Do you think the perfect guy exists?

This song was written at 1:00 in the morning in about 15 minutes back in April of 2021.

My friend Marissa had texted me late in the night while I was up attempting to write an essay for school. The guy she had been seeing was avoiding the dreaded “What are We?” conversation, and when she brought it up, he stopped talking to her for a few days. In this weird, emotional limbo period, I remember her trying to figure out why that was the response she got when all she was looking to do was to have an honest conversation.

I was particularly aggravated by the situation because Marissa is just a complete ray of sunshine, a good person who gives and never expects anything back.

It was raining and the song just came flowing out.

It was around this time that I had also started taking guitar lessons. I brought the song to my teacher, Francisco Mena, and we figured out a jazz-inspired composition. The guitar reminded me of the raindrops from that night, and Fran helped me structure the song into something more solidified.

We played it for the first time in front of people (including Van and Marissa) at the Hope, Peace, Love, and Music Fest held at my family’s farm in 2021. It was then that I realized just how special the song was, and just how much I loved it. When Van and I started discussing the record we’d be making together, this song was an instantaneous yes.

Van had the marvelous idea of turning this song into a duet, and so that’s what we did. We had a vocalist in mind, and he was on board. We recorded our parts and I was so excited to have this song on my record, especially because it was so intimate and meaningful to me.

However, it would seem that, after all, the perfect guy simply just doesn’t exist.

I sent this song to the mixing engineer and after the mix was completed, the vocalist decided he didn’t want to be featured or named because it “didn’t go with his brand.” I was devastated. We agreed to release the recording, but the vocalist was to remain anonymous. In a tragic, poetic sense, that just made the message of the song that much purer and true.

This once-jazz-tune turned into a country waltz. Van and I always talk about how this song is like the last song playing off the jukebox, and that one couple is dancing alone to it with the dimmed lights while some guy wearing sunglasses plays the guitar in the dark corner. The duet turned this song into something romantic, slow, hopeful, beautiful, unsatisfying, and borderline crushing.

I love this tune and am so grateful to Fran and Van for turning it into what it is today. And I hope that one day, I get to rerecord this song with the perfect duet partner.

If you know anyone who would maybe want to, send them my way.

And once again, thank you for listening.

Love,