Hey loves! It’s October, which means it’s LGBT Month! In honor of that, I wanted to write a song that follows along with this month’s theme.
As you can probably guess from the title, the song is called “Gal Pals.” This song is basically about the giddy feeling you get just from being around your crush. You know the feeling—undying hope that you’ll be together forever, and constantly hoping that you’ll get the chance to tell them how you feel.
HOW I CAME UP (AND CAME OUT) WITH THE SONG CONCEPT
When I set out to write this love song, I came up with the chorus first. I knew that it would be about having a crush on a friend, so I thought that it would be funny to center around the term ‘gal pals’ because it’s a phrase that’s generally used by people who mistake lesbians for platonic friends. Since the chorus had such a strong central theme, it was pretty easy to solidify. With that done, it was time for…
JAM TIME WITH JON & JLENN!
I tried to solidify the melody line and lock down basic chords by jamming with Jon on his guitar. This entailed a bunch of messing around with random chords and mumbling random melodies. Eventually, I found a melody that I liked and recorded it so that I could work out the lyrics for the verses. This led to mucking around with the lyrics at home—all I did was crouch like a goblin in a corner of my living room muttering incomprehensible phrase combinations until three in the morning. (Shoutout to my family for putting up with my ridiculous creative hours!)
Once I had a rough idea of what I wanted the song to sound like, I started messing around with the placement of the chorus and verses with Glenn (or Jlenn, as we like to call him). We even ended up creating a bridge, which was exciting because I haven’t put one of those in a song before!
I’ve started recording now, but here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come. Below are the pages where I started brainstorming the song. Tune in soon for the complete version of “Gal Pals”!
Illustration by the wonderful and talented Erin Ichimura! Check her work out on Instagram at artemistique.
