For a long time, I didn’t trust small signs of progress.
Not because they weren’t real, but because they felt out of proportion to the work. When you’ve put years into something, a single comment or a slight uptick can feel almost insulting. Like being asked to clap for crumbs.
Not dramatically. Not in a way that changes anything overnight. But enough that I noticed myself pausing instead of dismissing it.
There were twice as many streams on release day forGHOST2·0compared to Running Away. Another producer left a comment saying they loved it and wanted to remix it. That hasn’t happened before. Those are just facts. They don’t mean the floodgates are open. They don’t mean anything is “about to happen.”
What surprised me was how uncomfortable it felt to let those things register in the past.
Part of me still wants to wave them away. To say it’s noise, or luck, or too small to count. That instinct has kept me protected before. Sure, It stops you getting carried away. It also stops you seeing what’s actually in front of you and what I allow myself to be grateful for.
I’m not suddenly optimistic. I’m not telling myself a story about momentum. I’m still aware of how slow this has been, and how much of it happens without witnesses.
But I am noticing a shift in how I measure things.
Not scaling the wins up into hope. Not shrinking them down into nothing. Just letting them exist at the size they actually are.
That feels quieter than motivation. More like calibration. I’m making music to measure my own progress, release by release. Seeing that change is enough to keep me moving.
I don’t need these moments to save me. I just need to stop pretending they don’t matter because they don’t look how I imagined progress would.
That’s where I am right now. Not celebrating. Not quitting. Just paying closer attention.
For three years I’ve been releasing music to a tiny audience.
Not “blowing up.” Not “algorithmically blessed.” Not “about to break through.”
Just small, scattered signs of life.
A handful of listeners who keep coming back. Some solid radio support. A modest social following.
Enough to know the music isn’t nothing — but nowhere near enough to feel momentum.
I write the songs. I pay for the production. I obsess over the mixes. I release them properly. I pitch them. I send the emails. I do the blogs. I do the radio submissions.
And most of the time, the response is still… quiet.
That’s the part people don’t talk about.
Because silence doesn’t mean failure — it means limbo. You’re not rejected, and you’re not rewarded. You’re just hovering in that uncomfortable middle space where effort and outcome don’t line up.
After long enough, motivation stops being excitement and becomes endurance.
You start questioning things that shouldn’t even be questioned: Am I actually good? Is this worth the money? Am I being patient — or just stubborn? Would stopping be healthier, or would that break something deeper?
The hardest part isn’t the numbers. It’s the lack of proportionate feedback. When progress doesn’t echo back at the same volume you put in, perspective gets distorted. You’re not being told you’re bad — which you could work with. You’re being told very little.
And yet… the music keeps improving.
That’s the grounding truth underneath it all. The songs now are stronger than they were a year ago. The vocals are better. The writing is clearer. The confidence is real, not imagined. Growth is happening — just not where the internet tells you it’s supposed to show up.
So eventually you’re forced to face a sharper question:
If the audience stays small… do I still do this?
For me, the answer has shifted.
I don’t release music anymore expecting it to rescue me, validate me, or prove my worth. I release it because it’s part of who I am, because stopping would feel like erasing something honest, and because progress itself has value — even when it isn’t widely witnessed.
That doesn’t make it noble. It doesn’t make it romantic. It just makes it real.
Releasing music to a tiny audience teaches you something most people never have to learn: how much of yourself you’re willing to stand behind when the room isn’t full.
I’ve been thinking a lot about where AI fits into my creative process — and where it doesn’t. The conversation around AI in music is messy, and as an independent artist I’ve had to figure out what feels authentic for me.
So here’s the honest truth, I have experimented with AI visuals in the past. Some of my older releases used AI imagery as part of the artwork because I didn’t have access to better tools or resources at that time, plus the conversation around AI in music has shifted a lot since then.
That’s not where I am now. AI does not create any part of my music. It doesn’t write the songs, it doesn’t sing the vocals, and it doesn’t produce the sound. The finished music is entirely human — written, sung and shaped by me.
Where AI still appears is only in the planning stage. Not the output.
When I was sketching ideas for the GHOST2·0 video, I used AI as a rough storyboard — a pacing guide, a mood reference. But the final video is real: shot by me, built from real footage, with no AI-generated visuals in the final cut.
The same goes for my artwork now. I might use AI to mock up a layout or test a concept, but the final artwork is created manually in Photoshop, shaped from my own design choices, not generated for me.
So this is my line moving forward:
AI can help me plan. It does not create my work. The finished art — music, vocals, visuals — are human-made.
And on the broader conversation: I understand why some people use AI to make entire songs. But that’s not what being an artist is to me. Music is something you grow into — through writing, through learning, through messing up, through finding your voice. I’ve spent the last three years building mine, and that part can’t be outsourced.
AI can mimic a melody, but it can’t feel it. It can generate a voice, but it can’t live a life behind it.
My work continues to evolve as I do — but at the core, it’s still human, intentional and emotionally driven. AI is a practical tool in the early stages. The art itself comes from me.
Scrolling for Love came out of a pretty blunt reality: after being single for more than five years and living in a place where I rarely cross paths with other gay men, the only place to meet people is online. And honestly? It feels wrong most of the time.
Everything about modern dating apps feels engineered, curated profiles, photos that look nothing like real life, endless swiping, people disappearing mid-conversation, and a whole ecosystem built around selling the fantasy of connection. It’s transactional, shallow, and at times completely scammy. I don’t meet people in real life here, but online doesn’t feel like real life either. So you end up stuck between two worlds.
That’s where the song came from. Not heartbreak. Not yearning. Just frustration.
