My name is Freya, and I am a R&B-Soul artist and songwriter based in London, UK. I’ve just released my debut single “land back on earth”, the song is a warm introduction to the thin-line between dreams and reality.
The main subject is a love song, but it’s much more than that, with underlying truths about our society by living to work, and not working to live. In a world where you spend more time with your colleagues than your loved ones, I wanted to write a pretty song about the difficulties in losing connections and the meaning of community.
I’ve experienced vivid, utopian-like dreams since my childhood – things I haven’t seen in films using CGI, which weirdly makes sleeping more excited than my reality.
My producer (Blk Ozwald) and I created this song in his home studio during lockdown. I was writing a poem at the time, about feeling anxious about returning to the world, I was certain I forgot how to co-exist in public – even talk for that matter.
A couple weeks later, he was producing a beat and I was singing the lyrics from my poem, and we both looked at each other and decided we were gonna collaborate at that moment in time. We began the process, I read the lyrics off of my phone and recorded in one take.
I am heavily inspired by neo-soul, so we wanted to bring elements of this into the production. We used a lush Rhodes which has been sampled down, and left the backing spacious, letting the bass drive the groove along with drums that emulate a live sound and feel.
We had our doubts about the sound quality, but deep down, we loved making the song, at that time, we just kept it as a home recording. It definitely has sentimental value to us.
The inspiration behind the track began as a love song. It’s about that moment when your lover leaves for work, and you are both peaceful and content. But ultimately these moments are fleeting, as life gets in the way. That’s reality, it’s all of our reality. Once I realised this monotony that we face ahead, for decades longer, I delved into the meaning of life and our existence.
Most days, when I get woken up in the morning as they leave, while I drift back off I will dream about that interaction. Once I’ve fully woken up, and I realise they’re gone, I sometimes begin to wonder was this just a dream; “when I wake, you’re no where to be seen, did I just dream, you were next to me?”
I proposed a plan, maybe we should just quit our jobs and stay at home, create, relax, enjoy being naturally human; “I’ve made it clear where I stand, it’s the vision, it’s the plan, dream with me, will we land back on earth again”. Landing back on earth again is accepting the reality we live in.
The second verse delves into the thin-line between dreaming and reality. When you’re in the company of someone you love, you feel like you’re floating on a cloud and your mind is so focused on the connection, it can feel like a dream;
“I don’t wanna wake up, out of this scene”, but this is a only a tiny segment of the lives, as we both have to return back to reality and our responsibilities. We’re only human. We crave love, we crave connection, it’s a beautiful thing.
I’ve been learning to love reality, though. Writing songs and making music brings me back to life when I’ve been sleeping on myself. Don’t sleep on yourselves.
Listen to “Land Back On Earth” below and stream it everywhere else here.
