He came to sing at a friend’s birthday party. For the entire time he held the mic and sang, everybody was enchanted. Some sang along, while others got up from their seats and danced to the music. And then there was me—the girl who couldn’t do any of those things. I just sat and stared as the music played on. After the performance, he walked up to where I was seated and asked if someone was sitting next to me. I said, “No, there’s no one sitting here. If there was someone, they must have moved to a different seat.”
He sat next to me and introduced himself: “My name is Zeek. How about you?” I responded, “I’m Anita. I saw what you did a moment ago. You’re good.” He smiled and said thank you. That was the beginning of us. We talked all night. When he was called to sing again, he even used my name in most of the songs. It was thrilling. After the program, we exchanged numbers. Weeks later, he became my boyfriend, and I became his girlfriend.
There was one thing I knew right from the start of our relationship: music was his first love. Everything else came second. In the corner of his little room were his guitar and a keyboard. He had set up a small studio where he practiced music all day. We could be in the middle of a conversation, and he’d suddenly go quiet for a while. Then he’d jump up, rush to his keyboard, and start playing. He’d hum and put tunes together. Later, he’d say, “That’s how inspiration works. It can hit you no matter where you are.”
One afternoon, in the studio at the corner of his little room, he said, “Sit here. Let’s listen to all the demos I’ve ever recorded. No one has ever heard them. I’m giving you the rare privilege of being the first person to hear them. You see how much I love you?”
One after the other, the music played on. He told me the inspiration behind each track and the mood he was in when he wrote them. After listening to all fifteen demo tracks, he asked me, “What do you think? I know you love them, but which one is your favorite?” I looked into his eyes and said, “It’s hard to choose. All of them are beautiful and sweet. If you release them individually, they’ll all be hits.”
He screamed, “Wow, that’s all I want to hear. We’re going to get famous, darling!”
You could see my comment made him very happy, but truth be told, every song I listened to on the demo was trash—very raucous at best. It was the kind of song that makes you switch the dial to another channel because it’s a waste of your precious time to listen to it. He had the voice. He was sweet when singing other people’s popular songs. He had a dream, and he was my boyfriend. I couldn’t crush that dream with my honest opinion, so I gave him what he wanted to hear.
Whenever he was invited to perform at shows, he only sang popular songs. He didn’t have the courage to sing his own. Maybe that was an indication that he didn’t trust his own work either, but I loved his zeal and his desire to make it big in the industry, so I supported him as best as I could.
Two years into dating, and he was still hopping from show to show, singing other people’s songs. He kept writing songs that were hard on the ears—no harmony, and the rhythm was all over the place. One day, after listening to a new song he had written, I suggested he change a word in the song because it didn’t fit where it was. He said, “This is art. You don’t have any art in you to notice the beauty of that word where it is.”
I was deeply hurt. I replied, “It’s just a suggestion. I don’t have to be a road contractor to notice a bad road.” It turned into a heated argument. He made silly comments about me, and I told him exactly how I felt. That was the day I should have told him how trashy his songs were, but I let it slide.
Three years into the relationship, and all I had was bad music and promises of future fame. He didn’t do anything that brought him a steady income. Sure, sometimes he played a show and earned some money, but it wasn’t consistent enough to call it a career. He had a degree in engineering but wasn’t ready to work in that field. He said, “Art is a pure thing to do, and it must be done wholeheartedly. If I add anything else to it, my focus will shift, and I won’t get famous. True artists don’t work like that.”
Yooo.
Then he’d call me every week asking for loans he never paid back. He wouldn’t take my advice, but he’d take my money and never repay it. He’d say, “When I finally make it in the future, you’ll be by my side to reap all the fruits of your labor. Trust the process.”
I started thinking about my own future—how time was passing and how he wasn’t serious about building a meaningful life for himself. One day, we had a fight. It was about his music, and he made it very clear that he would always choose his music over anything else. I told him, “Go ahead and marry your [trashy] music. I’m done.”
The “trashy” is in brackets because I didn’t say it loud enough for him to hear.
He tried coming back several times, but I didn’t pay him any mind. I moved on with my life.
It’s been three and a half years since we broke up. He’s still an underground artist. When you hear a promo mentioning the names of artists performing at an event, they’ll usually list all the big names and then say, “And many more…” Yeah, he’s always part of the “many more.”
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He gets invited, but his name never appears on the bill. Not everyone makes it in the end, and that’s something he should realize. Some people try for years and later change course. I hope it won’t be too late for him and his bad songs, but most importantly, I hope someone will finally tell him the truth: that all the songs he’s ever written are terrible, and no one would download or stream them if he dared to release them. He needs that awakening.
