The Writing of Sundress

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Sundress was written during a gap semester I took during the fall of my sophomore year of college. This was after my freshman year spring semester was abruptdly interrupted by the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Summer had ran out of days and (unbelievably) it was suddenly time to start my second year of college. Although my university was allowing students to return to campus, I had decided to take time off until everything settled down a bit more.

During this time, not only was the apocalypse kicking off with a pandemic, I was also going through what every young adult equates to the end of the world: a breakup. Fortunately, this was not my first experence with heartache. I knew with time I would get over it. Instead of dwelling on the past and indulging in nightly cartons of Ben & Jerry's, I decided to take time to reflect. I reflected on my past relationships and breakups, and the ways in which they affected me. I had quickly reached the conclusion that the worst part of a breakup was not losing the person, but learning to forgive myself. Forgiveness for allowing someone else to come before yourself. Forgiveness for letting someone else's opinions overtake your own mind and become the reality you live in; even when they are no longer present in your life. Art often helps me to deal with the predicaments of life, so I turned to songwriting. I wanted to capture this feeling of betrayal. Eventually, out of my reflections, came the image of a sundress dancing around my head. I am truly grateful for the time that I took off, and the allowance for not only the inspiration for this song, but also the opportunity to begin to grow into the woman I am meant to be.

From a more musical standpoint, Sundress was heavily inspired by a combination of SZA’s Supermodel and Clairo’s Pretty Girl.

These are two of my favorite songs ever. Sometimes there are songs, poems, and books that when I hear their words I feel like you wrote them. These two songs are the best example of this phenomenon.

Through my own experiences and this inspiration, I wanted to write a song that dealt with the feeling of becoming undesirable in someone's eyes. Eyes that once held a view of adoration and promised love. As a symptom of this sudden undesired feeling from their eyes, your own eyes become just as untrustworthy. Your own security with yourself beigns to wear down. Your vision is blurred with the constant comparisons to others.

Although disloyalty and mistreatment are very harmful experiences within themselves, the haunting concept from this situation that causes the worst harm is the idea that someone could so easily switch from loving and admiring everything about you to acting out a betrayal rooted in everything that is the opposite of you. This betrayal causes you to begin to question the genuineness of their original love, and eventually the security you have with yourself.

When I began writing Sundress the phrase “Sundress in the wrong season” kept swirling and dancing around in my mind. These opening lyrics captured the feeling of blaming oneself for the mistreatment caused by a significant other. The feeling of suddenly realizing you have been stuck in rut while your partner rather than having promised patience for you, has been seeking out a sunnier "season" that is nothing like your present experience.

The sundress is not one individual girl, but a representation of the woman considered more desirable to the boy. Her characteristics are heavily influenced by the male gaze. My lyrics purposely focus on the way in which the male’s desire for a type of woman focuses on attributes that can be considered submissive. The sweet, quiet, soft spoken. I wanted to focus on the emotions involved with wanting to be desired by someone you love, but feeling like you have to sacrifce your own strength, success, and independence to do this. Maybe you should stay quieter, keep your opinions to yourself so you don't come off as a loud, disgruntled woman. You become stuck in a box that is nothing like the true you. Unrealistic standards created by men are the same standards that women and girls are constantly judged and measured by. This judgement ineviabtly is extended to women as it teaches us to desire to become like her (the desired). Rather than one specific individual, the sundress I began to compare myself to was sort of a Frankenstein of the flickers of the posed images I saw through scrolling on Instagram and other elements of everyday life.

Traditionally heartache songs written from the woman’s perspective are often filtered through a misogynistic lens that is spiteful towards the “other woman.” I really wanted to eliminate the use of this idea in my own writing, since I find it extremely unproductive to teardown someone else’s positivity. This ideology ultimately shifts the blame from the one who is actually at fault. I really wanted to write my truth, and to be honest, I was not hateful towards other girls. I wanted the lyrics to show that: I don’t blame the other girls for being desired because of who they are.

For me, the most powerful line in this song that really helped me to confront these issues within my life outside of the narrative of the song was:

“I don’t look like her and I never thought I cared."

These lyrics illuminated the idea that before this scenario I never really compared myself to others. I was aware that I did not look like these other girls and that was okay with me, because I was secure and confident with who I was. It was important for me to learn to love myself unconditionally.

The writing of many of my songs often help me to grow and heal from the situations they revolve around. Even though songs are a shorter format of writing, I spend time carefully picking out each word I write so I am able to truly capture my genuine emotions, in hopes that my words may be just what someone needs to hear. I hope that anyone experiencing something like the scenario involved in Sundress, is able to use my song, and it’s lyrics as reassurance that you will one day allow yourself a love even more powerful than the one you lost.

One of my favorite poems, perfect for after a breakup.