This past August, I released a new project titled Vivian-i. It holds a special place in my heart, as well as a unique place in my discography, so I wanted to compile and share the most important details about it.
I’ve been referring to Vivian-i as a “mini-album” (which is a term used more frequently in Korean music than in American music) because it sits right on the cusp between an album and an EP. It has ten tracks (which is a common length for a full-length album) but only five or six of those tracks are standard, full-length songs. Meanwhile, it runs 26 minutes in length, falling four minutes shy of the thirty-minute cutoff that is used by many as the distinction between EPs and LPs. However, like most of my albums (Unfall and Accidental Days in particular), the album has two halves which follow a particular pattern. In the case of Vivian-i, that pattern is:
- Short track based on a 2023 voice memo
- Guitar-led rock song about parenting and life changes
- Softer, piano-and-guitar song written for my daughter
- Piano interlude written in 2024 while my wife and daughter played behind me
- Song that my wife and I have regularly sung to our daughter throughout her life
This pattern has resulted in Vivian-i being a solid competitor for my favorite sequencing across my albums. I love its flow from track to track, and I also noticed something cool about these two halves: You can view them as the “daytime” front half and the “night time” back half. The daytime tracks (1-5) are generally bright, celebratory, and upbeat, with track 4 being the peppier of the two piano interludes, followed by track 5 (“The Vivi Jig”), a song that we often sing to Vivian during playtime. The nighttime tracks (6-10) are a bit slower, darker, and more reflective, with the darker of the two piano interludes (track 9) being followed by a closing track (“Dwell in Safety”) that we would normally sing to Vivian while putting her to bed at night.
Another important fact to clarify about this album is that it’s meant to be pronounced “Vivian One,” with the Roman numeral referring to Vivian’s age when the project released. I’ve had a few people ask me whether this naming convention suggests that this is meant to become a new yearly series. And the answer to that is defiantly: “No!” It’s possible that we’ll see Vivian-ii next summer or fall, if the following twelve months organically result in a large crop of new songs for Vivian or about parenting, but such is not the plan. Rather, I’m taking the Adele route with this naming convention; similar to how she names her albums based on her age when she wrote the songs, I’ll be naming subsequent projects based on the age of the child when it released. So the next project in this series could be Vivian-iv, or it could be Other-Daughter-ii or Chase-Jr-i. I simply don’t know at this time. I only know there’s a high likelihood that Vivian and (we pray) her younger siblings-to-be will continue to inspire new musical material from me for the remainder of my life.
A word about the album artwork: I took this photo a few days before Vivian’s birthday, while we were on a trip to visit my wife’s family in Arkansas. Her father’s house is surrounded by the woods seen in the picture, but what I specifically wanted to convey with this photo was the split-image dichotomy between looking forward and backward simultaneously. The top half of this photo is the car’s rearview mirror, where you can see Vivian’s empty carseat, while the bottom half of the image shows my wife and daughter standing in front of the car. I love this imagery because it shows how they exist out in front of me, no matter how much I look backwards. The entire album is an act of remembering and reflecting, but they don’t live in the past, and Vivian will never be 12 months old again. The empty carseat is also a poignant image for me, referring explicitly to the song “Carseat,” which I consider to be the lyrical centerpiece of the mini-album. Among other topics and themes, “Carseat” explores how it can be easy to miss how quickly Vivian is growing because I see her every day, but her constant growth is a reality that will never change or slow down; the real version of her is always the one that exists in front of me, not the memory of her that lies behind me, no matter how cherished that memory may be.
Regarding the album’s production, I believe Vivian-i‘s largest long-term impact and influence on my discography will be that it was fully self-produced — including the two singles released to all streaming services and digital stores, “Ready” and “Every.” These songs mark the very first time I’ve released self-produced tracks to join my “official” public discography, as opposed to being relegated to Bandcamp or the Friends Club exclusively. Granted, the rest of Vivian-i can currently only be accessed on Bandcamp or by becoming a member of the Friends Club (where you can also access the instrumental version of the album), but my decision to leave Vivian-i off of streaming services has less to do with any concerns regarding the album’s quality and more to do with 1) my concern that the subject matter of the mini-album might be too niche for the bulk of my listeners, and 2) how I would rather use this collection as a way to bring more people to Bandcamp and the Friends Club, as opposed to using it to puff up my streaming numbers.
To this end, releasing two singles from this project functioned as a fascinating experiment for me. I was able to use the response to the singles to gauge interest in the project as a whole, as well as gathering intel about the quality of my self-produced material from the perspective of listeners used to hearing my bigger-budget studio fare. As a whole, I would say it’s been a success, at least on the latter front. When it comes to convincing Spotify listeners to head to my Bandcamp page in response to hearing one of the singles, that’s no easy feat, and I have no data to confirm whether it’s happened a single time. When it comes to how people reacted to my production work, though, the outcome couldn’t have been much better. On Spotify alone, “Ready” has already outperformed my 2024 single “New Wave,” and “Every” has outperformed my 2023 single “After Love.” Listeners have told me that the difference in quality is nearly indistinguishable. It hurts me to make compromises such as using programmed drums instead of recording on a real drum kit — and for listeners with a keen ear, my reliance on “virtual instruments” has been the biggest mark against Vivian-i — but I’ve tried to make the most of that opportunity by composing drum parts that are probably more intricate than what I would actually be able to play.
The last vital detail I wish to share about Vivian-i is that, unintentionally, it has evolved into an interesting and layered companion piece to the main project that I’ve been working on this year: my first exclusive full-length album for the Friends Club. This 2024 Friends Club album will ostensibly be my “real” fourth album and the direct follow-up to 2023’s Accidental Days, despite the fact that it will not be appearing on streaming services. For a litany of reasons, I have found myself on a trajectory of making the bulk of my new music for the smaller subset of listeners who have chosen to follow me and support me through the Club; for the health of my own artistry, finances, emotional/mental stability, and relationships with my fans/friends, it is important for me to focus for the foreseeable future on my musical output being primarily for this limited audience. I would love for more people to join the Club, of course — and if you’ve read this article all the way to the end, you probably belong there! — but when it comes to my public profile of widely accessible, universally-streaming music, my new output is going to be limited to the occasional single, EP, or collaboration. So I hope you will consider joining the Club for only $1 a month (before the price increases at the start of 2025), and I’ll be waiting until after the big 2024 album releases in December to share the cool ways that musical and lyrical overlap has crept up between that coming album and Vivian-i.
Thank you for reading. I hope that these extra details will enrich your experience of listening to my daughter’s mini-album.
