Music Notes

August Media Prompt Challenge

With all due respect to StoryMaster and the effort he puts into creating this monthly music prompt challenge for us, I have to say I don't find the latest choice to be very tasteful. Looking over the lyrics, I find several "bleepable" words as well as references to drugs and alcohol. And besides, the song's theme is very much the same as that of the May challenge track, a mere two entries below this one in my blog.

So this month, I politely excuse myself from writing about or being inspired by the provided song, and instead I would like to share my experience with a song I've finally been able to listen to this evening after three years: Follow, by OneRepublic and Kygo.

I first discovered Follow on Genius   some time in 2021, when I was just getting back into my music journaling hobby after nearly having a nervous breakdown during the pandemic. On Genius, I go by Wolf Angel (@Thoughtfullyricist), a well-known and respected member of the community, where I enjoy contributing knowledge of my favorite artists and their work in the form of primary source quotes, interview citations, embedding videos and other such things. (I also have a couple albums of my own unproduced lyrics posted there, but that's another story...)

Follow is unreleased and has been for approximately the last four years, according to this Reddit thread.   The audio was leaked at that time, and several unofficial fan videos were made of it. I never had a chance to listen to the song. By the time I knew it existed, the videos had been taken down, and all that remained were the lyrics on Genius. When I saw it, all I could think of was "did they decide not to release it because of the Imagine Dragons song Follow You   which just dropped?" And I felt incredibly curious to know if the two songs had any sonic similarities. (Spoiler: they don't.) But I couldn't find the leaked audio anywhere, and Follow settled into the corners of my memory.

I'd remember it whenever OneRepublic lead singer Ryan Tedder would promise us a new album was on the way, and when Artificial Paradise   finally came out in July 2024, I was disappointed Follow wasn't included on the tracklist. Some poking around the web a few days ago brought me to the Reddit page, where I recognized someone from Genius (JustDKFilms) who discussed having actually listened to the song when it was originally leaked. Seeing this, I reached out to him on Genius and asked if by any chance he had downloaded the audio file and could share it with me.

This afternoon he responded, saying yes, he does have the audio! I gave him my email address and he sent it right over. I secured my long-desired track on my old TCL phone, which I use as an iPod to stash my music offline (another story for another day...)

I was so excited about finally acquiring the audio, I posted on Scroll and shared the Genius page. Much to my surprise, Allan Charles found the audio online almost immediately: on SoundCloud  , which ironically is supposed to be incorporated into Genius pages but is usually overridden by an embedded YouTube link. I'm happy he found it, because now we can all hear and enjoy this unreleased gem. But I'm also quite happy that JustDKFilms sent me his audio file instead of merely pointing me to the SoundCloud, because I prefer my music offline and there's no telling if that particular webpage might disappear someday.

I'm listening to Follow as I write this... It begins with a leap directly into the chorus, and then continues with a gentle guitar line and the opening two verses. Ryan Tedder's pure, golden voice is quiet, honest and unmodified as he sings of fidelity and standing by each other when things are tough. The EDM (electronic dance music) drop is soft, not a heavy party bass, and the twinkling, fluting piano line post-chorus, which forms the backbone of the genre expectations, is classic old-fashioned Kygo.

Kygo is a Swedish EDM producer who composes music and collaborates with various singers to craft songs. Over the years he's worked with both Imagine Dragons and OneRepublic on a total of three released tracks, and I've come to recognize and appreciate his particular style of elegant, melodic-hook-based EDM. (I was disappointed by the lack of this "magical, twinkling" type of melody on Kygo's most recent 2020 1R collab Lose Somebody, which seemed to be a peculiar pandemic song... But that's yet another story.)

That finishes my weird musical ramblings for the day. Thank you, StoryMaster, for getting me motivated to write up my discovery of this song for the WdC community. Be sure to listen to Follow on SoundCloud; it's well worth your time. I'll see if I can embed that audio into the Genius page.

Word Count: 822.
Written for "Note: 48-HOUR CHALLENGE : Media Prompt Deadl..."