The Making of “June 18th”

Music inspired by 2 dreams from 6/18/2020 and 6/18/2021

Written July 2021

“June 18th” is easily one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, but it was also one of the easiest to write. Almost all of the lyrics and melodies were just taken right from the 2 dreams I had - both of which were somehow on the date June 18th, exactly one year apart. The song is probably just the most straightforward love song I made. What I find interesting is that, after I dreamed the lyrics “I got a box with your old ID”, the account of the subject person got deleted for some reason, meaning he lost access to all our old texts and now only I could read them... the song manifested itself into reality. 

I had another dream that there was a song where the first half was sung passionately by Jandek, an avant-garde folk musician, and the second half was sung by pop songwriter Fiona Apple and produced with a chamber pop style. Like Jandek usually does, I improvised the first half of the song on guitar with random made-up chords. I’m glad I got a good one on the first take. 

For the piano and strings in the second half, I just played what felt right in my heart -- but for some reason, part of me thought it wasn’t good enough for a long time, probably ‘cause I’m not a pianist or string arranger. I eventually decided this arrangement was good enough, though, especially because the person who I dedicated the song to told me that the demo made him cry. With some help from a collaborator Will to make the string arrangement more dramatic and professional, I re-recorded the song and was very happy with it.