Why I Made Cold Shoulders

There’s a difference between being cold and becoming guarded.

That idea sits at the center of Cold Shoulders.

The song comes from the point where distance stops being accidental and starts becoming necessary. People usually notice the change first. They notice when you stop reaching out the same way, when your energy shifts, or when you stop giving certain situations the same access to you.

What they don’t always see is everything that happened before the distance showed up.

For me, that’s where the record lives.

Sometimes pulling back isn’t about hate. It isn’t always about anger either. Sometimes it’s about recognizing that continuing to give the same energy to the same situation is costing more than it’s giving back.

That can look cold from the outside.

From the inside, it can feel more like protection.

I didn’t want Cold Shoulders to explain every emotion in a neat way. Real situations usually aren’t that clean. You can still care about something and know you need space from it. You can still carry history with somebody and decide that the relationship with that history has to change.

That tension is more interesting to me than simply saying somebody is cold.

The visual side of the record follows the same idea.

A lot of the imagery around Cold Shoulders plays with temperature, atmosphere, stillness, smoke, winter, and late-night city energy. Those visuals work because cold doesn’t mean nothing is happening. There can still be movement underneath it. There can still be heat underneath it.

That contrast is important.

The vinyl imagery brings out another side of the record for me. Music has always had a physical feeling to it. A record, a cover, a needle dropping, the ritual of actually sitting with a song — all of that slows the experience down.

That matters with a record like this.

Cold Shoulders isn’t meant to be rushed through just to get to the next song. There are details in the mood and delivery that make more sense when you sit with it.

That’s part of why the response has meant something to me.

Since the release, Cold Shoulders has been getting one of the strongest reactions out of the music I’ve put out during this current Meloetry chapter. I don’t think that comes from people hearing the exact same story I had in mind. I think it comes from people recognizing the feeling.

Most people understand what it means to reach a point where you stop explaining yourself.

Most people understand distance.

Most people understand the moment when protecting your peace becomes more important than making sure everybody understands why you changed.

That’s the space I wanted the record to sit in.

Not bitterness.

Not pretending you don’t care.

Just knowing when something has changed.

And knowing when you have to change with it.

The winter imagery in the final visual section probably says it more clearly than I could with another paragraph.

Cold can be a season.

It can also be a boundary.

That’s Cold Shoulders.