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Not every song ends with happily ever after... and that's what makes them worth listening to. Soft Truths & Hard Feelings is a collection of love songs, heartbreak ballads, quiet confessions, late-night jazz, tender promises, impossible goodbyes, and all the beautifully complicated emotions that come with being human. Some songs celebrate finding the right person. Others mourn losing them. A few simply sit beside you while life figures itself out. So dim the lights, pour yourself something comforting, and stay awhile. Around here, we don't pretend love is always easy—but we do believe it's always worth writing a song about.
Behind the Melody
Behind the Melody
Some songs come from imagination. Still Here in the Air comes from a deeply personal wound I've carried since I was seventeen, when I lost my mom.
So many years have passed, and yet there are moments when the distance between then and now seems to disappear. A certain place. A piece of music. A feeling I can't quite explain. Little signs that arrive when I least expect them. For just a moment, she doesn't feel quite so far away.
That's where this song came from.
Still Here in the Air isn't really about death as much as it is about what remains afterward. The people who shape us become part of who we are, and losing them doesn't erase that. Their voices live in our memories. Their influence appears in choices we make without even realizing it. Sometimes their presence seems to find us in quieter ways—in the wind, in the silence, in a song, or in one of those strange little moments that feels too perfectly timed to dismiss.
I wanted the music to remain gentle and spacious, because this isn't a song that needed a dramatic declaration. It's something quieter: love continuing long after you've had to say goodbye.
I lost my mother when I was seventeen.
But every now and then, I still find her in the air.
Behind the Melody
Behind the Melody
In the Quiet Light is connected to Still Here in the Air, but it looks at love from the other side.
I wrote Still Here in the Air as the daughter who lost her mother. I wrote this one as the mother and grandmother who knows that someday she will be the one who is missed.
In the Quiet Light is for my daughter and my grandchildren. It's something I wanted to leave behind for them—a reminder that when the day comes that I'm no longer physically here, the relationship we've shared doesn't simply disappear. Love leaves fingerprints everywhere.
I hope they'll hear me in familiar music, remember something ridiculous I once said, recognize me in a family tradition, or suddenly think of me for no apparent reason at all. Maybe they'll feel me in a quiet room, in the fading evening light, or in one of those small moments when the world seems to go still for just a second.
And when that happens, I hope they don't immediately think about what they've lost. I hope they'll know that they found me.
That's really what this song is meant to tell them: don't search for me somewhere far away. Listen. Remember. Pay attention to the little things. Everything I gave you, everything you learned from me, and every bit of love we shared is already part of you.
Still Here in the Air is about realizing my mother never completely left me.
In the Quiet Light is my promise to the people I love that I won't completely leave them either.
Behind the Melody
Behind the Melody
There comes a point when keeping the peace starts costing more than telling the truth.
I Meant It When I Said It lives in that moment. It's about finally saying the things you've been editing, softening, swallowing, and carefully rearranging because the unvarnished truth might make someone uncomfortable—or might change the relationship altogether.
I've always been fascinated by how easily we can convince ourselves that silence is kindness. Sometimes it is. But sometimes we're simply protecting a fragile peace by making ourselves smaller inside it.
This song is about what happens when you stop.
There's no coy "maybe I didn't mean it quite that way" afterward. No scrambling to make the words more palatable once they're out in the room. The narrator knows exactly what she said, knows there may be consequences, and has finally reached the point where honesty matters more than being easy to live with.
Musically, I wanted it to feel exposed and emotionally charged—a pop ballad without much room to hide. Because the most frightening thing about finally speaking your truth isn't wondering whether someone heard you.
It's knowing they did—and saying, "Yes. I meant it."
Behind the Melody
Behind the Melody
Some people write songs to say what they can't quite manage to say out loud. The Last Honest Song is about what happens when someone finally realizes they've been doing exactly that all along.
Every song the singer has ever written contained a confession—pieces of love, hurt, longing, disappointment, and truth carefully tucked between beautiful words and melodies. Nothing was really hidden. The person those songs were meant for simply never listened closely enough to understand what was being said.
That's what makes this one hurt.
The Last Honest Song takes place after the crowd has gone, when the room is quiet and there's no longer any reason to perform. Just a piano, one final song, and everything that should have been understood years ago.
There's no anger in it and no grand confrontation. By this point, the singer isn't trying to convince anyone of anything. This is simply the last time they're willing to translate their heart into music for someone who keeps hearing the melody while missing the meaning.
I wanted the arrangement to feel appropriately bare—a late-night piano ballad where the spaces between the notes matter almost as much as the notes themselves.
Because sometimes the saddest part isn't that you never told someone how you felt.
It's realizing you told them over and over again... and they only heard the song.
Behind the Melody
Behind the Melody
Trigger warning: This song explores emotional manipulation and psychological abuse and may be difficult for some listeners.
I hesitated before sharing You're Imagining It because this song deliberately puts the listener somewhere uncomfortable: inside the voice of the person doing the manipulating.
The song is sung by the abuser. He's calm. Reassuring. Almost tender. He explains that she remembered things incorrectly, that she's confused, that she's making too much of something that wasn't really what she thought it was. And then, with breathtaking generosity, he lets her know that it's okay.
He forgives her.
That's what makes the song unsettling.
There is no moment when he suddenly understands what he's doing. No apology. No redemption. And there is no neat scene where she finally confronts him and makes him see the truth. Because sometimes that isn't how these stories work. You cannot reason someone into acknowledging a reality they're invested in denying.
The clarity belongs instead to the listener.
We can hear what she may no longer be able to see clearly herself: the gentle corrections, the shifting reality, the manufactured guilt, and the extraordinary way responsibility keeps finding its way back onto her shoulders.
Musically, I wanted the song to resist announcing its villain. The voice doesn't need to sound cruel. In fact, it's more effective because it doesn't. Manipulation isn't always shouting, threats, or slammed doors. Sometimes it sounds remarkably like patience, concern—even love.
And perhaps the most frightening words aren't "You're wrong."
Sometimes they're:
"You're imagining it. But it's okay. I forgive you."
IYKYK...
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