Vane: Writing about your feelings feels cringe. I’m not particularly known for my love songs. Hell, I think I have more songs related to gorey cardiectomy than I do about love (LOL). I was a little embarrassed to show “Water The Roses” (initially titled “cringefail”) to anyone when I first started it.
The plan was to lock it away forever and ever in my project files until I forgot it existed forever. But then, FLAVOR FOLEY Happened. I shared the wip with Jamie and Rice and the two of them gave it so much love and hype that I decided to finish it with FLAVOR FOLEY! And I’m so glad I did, because the final work came out even better than I could’ve imagined.
Jamie: I'm really glad Vane shared this with us because this song is SO FREAKING GOOD!!! I saw a couple people saying this song felt very JamieP to them, and it feels very fun to be like… hehehe… you've fallen for our trap… the Flavor Folly… this was a VANE SONG
Rice: The Flavor Follyyyyyyyyyyyy
Vane: I wanted to go for the 2010 GUMI love/breakup song vibe. “Coward Montblanc” by DECO*27 was one of my favorite childhood songs and was definitely my biggest source of inspo for this work. I used the vi-IV-V-I progression for the main sections since it felt kind of emblematic of love songs from that era, and I topped it off with a bit of swing (love swing everyone should use more swing) and some of my favorite arrangement choices ((I love accordions everyone should use more accordions)). I also really love flower/gardened themed stuff it’s one of my favorite aesthetic choices..
Jamie: Channeling the early 2010's vocal synth vibe with the production was so much fun, and really made my inner 14 year old who still gets teary eyed even just thinking about like Hello/How Are You or whatever so unbelievably happy. Also literally free-reed instruments are the way forward as far as I'm concerned. I will put a melodica in literally every single song ever and you can't stop me
Vane: HELLO HOW ARE YOU SO TRUE that was one of my favoritest songs as a kid… In terms of love, I think you could classify this as doomed love (bloomed yuri, as friendxp said). Not unrequited, but a love that doesn't work out even though the love is there. What is it like to spend years building a whole life with someone, living with them and loving them, only to close that chapter due to circumstance? Will I ever bloom again, will I ever love again? What will become of us? Regardless, the seasons will continue to change, and so will you.
Jamie: There isn't really another good place to put this, but I wrote the pre-choruses ("it's only three small words…") and the bridge, and they're some of my favorite little bits of music and lyrics I've ever written. I have a habit of showing up to our writing sessions with mostly fully-formed sections of songs to show the others, and I always feel a little weird about it, like it's violating some sense of decorum or something… but usually the reaction is just "this is sick" so maybe its okay
Rice: I love this song. I have nothing to say about the music the others didn’t already say, but I made the MV, so I’ll talk about that. We were going for an “old Vocaloid” feel, so I stuck with simple scenes with linear interpolation motion (words that mean nothing to 95% of people).
The lyrics are done through fridge magnet poetry. They’re packs of magnets with words printed on them you’re meant to put on your refrigerator and arrange into sentences. I wanted to point this out because I don’t know if this is a commonly-known thing among non-English speakers.
I was quite particular in my direction in separating this song thematically from “weathergirl”. They’re both sad songs, so I was worried they would get misconstrued. While “weathergirl” is about a one-sided love that has yet to be, “Water the Roses” is about a pre-existing love torn apart. Once I realized we could do a collage vibe for this song (I love collage aesthetics), I decided to make this extremely visually obvious by showcasing them on torn-apart sheets of paper.
Of course, this meant it had to be visually obvious the torn pieces were two halves of the same paper, so rather than just use online assets I had to tear my own paper in real life and scan it at the library. Because I don’t own a scanner.
If you’re thinking “Woah, I didn’t notice all the torn paper in this MV was bespoke”, you may have fallen for my Trick: The tears start out quite clean, such that you maybe didn’t even notice they were two halves of the same sheet, but as the MV progresses the tears become more and more rough, as if the person tearing them was becoming more and more upset, and more unmistakable that the two halves fit together.
The crumpled paper is bespoke, too, if you care. I did actually crumple up these pages and scan them and meticulously digitally cut them out. Here’s a big fucking png of one I didn’t use
It would’ve been cool if I’d printed out Eddie’s drawings to crumple/tear them in real life, but I was actually quite bad at tearing the paper precisely, so it would’ve just been a waste of ink….. Also, I would’ve felt really bad ripping up Eddie’s beautiful art….
Return?