John Conlin is back with another heavy hitting, emotionally-charged single, “High In 7/11”. It’s a colorful, catchy and insightful and the follow-up to his hit single, “Kissing Other Girls”, which has already garnered over 165k plays on Spotify.
“High In 7/11”, was inspired by his experience one night walking around in Hollywood after seeing a friend’s performance, when a feeling of dread creeped into his body. John says, “It’s that familiar existential feeling that all artists feel where the voice inside your head goes “AHHHHH, what if I never ‘make it’ in this industry” and “I feel like a constant failure”. I wanted to write about that feeling in a fun, almost positive way. I just so happened to be walking into a 7/11 for a midnight treat and something about the overexposed overhead lighting and colorfully saturated snacks hit me like a truck. I didn’t necessarily feel 100% better, but I felt a sense of distraction and a small, calming feeling of “exhale, it’s gonna be ok. It’s always gonna be ok”. And I knew, right then and there, what I wanted to write about.”
The song itself speaks to, “coping with life and all the shit things it throws your way”, says John. “It really feels like the world is kind of falling apart and ripping at the seams right now, which is so scary and exhausting to deal with. And on top of that, I have all these internal feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, and insecurity that come up from time to time. This song is about acknowledging and embracing those existential feelings and not letting them get the best of me.”
While John has written a lot of songs about love and heartbreak in the past, his favorite topic to cover is the balance of, “I don’t think I’m doing well, mentally” and “okay, how am I going to cope with this?”. It’s been really fun and challenging for John to take more of a nuanced approach to lyric writing, but it’s been really rewarding for him too.
Some things you may not know about John is that he’s not only originally from Toronto, Canada, but he’s fluent in Italian, needs to have a lollipop at least every other day or he feels like he’s going crazy, and his favorite album is ‘Guilty Pleasure’ by Ashley Tisdale.
As for now, John is working on the last few songs for his upcoming album. “I’ve been putting out singles for a while and I think I really found my sound last year.” He continues, “Right now, I’m actually recording vocals for my favorite song I’ve ever written, and I can’t wait to finalize this project and release it. It’s been really exciting to craft an album and create a whole cohesive project.”
“High In 7/11”, was written by John Conlin, Stacey Kelleher and Taylor Macres, as well as produced by Taylor Macres.
