Why I Leaked My Own Unfinshed Song

There is this strange kind of quiet that happens when you are about to release something half-baked. The voice inside your head is saying, "Wait for it to be perfect." The world is reminding you that perfection is how you are taken seriously.

I went against all of that and leaked my own demo instead.

The track is called "More." It's a wishful, underwater-sounding bit of film pop — laid down in one late-night take, chopped up on AirPods in school the following day. It's raw, emotional, and not perfect. There are moments where you can even hear me breathing too close to the mic, half-formed words spilling out. And that's exactly why I released it.

The beauty in rough edges

When I'm producing music, there's a point when the song starts to perfect itself. I can mix and master, and my boyfriend's an audio engineer — I could get it ready for the radio. But "More" was a song that didn't feel like it was meant to sparkle. It felt like it should be in that vulnerable, uncertain state before perfection.

I've worked on my first single, "24" (release date: November 14), for months, and I knew this was not the same kind of song. "More" was intimate, more revealing — a work in progress of emotion that somehow managed to capture the truth in a way the final product never could.

Why imperfection matters

When I listen to the condition of music these days, I find myself noticing just how clean everything is. With AI, music has been perfected to be more efficient, more elegant, more smooth. But I don't want smooth. I want friction. I want the proof that a human has passed through.

"More" never was meant to attempt to be that world. It was meant to sound human. The autotune is not there to hide the flaws — it exposes them. It distorts every distorted note, every wavering pitch, into something almost caressing. The whole thing is underwater, but it's breathing.

Leaking as honesty

Releasing your own song is adrenaline-fueled-sounding, but to me, it's just honesty. I did not want to wait for a label, a concept, or the perfect rollout. I don't even have a Spotify page yet — releasing it when "24" releases — but I didn't want to wait for approval to release something real out into the world.

There's this weird pressure as a new artist to come out as a brand, not an individual. I wanted to start with the opposite: something immediate, something human, something imperfect. "More" is me before the editing, before the structure, before I knew how to trim emotion neatly.

The song beneath the song

The words — some mumbled, some written down — whirl around wanting everything at once: love, freedom, peace, success, meaning. It's coming to terms with the fact that you're not good enough to become what you dream of being. There is no tidy ending. That's what makes it real.

When I listened back, I realized that the demo was not just a placeholder, but it was the story itself.

Looking ahead

If “More” is the moment before the curtain rises, “24” is the scene that follows. It’s cinematic and deliberate — about time, ambition, and the fear of wasting it. But “More” had to come first, because it’s the part I don’t want to forget: the shaky, uncertain, human beginning.

I don’t know what happens next. Maybe that’s the point.