How a Song Actually Gets Made
People think a song starts in the studio. It doesn't. It starts in the most random places — a hum in the shower, a voice memo at 3am, a feeling I can't shake on the train. By the time I'm in front of a mic, half the work is already done. The studio is just where I finally catch what's been chasing me all week.
Most of my ideas show up as a melody before they're ever words. I'll be walking somewhere and the way it should feel lands first — the mood, the pocket, the energy — and I mumble it into my phone before it's gone. My camera roll is full of these little fifteen-second nothings that nobody would understand but me. Some of them turn into records like Necio. Most of them die in there. That's the job, and I made peace with it a long time ago.
Then there's the language. Growing up Dominican and Puerto Rican in New York, I think in two languages at the same time, so my songs do too. Some feelings only fit in Spanish — there are things Mala or Playita say that English just can't carry the same way. Other times English snaps it shut. I never sit down and decide "this one's a Spanish record." I follow whatever the melody asked for. The switch isn't a strategy, it's just how I actually talk.
In the studio, I don't overthink the first take. I'd rather keep something real and a little rough than something perfect and dead. A lot of what you hear on my records is the scratch vocal — the very first pass — because that's where the honesty lives. You can always clean up a take. You can't fake the feeling you had the first time you sang it.
Honestly, the hardest part isn't making the song. It's knowing when to stop. I could tweak a mix forever — nudge a hi-hat, redo a word, push the vocal up half a dB. At some point you have to admit the song is finished and you're just scared to let it go. I've learned to feel that line. The second I catch myself changing things only to avoid finishing, I know it's time to put it out.
And then you release it, and it stops being yours. That's the strange, beautiful part. Once it's out, the song belongs to whoever needs it — somebody playing it on the train, somebody crying to it in their car, two people who decide it's "their song." I made it alone in a room, and now it lives lives I'll never get to see. That's the whole reason I do this.
So I'm curious how it works for you: where do your best ideas actually show up? In the shower, on a walk, right before you fall asleep? And how do you know when something you're making is finally finished? Pull up on me on Instagram and tell me — I read everything.
