Q&A: MEIJA CAPTURES BEAUTY IN THE MUNDANE THROUGH SOPHOMORE ALBUM, ‘THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING’
MEIJA HOLDS A PLETHORA OF EMOTIONS IN HIS HANDS — to share with listeners in his sophomore album, There’s Always Something. The gifted artist who originally got his start with his family members in Echosmith has returned once again to showcase his incredible talents as a solo artist.
The new album is set to release on Oct. 11, each song carefully yet effortlessly crafted to focus on specific circumstances and emotions. The album is indeed a spectrum, ranging from finding the magic in everyday life to letting your anger consume you and unintentionally taking it out on the ones who mean the most to you. This collection of songs are ones to be studied, ones that allow the listener to take what they need from the songs and hold that close to them. To meija, this album is the most true to himself he’s ever been and that honesty is what he hopes to invoke from listeners.
It’s no doubt that meija is committed to his artistry, and he shared with Luna that there are plans to release a short film that’s been created to accompany the album and its’ release. This short film will include his recent music videos surrounding the album. Luna had the opportunity to chat with meija about his creative process, how his wife and son have writing credits on certain songs, his musical evolution, and more. Read the full interview below.
LUNA: You originally started your music career as a part of Echosmith. Since you began this solo project, how has the transition from making creative decisions with a group to completely on your own been?
MEIJA: Oh my God, I love it. There are just a lot of cooks in the kitchen outside of that with management and a big label. All these things felt very constricting to me as a creative person to have to make a vote between a band, and then try, as a band, to convince other people as well. Honestly, one of the most fun things about being a solo artist is that I get to try the things I want to try and do the things I want to do. I'm really fortunate to have a really supportive group around me of people who let me do my thing. I'm a big believer in that too. Everything should kind of come from the artist anyway, even as a producer too, I really encourage that. My opinion is always second to what an artist is doing. Sometimes, the benefit of being a solo artist is that it's one person's thought, so it's fully what they want to do.
LUNA: What has the process of discovering your own sound been like?
MEIJA: It's been a long one. Even though I didn't want to do an artist thing when I first quit [Echosmith], I had song ideas and things that I would be working and playing with. It took a couple of years - I quit in 2015 and I didn't put out the first song until 2019, so it kind of took four years to play around slowly and figure out what I wanted to say, and then on the production side, like how I wanted to dress it up. I always wanted something that felt really true to me. I think it's always an evolving process too, each project is different. That's what's exciting about being an artist, is that you get to really try and embrace whatever season or mindset you're in, and let that bleed through in the music. It's always changing, but it took a couple of years for me to feel ready to actually put my stamp on it and be like, “Okay, here's my project.”
LUNA: Following up to that, what are you most proud of within your musical evolution? Whether that be from the beginning of your career till now, or even from your first album to this new one coming out?
MEIJA: I've really just tried to do what I thought would be cool for myself and just really follow that instinct. Even the first couple songs I put out, I was really surprised and thought it was really cool that other people were connecting with it, because I was just trying to do something I thought was interesting, and there being other people who thought it was interesting too always perplexes me. I think it's a really cool experience, because that's really where it's coming from, and each project that I do, there's some sort of big goal that I have that I'm trying to do. With Do Ya?, it was about trying to figure out how to do live analog recording, and I figured out how to do that, so I was really proud of that. For this most recent record, There’s Always Something, a lot of it was more about figuring out how to resample things I did myself. I'm really, really happy with and proud of the way I was able to collaborate with other artists on this album, too.
LUNA: Speaking of those collaborations, you teamed up with artists like JAWNY and Hand Habits to help bring this album to life. What was that experience like collaborating with people for your own project versus producing for them?
MEIJA: These are the first proper collaborations I’ve done within this project. I had a realization a couple of years ago where as an artist, and as a producer, the lines are so blurred. That's actually a really cool thing to embrace, because you just go in really open with other artists and see what comes out. As far as bringing people into my world, all three situations came completely different and very naturally. The JAWNY one was the most direct. I was working on his record and we had a couple of weeks locked in where we were just doing that. We took a break, talked about collaborating on a meija song, and I played him an early version of “MAGIC”, and he just instantly connected with it. We were talking about the song, and then I was like, “Well, do you want to try and write a verse about that thing we're talking about?” And he sat down and did that. So that was a pretty crazy natural flow where we wrote it and recorded it in like, an hour.
There were songs on this that I imagined there being big features on because I wanted to blur those artist and producer lines even more. I'm working with artists all the time, so I wanted this album to also feel, even though I'm self producing it and writing a lot of it myself, that it's a collaborative process. I had some songs that I envisioned features on, and “MAGIC” wasn't necessarily one of them, but there was a conversation happening, and it actually felt like a really interesting perspective to have another verse, because then it makes the whole idea of looking for magic, or trying to find magic, more of a conversation, like inviting people in to say what magic is to them. Bringing that feature in actually changed and opened up the song for me.
