Wow, after taking the very scary step of sharing music I made publicly for the first time over two months ago, the final track of my first album is now released, and Neon Tides is officially available in it's entirety! The styles and emotions of each piece varied a lot as I tried to express so many different things, but taken together, I believe the album makes its own kind of sense and am glad everyone can hear it all the way from start to finish now.
(Update: Full album playlist is now on my YouTube channel under "playlists"!)
Track 11 is "Unleashed". This song is an attempt to express all of the joy, excitement, optimism and other harder to describe feelings that I felt completing my very first album, a dream I never before believed would come true. Finally able to give voice and music to everything I always wanted to, that feeling of "anything is possible now" was the most incredible thing in the world. It's the end of the first album, but only the beginning of infinite possibilities of what can come next... My long buried voice wasn't set free- it was Unleashed!
So what's next? Well, that's a bit less clear now than before. Recently a very close friend and creator has suffered a string of personal attacks, first having thieves and trolls say they were going to steal their stories and mocking them, then discovering people on another site selling images of their OC characters and even literal copies of their images posted here in defiance of the license terms set on their character LoRA (and basic decency), and that hurt me a lot. Said friend is obviously not eager for even more attention right now, so please forgive me not saying who directly, but many of you might know.
As a creator, just sharing something that brought you joy to create with others and hoping it makes them happy as well is a wonderful, very pure feeling, and it is lousy beyond words when that kind gift is thrown back in your face or ripped off by people with no creativity of their own.
My first album was all of my joy at being able to finally sing my songs I never thought I could, having others be able to hear them was vital to that dream coming true. I had to share it, and am glad I did. But now, looking forward, the way amateur artists like us just give our work away for nothing but a little love and too often also get a lot of grief is something I am having to reconsider.
Am I done releasing music? Absolutely not! More is coming, but I cannot go directly from the first album into the second as planned, and need a little time. I will spend the next few weeks releasing some fun singles, such as romantic songs and experiments, character themes and such, while I make my plans and peace with releasing the next official album itself. This was not really the tone I wanted to end the first album on, and I am still very optimistic and looking forward to what is to come, but I need to explain where my feelings are coming from and beg everyone's understanding and patience while I work through this curve-ball.
What a journey this was. Not always a smooth one. It breaks my heart that my Australian friends who got cut off won't be here for this final article, but at least the YouTube channel still has the song for them. Everyone who has listened, tipped my articles and commented here or on YouTube have given me gifts beyond measure, and I am grateful beyond words to you all! I look forward to seeing you again next week for the release of something a little smaller, but by no means less authentic or special to me. Thank you again, and please everyone, for the sake of this amazing community, be kind to one another- you can never know what someone else is going through, or how much a random silly post meant to them. To that certain friend feeling demotivated right now, as well as all of my others reading this, even new friends of the future, I love you all and you are why I share these, thank you for everything!!