Melanie Grace

Tag: Independent Artist

  • Be Kind: Rewind (A Love Letter to Friday Nights at Blockbuster)

    Be Kind: Rewind (A Love Letter to Friday Nights at Blockbuster)

    Be Kind: Rewind is a Blockbuster song. A full, sincere, completely committed love letter to the Friday night ritual of piling into the car, walking through those sliding doors, and spending forty-five minutes arguing over four tapes.

    The laminated rewards card. The fluorescent lights. Dad mentally calculating late fees the entire time. Mom’s little frown when he announced the number. The guilty pleasure movie that made it into the bag every single Friday without fail.

    “Dad’s tally of late fees, Mom’s little frown, but we’d still leave with joy written all over town.” That line is my actual childhood.

    The production is a very specific 90s pop cocktail: bubbly pop bounce, big emotional chorus soar, full girl-group anthemic power, all crashing together in a Blockbuster parking lot. The verses are airy. The chorus takes off completely.

    Here is the truth this song keeps pointing at: the arguing in the aisles WAS the family night. The negotiation was the connection. The friction of choosing together was the whole point and we didn’t know it until it was gone.

    What movie did your family always end up renting? Tell me everything.

    Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify and Apple Music!

  • Lisa Frank Folders and the Art of Living Out Loud

    Lisa Frank Folders and the Art of Living Out Loud

    Hot pink. Electric blue. Rainbow tiger. Neon leopard on a hot pink sky. If you know, you know.

    Lisa Frank Folders is the most purely joyful song I have written in years. It started with one specific memory: five dollars at the Scholastic table, my mama saying yes, and the absolute queendom of carrying that folder down the hall.

    But here is what the song is really about: the unapologetic boldness of childhood before the world teaches you to tone it down.

    “Nothing matched and everything did, because that was just the rule when you were a 90s kid.”

    Kids don’t second-guess the rainbow tiger. They don’t wonder if the neon leopard is too much. They live in the color and the conviction. We spend so much of adulthood learning to edit ourselves. The Lisa Frank folders remember who we were before we learned any of that.

    I never threw mine out. They are in a box. I have no regrets.

    Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify! Tag me with your Lisa Frank memories!

  • Cart Full of Crayons: Everything I Feel About August in One Song

    Cart Full of Crayons: Everything I Feel About August in One Song

    The details in this song are all real. The three-page list. The expired coupon. The tissues nobody explains. The elbow-to-elbow moment when someone grabs the last wide-ruled notebook and you got there five minutes too late.

    And then: seeing the pencil pouch you had in fourth grade reissued in the same design. Suddenly you are nine years old in a discount store and your kid is looking at you like you have completely lost it.

    Then he shows you the $40 backpack.

    “Okay fine, kid, get the good backpack.” That line is the whole experience of parenthood in six words. Every parent knows that exact surrender and I finally wrote the song about it.

    But the bridge goes deeper: “One day these lists will end, no more glue sticks left to buy.” Every August supply run is an investment in a childhood moving faster than you were warned. “And honestly, I’d sing along” is as true as anything I’ve written.

    Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify and Apple Music!

  • The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Not the Christmas One)

    The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Not the Christmas One)

    I was standing in my driveway watching the school bus pull away. The house was quiet. My coffee was hot. And I thought: this moment deserves a song.

    So I wrote it.

    I love my kids more than anything on this earth. The bridge says so plainly: “By three o’clock I’ll miss the noise, I’ll stand at the window watching for my boys.” Completely true. Zero joke in it.

    But the first two verses? Also true. Summer is a marathon nobody trained for and the school bus is the finish line. Both things exist simultaneously and that tension is the whole song.

    “That’s only half of a lie” might be the most honest lyric I’ve written all year.

    This song is for every mom who has felt the guilty relief of that first quiet morning. The little dance in the driveway. The hot coffee you actually finish. You are not alone and I wrote you an anthem and it opens Mixtape Mindset.

    Stream on Spotify! Share with every mom you know today!

  • What Release Day Actually Feels Like (An Honest Account)

    What Release Day Actually Feels Like (An Honest Account)

    Yesterday was release day. Today I am on my third cup of coffee and I have zero regrets.

    Release day as an independent artist is simultaneously the most exciting and most vulnerable day in the creative process. You know every word, every beat. And then you hit publish and it stops being yours. It belongs to anyone who finds it.

    The vulnerability of that never gets smaller. I don’t think it’s supposed to.

    But then the messages start. Someone played The Most Wonderful Time of the Year for her mom group and they were all crying laughing at the same time. Someone said I Can’t Believe I Missed This hit her so hard she had to sit in her car before she could drive. Someone else immediately called their childhood best friend after Seven Digits without even explaining why.

    That is the whole reason. Every single time.

    If you listened on day one, thank you. If you haven’t yet, Mixtape Mindset is waiting. And if you love it, share it with one person today. That single action is the most powerful thing a listener can do for an independent artist.

    Stream on Spotify and Apple Music! Tag me @TheMelanieGrace with your reaction!