SPILL VIDEO PREMIERE: TEARING UP – “SAID SOMETHING”

TEARING UP – “SAID SOMETHING”

A SPILL EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREMIERE

Following the release of his debut EP Billy Is Dead (out now via all DSPs) earlier this fall, Tearing Up (the brand new project of musician Graham Caldwell, who previously released music under the moniker Billy Moon) returns with the long-awaited release of his debut LP, Heavy (out tomorrow via all DSPs).

The new record is not “easy listening” — “I wanted this record to hurt,” as Graham wrote, and that motivation was largely inspired by a series of personal struggles that he experienced from late 2017 to early 2020, including the loss of his father. In those hard times, the people around him helped push him forward, and writing this record, in all honesty, gave him something to do aside from grieving. “October of 2017 to January of 2020 basically felt like one very, very, long year. But even before that, the record was always going to be called Heavy,” he wrote.

In addition to finding solace in human connection, Graham also found himself turning to music in less of a “this album saved my life”-sense, but more so in recognition of the way music can heal, but can also hurt. Heavy came from his personal place of pain and loss, and it became his version of hard, but necessary truth-telling via making art.

“Billy Bragg’s ‘Sexuality,’ Dixie Chicks ‘Wide Open Spaces,’ Andy Shauf’s ‘My Dear Helen,’ Cindy Lauper’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Carey’… Even writing this list makes me misty. At the real root of it, I think I just wanted to write music that could make someone cry. Just something that would make a person feel something, realize something, or remember something they thought they’d forgotten. I hope I’ve done that with this record.”

To celebrate the record’s release this week, Graham is also sharing an official music video for “Said Something,” one of the record’s first singles. Today, SPILL Magazine is proud to host its premiere.

Said Graham of the track itself:

“Losing someone is particularly strange because, in life, we get used to things being temporary. We know we can never step in the same river twice, but this is assuming there will always be a river. When the river runs dry, it’s quite a shock, and given how often we were used to stepping in it, we find ourselves asking: where the fuck is my river?

Sometimes, these things happen because of an unknowable number of circumstances: Anyone who’s ever been in a car accident will know about having the thought of “if I had just left home 3 seconds later…” or “if that woman driving had checked her blindspot…” or “if that guy in the truck had pulled over sooner”. Sometimes things happen and the reasons are too complicated for any one of them to be the sole reason for the thing that happened.

But then again, what if one of them was? What if one of them actually was and you could never actually know for sure? What if one of those things was something you did, unknowingly, absent-mindedly, that set off a chain of events that would ultimately end in tragedy? You will never know, but of course that means you’ll never be sure either.

Suicide is difficult because it blames both everyone and no one. The person who dies is both perpetrator and victim. It absolves everyone and yet also condemns them. You are both at fault and totally powerless at the same time, waving between the two feelings like a metronome. When I lost a young family member to suicide, many of us were completely dumbfounded as to why this person would choose to end their life. What made things worse was how they left no explanation, leaving us to try and piece together whatever their reasoning was, an endless circle with no real answers.

Time moves on and to some extent, our family’s been able to find some sense of closure. We accept how we’re powerless against the past and keep moving, for better or for worse, it’s all we can do.”

Tearing Up’s debut LP, Heavy, is out tomorrow via All DSPs. Stay tuned for more new music, coming soon.

Tearing Up
Heavy
(Independent)
Release Date: January 27, 2023

Artist Links

Background Photo Credit: Kate Dockeray

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