This song started its life as a little loop I wrote on guitar with my looper pedal. Basically the first half of the song comes from that idea, and there’s even a little bit of that original loop buried there in the mix.
A year or two later I tried to record the song, and in the process I added the whole last section. But the production was so muddy and I just didn’t feel content with it, so I put it on the metaphorical shelf for a while.
As soon as I finished recording “One Weird Trick”, I decided to tackle an old project and landed on this song. The production isn’t perfect–it’s overly compressed and distorted–but it’s done. I’m happy with it and now I can put it to bed.
Throughout the whole process, the song never had a good title, just a generic working title. But while recording, I had images of car crashes in my mind, and I found the cover photo and it kind of fit with what I’d pictured.
I recorded the song in September and October of 2023 in Des Moines. I played all the guitar and bass and some of the keys, and for the rest of the keys and the drums, I programmed those. The cover image is by Kevin Fitzgerald on Unsplash.