Sentimental

In romance, I allowed my heart to shatter one time. I was seventeen, and he was twenty-three. It was an intense relationship from my point of view and maybe it was for him as well. But when it ended, I was left wondering. During my entire senior year of high school, my mother was terrified I’d give up on all ambition and wind up barefoot and pregnant. In all honesty, there was a part of me that would have sacrificed anything just to be his. Luckily, my mother is stubborn and relentless. Off to college, I went! Before I left, I got into recording home videos. In one of them, my boyfriend and I talked about how he’d kept all of our movie stubs and cards that I’d given to him in a shoebox. It melted me that he would do that. I was always in a state of anxiety about his real feelings. I’m shaking my head now, thinking about it. In the video, he jokingly accuses me of being overly sentimental. That’s where I got the song title. He sent me off to school with a signed pillowcase from his bed. I could never bring myself to throw it out, maybe I knew I’d get a song out of it. Sure enough, the first line of “Sentimental” is: “I still have your pillow case, the one you signed for me to take.”

In the bridge, you’ll hear that when I sing “Time steals everything,” my duet partner Joel Taylor counters with “Heals everything.” I wrote it this way to portray the different mindsets of the loved and beloved. Joel is an incredible singer; he is the consummate musician. He’s one of those people you can count on to show up and get it done and he brings with him a great understanding of song interpretation. “Sentimental” called for some vulnerability, and even a little sense of humor tucked in there. Paul Redel produced this and got a great sound out of the drums with the clever use of a pipe. I was sick that day. The vocal you hear was actually supposed to be a scratch track, but I never did beat it. Because I wasn’t feeling well and was feeling nervous about the session, I asked the wizard player John Thomas to come in and play my piano part. Beachwood Rocker and local Los Angeles legend Johnny Moezzi graced the track with that aching guitar solo. The background singers were from my vocal coach Claire McKeown’s group, Honey Child. She did all of the background arranging. It was fun to watch her work, and I learned a great deal from her. She also arranged the backgrounds for “Dante,” “The Door,” and “Fortunes.”