, and classical.  When picking the vocalists for the song, I knew that I needed two singers that could sing rock.  PK Greenwood (Parker) and Vale Peñaranda (Valeria) are artists that have released music in the rock genres and were the perfect choice to collaborate with.  Their performance is stellar and helped bring out the intensity and rage of this song and its story.

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