Hello, Jenny here again. My new album “Shortwave Daydream” releases tomorrow, September 8th. Since I’m bored, I’m going to talk about working titles and stuff since that interests me.
First we start with my debut release, Leftovers, with basically the entire EP being totally different. “Spacial Integrity” was originally called “Zero One”, after binary, since the EPs theme is space. I’m not sure whether this would’ve been shown as 01 or not.
The EPs second track, “Venus” (which, I should add, is not actually named after Sailor Venus), was originally titled, simply “Square” (although the file name just called it “squ”). Venus was probably the better title if I’m honest.
The EPs third and final track is titled “Breathe”, due to the calming nature of the track. The title is an instruction, telling you to just let go of everything, slow down, and just breathe. The original name for it was “Forget”, which works just as well. I do think Breathe sounds somewhat better, more calming.
We’re going to fast forward to Radio Silence, as early titles for everything between Leftovers and Radio Silence have sadly been wiped, although I do remember the (unfortunately) hit song “Superstition” had a working title of “The Wrong Religion”, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that it started out as an attempt to make a song like Justice.
Since Radio Silence was partly made up of already completed songs (and a vision had already been planned out for the 2 EPs), only one working title exists for it, that track being “Cottoncandy”, which had the original name of “First Place”. I’m not sure what it meant, but I assume it was a placeholder, as songs titled “First Place” and “Last Place” both exist as part of the scrapped album “Dream Unseen”, and have yet to see the light of day (a track from this album that has still not seen a full release is being re-worked for the new Aithein EP, but production on said release is on a hiatus at the moment).
So we move on to the release of the album Neptune. Funny thing is, this album had artwork for each track ready, as well as tags and everything with the working titles, but then at the very last minute was changed to the new titles shown on the album now. “Atmos” was titled “Eclipse”, “Sentience” was titled “Homework” (but was changed to avoid Daft Punk comparisons), “Automaton” was titled “The Feeling”, “Time & Space” was titled “The Traveler”, and “Fadeout” had two similar working titles, which were “Outsider”, and “The Outsider”.
I, myself, seem to not recall why such changes were made so quickly, but if I had to guess, it was possibly to give the album a more “spacey” vibe.
Next up are 2 demos (since demos also need pre-release titles). These are taken from early 2019 releases. “Kia”, the SebastiAn inspired small interlude, was originally titled “SpArk”, but was changed for obvious reasons. “Slow Day” was given the working title of “Ransomware”, but the title felt too “aggressive”.
Now we move on to the new era, with “Transatlantic Opus”, which had a couple of working titles.
During the recording and cutting stages, the track was given the working title of “Lowee”, which was later given to the imprint that released various singles and imprints from “Shortwave Daydream”, before being renamed to “Loveitch Records”, after another working title we’ll get to shortly.
During the end of production of “Transatlantic Opus”, two title suggestions were made, “Transatlantic 2100″, which implies the audio is from far into the future, and “Transatlantic Tokyo”, which gives the track a setting. The track is, in fact, a bit of both.
The first single from Shortwave Daydream was “If I Fell”, which had two similar titles, which were “Smoke Room”, as the track has a “hazy” feel to it, and, carrying on from that trend, “Hotbox The Spider Robot”, named after the character from Into The Spider-Verse. Smoke Room was the main choice but ended up not being used due to possible drug associations.
The second, and main single, “Dazed & Confused” had the working title “Lucid Awakening”. This felt too bare, and so was given a second working title, which stuck. Which is annoying, because I wanted a better title. Couldn’t think of one better than either of those two.
“Internet Connection” was the follow-up single, which was a later addition to the album’s track-list, and had the working title “I Thought You Loved Me”, before a weird connection made me realize I had a better track title. And, no, this was not a connection with the person I named this after. I just made it that so people didn’t find out I made 2 songs after the same virtual YouTuber.
Speaking of, “Asobi Beach” had the working title “Gate”. No idea why.
“Narcoleptic Insomnia” was originally the introductory track, but a real intro for the album couldn’t be made using that track, so was pushed to second. The original title for it was “Wait”.
And, finally, we get to Loveitch Records.
The track “Strawberry Sunrise” had the working title “Lovelitchi”, after the tamagotchi, and also after a really good friend of mine. This was later renamed to “Love Itch”, and then to “Strawberry Sunrise” to avoid any resemblance at all. The title was then given to the imprint releasing the album, just as one word.
“Shortwave Daydream” LP releases Sunday, September 8th on all good streaming sites and digital storefronts. More info on our discord, at http://discord.io/teevex