Credit: Ana Ross
LUNA: Do you have any favorite lines in the album that stick out the most to you?
MEIJA: One of my favorite lines is on “MAGIC” there. Actually, if you look at the credits, there's an additional songwriter on that song named Django Ross Sierota, who is my eight-year-old son. He technically has a songwriting credit on this because he would say this funny thing all the time, “They’re like a chicken with no condition.” And I'd be like, “It sounded poetic, but what does that mean?” It means you're dead, you're not alive anymore, like not full of life. Like, wow, okay. I thought if I could figure out a way to use that lyric in a song, that'd be crazy. With “MAGIC”, it was a song about trying to find beauty in small things.
In that verse, I use this lyric, which I took the roast chicken part, and I say, “Even this roast chicken used to have some kind of condition.” Just to have the awareness of the things you're eating and the things you're taking in as, like, there's a story and there's a history, and there's a life to everything. You start to kind of trip out if you think about it too much.
LUNA: I see songwriting runs in the family then!
MEIJA: Well, it's funny, a lot of this record came very naturally too, because even with “POSSUM” too, my wife has a writing credit on it. There were some personal things that I was going through, and my wife got up in the middle of the night and she saw a possum outside our door. She had this revelation of the imagery of a possum, and she brought it up to me the next day. She's like, “I saw this possum, and it was like an omen or something because I think you've been playing dead with your emotions, like you haven't actually faced the things you thought you faced, like a fake death.” So, the whole song sort of came from this omen my wife saw in the middle of the night, and then playing with this idea of I've been playing possum because I want to survive. You don't want to go through all the emotions that come with confronting things.
LUNA: Those are both extremely profound thoughts from everyday things, and it’s very interesting to pull inspiration from those sorts of pockets. What advice would you give to artists looking to write from unique places like that?
MEIJA: I think a big thing for everybody is just mixing it up. It's really easy to get caught in a creative rut if you're writing one specific way, or even with instruments. My background is mostly a guitar player, and I love writing songs on guitar, but there are periods where I’m not inspired by the chords that I'm playing anymore. I have to jump to a piano or jump to a bass or some other instrument because I think that's a big thing that sometimes, artists can get tied up with doing the same things over and over again. I think a lot of it is because they're working in the same space, or with the same instruments. If your life feels like it's in a rut, creatively it will follow too. Sometimes it's way more productive to get out of the studio and go on a hike, hang out with friends, see a show, see a play, go see a movie, go see some other form of art. Be inspired and have something else to think about that you don't even have to pull inspiration from directly. I found experiencing different things has had a pretty profound impact on my writing.
LUNA: Were there any songs on the new album that felt the hardest to complete?
MEIJA: One that comes to mind is “MATADOR”. I had this sort of imagery about the whole idea of anger and sort of using the imagery of a bull and a matador and seeing red and taking it out on the wrong people. I had this lyric idea of, “But I see red and you’re the matador” I had the lyric a while ago, and I always really liked that and really connected with it, but it inherently is a heavy thing to talk about. Writing about emotions is hard generally, but writing about anger, and being angry at somebody or taking it out on people is not really something I've done a lot, so I was kind of struggling for a while. I felt like I couldn't really get in the head space for it. Probably about a year ago now, I ended up doing a little trip just by myself to Joshua Tree. I rented a little cabin out there, and brought a few instruments and my computer. I didn't see a soul for four days. I let myself try out different things, and also sit outside and write. For “MATADOR”, I had to be in that sort of headspace, because I couldn't do my regular routine and write that song. It comes back to the thing I was saying earlier, where I had to get out of my space and be in a different sort of environment, especially to write a song that felt hard to talk about.
It's kind of a crazy thing how personal you have to get when you're writing a song. It's hard to go have coffee with a friend and then go write a song about the worst thing you've ever experienced, and then go to a party after that or something. It could be a very emotionally draining experience, and sometimes it's hard to finish that sort of thing. I think sometimes it's just helpful as an artist to recognize the things you're talking about and the things you're trying to do and then sort of realize, “Oh, of course that's hard to do.” I had that realization with “MATADOR”. It's all about being gracious with yourself and knowing that's a hard thing to do and a hard thing to experience, and that you need to get in a different headspace to do that.
LUNA: What are 3 words you would use to describe your music that don’t revolve around genre?
MEIJA: Wow, that’s a hard question. I think I would have to say analog, Los Angeles, and family.
