Hey everyone, my name’s Paula Luna and I’ve just released my first EP! False Hopes & Expectations has an Arctic Monkeys/QOTSA vibe, but my voice is quite jazzy, so it turns that vibe into something completely different – it’s a lot of things in a blender.
I wasn’t going to release it until after the lockdown, but honestly I think we all need a bit of connection with one another and music’s the best for achieving that, so here it is!
These are songs that I’ve been working on for a while, they’ve crossed the Atlantic all the way from Chile, where I’m from, to the UK, where I now live. Here, I’m gonna walk you through what each song is about, what inspired it, etc… Brace yourselves as we move forward, cause this is all autobiographical – we’re gonna get reeeeal up close and personal haha
“The Degradation Of Memory”
This is the opening track of the EP, it reflects on a past relationship long after it was done, and how it could have been better, what went wrong, etc. But also, in a way, I was still holding on to the last remnants of it.
The song talks about when there’s still some love left for an ex, but actually it’s for an idealized person in the past – this person no longer exists because too much time has passed for him to still be the person I once fell in love with. All is beyond over and done, we’re strangers now, and the truth is “I wouldn’t recognize you in the street if I saw you pass by”.
It’s definitely about the overthinking of what could’ve been if you had done things differently (classic haha), but also about what COULD be if you two met again now. Some time after writing the song, I did get my answer: 10 years after having broken up, I finally went to Madrid. All I’ll say is there’s definitely material for a sequel on the next EP…
“…And Mean It”
“That’s a euphemism if I’ve ever heard one”, said a close friend about this one. And honestly? He’s right. I didn’t have the ovaries to publish what I actually wanted to say because it was too damn explicit, so it’s up to you to give it a listen and fill in the blanks.
Anyway, this one’s about something dark I did that I’m not particularly proud of, but to me music is all about connection, so I have to be honest with you guys. I was in a relationship that was chaotic, passionate and sexual – and forbidden.
Writing it was really interesting because I had to explain to my band and my producers how I wanted to build this song. They thought it should be fast-paced and aggressive, but seduction isn’t necessarily quick and punchy.
In the case of this relationship, it was a slow, sensual build up all the way to explosions, especially considering that he and I weren’t supposed to be doing what we were doing, we resisted it.
I think the conversations with my producers and band were so bluntly honest and out there that we managed to express things exactly the way I experienced them. The song ended up conveying all of the things, like the sneaking around, the frustration, the desire, and more.
“I Don’t Owe You S**t”
Although I’d really like to do this, I didn’t sit down for this one and think “hey, how about writing a feminist track?”, it just organically became one, in a way. The thing is, this song came about because I had to deal with a really toxic person.
However, after writing it, I realized some of the things about this situation were rooted in sexism. For example, this guy just wanted me to shut up and look pretty: he’d steal my ideas, and comment on my body explicitly, and all of this at work.
When this was happening it was exasperating, but when I wrote this song I was at a point where I had realized this character was just kinda sad and pitiful, and I think the song expresses those two perspectives – the initial anger and then the second-hand embarrassment.
I think that people will listen to this song and think “ugh damn, I feel you!”, and not just from a feminist perspective but a personal one, because I think we’ve all encountered people who are fueled by their fragile egos and demand attention through destructive means.
“It’s (Not) Too Late”
This one’s inspired by a classic case – a relationship where two people are honestly and fully in love, but just can’t make it work. People say that love can overcome any obstacles, but sometimes that’s just not true.
After years of trying, I broke it off, came back, and broke it off again. I had always wanted to go back though, I never ended it being 100% sure. This song is me admitting I had always waited for some sign, for something to tell one of us to return. I don’t believe in “a bigger fate”, but when things get hard you want to look anywhere for answers. It was an impossible love story.
I think these are things people don’t really want to say out loud, sometimes they’re even hard to admit to friends, so I had to put it in music. I expressed it much better through song than I could’ve ever said out loud. The relationship keeps pulling at you, and you know it’s not right, but… Is it really too late?
Listen to False Hopes And Expectations below
