"bad4you" is this romantic indie pop track about making your case to the person you are into. It almost feels like a voice message that you would send at the end of a long night, maybe you would regret in the morning, maybe not.
Andreas has this floaty yet intentional tonality in this track. The hook is infectious and honestly takes this track into the flirty and sensual direction. It is this cool blend of RnB and pop that also shows vulnerability and an ability to convey a story with a lot of emotion behind it. The track is off of Owens' new EP, aptly titled almost everything i've ever wanted to say, an intimate and vulnerable R&B-infused pop record showcasing his ingenious and versatile songwriting. The EP follows a series of singles – “don’t feel happy”, “falling & falling”, and “not much (better than before)”. It is the beautiful love sick, flirty, honest, collection of songs that both have that element of groove but sentimentality.
“‘almost everything i’ve ever wanted to say’ is truthfully that — it is in every way, nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to say musically, lyrically, sonically, experimentally, and emotionally. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to create and complete a work like this; something where I’ve sat in my room and slowly worked from beginning to end without any real goal in mind. Almost like I’m reading a book about my life, piecing together one experience after another but not quite knowing where or how the story ends.”
“‘bad4you’ is likely the first song I’ve ever written where I can truly say I understood the significance of every sonic and conceptual decision. I’m not sure why, but with ‘bad4you’ in particular, I felt like something just clicked and suddenly everything made sense to my brain. Writing and arranging the song became less about convention and expectation, and more about what I felt the song needed, throwing caution to the wind, and consciously letting the song finish itself. I think in doing that – in a sense, giving myself to the song and not trying to dictate its final form – I found a place of comfort knowing I wasn’t forcing anything into the track that perhaps didn’t belong. Through the process I think it came into focus that production is, in every sense, a language, and producing ‘bad4you’ really helped widen my vocabulary.”
-andreas owens
'almost everything i've ever wanted to say'
The mentality and overall vision behind andreas owens has been pretty different to that of The Millennial Club. Ironically, the biggest distinction between the two projects lies less in the final product, but more so within the creative process itself.
Adapting an “anything goes” mindset helped facilitate a lack of pressure to fit within a specific genre and andreas owens quickly found himself enjoying the refreshing freedom present in creating without convention. This unadulterated creative energy ultimately led to the birth of almost everything i’ve ever wanted to say: a diverse and genre-blending EP that not only reflects his personal growth as a songwriter and producer, but surely defines his personal footprint as a truly generational artist.
andreas owens is the solo project of Los Angeles-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Andres Owens, the lead vocalist of indie pop and R&B band The Millennial Club. Delicately blending intimate vocals with unabashedly ‘pop’ backbeats, the So-Cal native has been slowly but steadily building a catalogue of truly unique material. Embracing the ever-evolving notion of bedroom pop, everything is written, recorded, and produced in his (tiny) bedroom-turned-studio.
In his own words, “It’s the only way I’ve found it to feel authentically myself. The safe, familiar space is the catalyst for facilitating something visceral and unapologetically my own. It allows me to release my compulsive ‘perfectionist mindset’ and instead create with the understanding that mistakes are inevitably a unique and beautiful part of the process that makes it my own.”
Review by Hannah Schneider