Hi, my name is Dana McCoy. I grew up in an incredibly musical household, I was constantly being inspired by the songs my mom played while she cleaned the house, the music my dad played in the car, and the constant attempts to keep up with whatever new music my sister was listening to.
In my earliest memories I am listening to a myriad of 60’s girl groups, singing along to Prince’s 3121 album, and attempting all the high notes in The Emancipation of Mimi CD.
This EP To Those Who Wait came to me almost by accident. I graduated from college in the middle of the pandemic, and I was afraid of the stagnation that would come with being stuck in the house. To prevent that and to keep in touch, two of my closest friends and I decided to give each other prompts, write a song a week, and present them to each other. That is how everything began.
Making my EP was the first time I felt most like myself while creating music. Since there was no deadline, and I was truly creating just for me, I was able to get out of my head and explore as an artist.
The first two songs of this EP, “Standby” and “Leave The Light On”, started as a stream of consciousness, and I think they speak to longing and the hope of being loved.
These songs were written at a time when I felt like the pandemic had caused me to miss out on these two years in my early 20’s. Which meant two years of having the opportunity to have new experiences, make new memories with friends, and fall in love were gone.
They both speak to two different parts of me: the anxious and the self assured. The track “Standby” I am especially proud of because it’s the first song I played a large hand in producing.
“Important” came from an inside joke with some of my closest friends. I’m always giving pep talks about making sure you’re playing the starring role in your own life, and that led to us writing a song about the idea. These were some of the most fun lyrics to write on the project.
“Tethered”, the last song on the EP, was written immediately after I moved. I had created this idealized version of what life would be like and how close me and my friends that had moved to LA would be, but things didn’t immediately start out that way.
I was feeling dejected because I felt like I had moved away from the people I felt closest to, and even though our physical proximity had changed I wasn’t feeling close to the people I saw on a daily basis.
I worked on a majority of this EP with two of my friends from school, Emma Botti and Sabrina Song. We live on opposite coasts, so we set up weekly zoom calls and shared screens and sound in order to change, edit, and produce the songs.
I think this EP has really helped me come out of my shell. I was able to make definitive choices about what I wanted the song to sound like and what I wanted to say in a way that I had never felt able to do before.
That is why I titled the project To Those Who Wait. This EP almost felt like a gift to myself, the epitome of a good thing. It is both a manifestation and reclamation. The waiting is over and now I feel like I have arrived.
Listen to my EP To Those Who Wait below and stream it everywhere else here.
