After I left Hollywood and ended my last relationship with you-know-who I decided to take some time to be completely alone and figure out what was actually going on in my life.
I promised myself at that point that the next person I let in close, kissed, slept with, or explored any sort of relationship with, would be someone I had first taken the proper time to get to know, like, trust, and genuinely care for — and I have kept that promise in the half a decade since.
Anyway, I’ve had a good solo run and have learned a ton about what (and who) I want and what (and who) I don’t want, but I’m back on men now.
Kind, dog-loving men who like naps and sandwiches and have long since deleted their Grindr accounts: Ask me out.💋
I released my 10th album this week and next year will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 1st one. Wild stuff.
I can’t ever tell if I am the hero or the villain of this story, so I usually land on: I am both. People are assholes and I’m one of them. Unlike most of you though, my entire humiliating human journey is on record. Every dark thought I had as a teenager is literally downloadable on iTunes, a quarter of a century later. It’s horrifying and liberating all at once, and has always felt this way to me. I made bedfellows with overexposure early on in my career because I had to as a result of my writing, not because I understood what that would actually mean 25 years down the road.
I’ve been writing songs about what’s happening in my life at any given time since I was a child, and began recording and releasing those songs professionally when I was 17 — still very much a child. Life was all the way off the rails for me back then, and so is everything I did and wrote during that time.
My discography exists in two parts: 1998-2008 sounds like drugs and violence because everything around me was drugs and violence. 2009-now sounds like a person putting things back together after all the drugs and violence. I do my best to stay compassionate with myself about the lot of it, and I am ultimately glad it all exists — but it’s so incredibly hard to look at, in parts. I was a very sad, unwell person for many years, and that comes through loud and clear in all of those tracks from before.
My songs have never been about answers, and they still aren’t. Even now, as a happy, well person, I am all questions and nothing else. It has been this way for as long as I can remember. These albums are just a reflecting pool; kinda hard to make out, quite like the years.
Some of you have been with me this whole time, others have joined at points along the way, and many of you are just getting here now. However you found me and my songs, and however long you have been around, I hope you all know how much it means to me that you are here.
And for anyone about to dig into my back catalog: Apologies in advance. It was the 90s and I was freebasing cocaine.
Thanks to everyone who tuned in for today’s Elliott Smith: Heaven Adores You livestream. It was great to celebrate this man’s life and music with you all.