And that same frustration runs through the music world too. Online spaces are gatekept. It’s not that my audience isn’t out there, it’s that modern platforms decide who gets seen. Everything is pay-to-play now. Organic reach is practically dead. If you’re not “viral,” “TikTok safe,” or “Insta-worthy,” you’re invisible.
Meanwhile the human psyche is addicted to outrage, drama, and conflict — the exact opposite of the kind of music or energy I put out. So you either play the game or you accept its limitations. Scrolling was my way of choosing neither, just naming the experience without turning it into a performance.
If anything, the song is about building healthier expectations and boundaries around the online world. Knowing what I’m actually looking for. Knowing what I refuse to chase. And being honest about the fact that both love and music now live inside systems that don’t always reward sincerity.
Scrolling for Lovewas me channelling all of that, the loneliness, the algorithm, the fake connection, the hope, the irritation, the honesty. It was the moment I stopped blaming myself for something that’s bigger than me.
This new version is bigger, cleaner, and more cinematic — the sound I always wanted this track to have. It’s fully re-produced from the ground up and hits a lot harder than the original.
The pre-save is now live, and it genuinely helps more than anything. If you’ve been following my music this year, this is the one I’m most proud of so far.
When I was sixteen, I stepped into the music world believing I was ready for it. I wasn’t. I wanted the dream so badly that I didn’t see how exposed I really was. That age is all hunger and imagination. You think you’re invincible because nothing bad has happened yet. You think a yes will change everything, and a no will never come. At sixteen, I genuinely believed I could be chosen and lifted into a life that looked golden from the outside.
It was the age of glossy boybands, rehearsed charm, rigid styling, and perfect harmonies. I found myself auditioning for one of them. Each round I passed felt like confirmation that fate was involved. I didn’t understand the machinery beneath it all, the way decisions had nothing to do with who could sing and everything to do with what could be sold.
We had sessions with Shirley Bassey’s singing teacher. She was fierce, perceptive, the kind of woman who could hear your entire emotional landscape in a single note. Before the final decision, she pulled me aside and said something I wasn’t old enough to fully process. “Andrew, if you don’t get chosen, it won’t be because of your voice. Out of all of them, you’re the best singer. It’s about the look they’re going for.”
Those words hit with a strange duality. They were both a reassurance and a judgment. I heard the compliment, but I didn’t yet understand the truth sitting inside it. I wasn’t being evaluated as a human being with a voice. I was being measured as a product. My voice was irrelevant. My face was the deal-breaker. At sixteen, that realisation sinks into the bones like cold water.
A few hours later, the no arrived.
It didn’t matter that the boyband barely made an impact. It didn’t matter that another group exploded at the same time and dominated the charts (a clue: The Irish came from the west). What mattered was that the dream I had pinned to my self-worth snapped in half. Something inside me folded. I didn’t rant or fall apart. I just went silent. Quiet silence is a different kind of pain. It’s the kind you carry for decades because you never gave yourself permission to feel it.
Without even naming it, I stopped singing. I walked away from something I loved because I assumed it didn’t want me back. I didn’t revisit that part of myself for almost thirty years.
People think dreams die loudly. They don’t. They submerge. They find a shadowed corner inside you and wait for your life to make room for them again.
Decades went by. I became an adult with responsibilities, bills, heartbreaks, jobs, survival. I built a life with no space for the boy who wanted to sing. But he never left. He just waited for a crack in the armour.
Then, one day, something small shifted. Not a dramatic moment. Not an epiphany. Just a quiet tug in the chest. A feeling that I had abandoned a part of myself I wasn’t supposed to abandon forever. I opened a music app, pressed a key, and sang a line. It felt like tapping a stone buried under the earth and hearing something alive beneath it.
My voice was older now. Deeper, steadier, carrying more truth than it ever did at sixteen. It didn’t sound like the voice of a boy chasing fame. It sounded like someone who had lived.
This time, though, I wasn’t stepping into the industry blind. I knew exactly what it was. The music industry is not a fair system. It’s not even a system. It’s a creature.
A lion.
Magnificent, powerful, hypnotic. It draws people in with the promise of safety, approval, elevation. But beneath that golden exterior live teeth and hunger. And the ones most vulnerable to the lion’s appetite are the ones who want its attention the most.
I was the lamb. I had always been the lamb. Soft, open-hearted, full of yearning. Yearning is dangerous. It makes you walk toward the very thing that can consume you.
This time, when labels began showing interest, I felt the old pull. The warmth. The sense of being seen. Words like potential and fresh sound. At sixteen, these words would have been oxygen. Now they felt familiar in a way that was both comforting and unsettling.
But adulthood gives you the one thing a teenager never has: pattern recognition.
The tone shifted. Compliments turned into expectations. Interest turned into extraction. Labels wanted me to fund everything myself: the production, the marketing, the promotion. They wanted my time, my energy, my money, my effort. What they offered in return wasn’t safety, structure, or partnership. It was intangible guidance. Wisdom. Suggestions. Knowledge presented like gold but impossible to hold.
And that’s when I understood the dynamic fully. The lion doesn’t want your talent. The lion wants your devotion. It wants your hunger because hunger makes you compliant. Hunger makes you easy to shape. Hunger makes you a useful meal.
I stepped back before the jaws could close.
And then something unexpected happened. Instead of shrinking, I expanded. I began creating music for myself. I wrote and released song after song. Narcissist. True Love Is Inside You. Capsized Heart. About Love. Ghost. Scrolling for Love. Running Away. Each one felt like stitching together a wound that had been open since I was sixteen.
But even then, the journey wasn’t smooth. I pushed too hard. Burned myself out promoting everything. Chased numbers. Refreshed stats. Wanted proof that I wasn’t delusional. On the worst days, the old sixteen-year-old voice whispered, maybe they were right about you.
But growth rarely arrives as a dramatic transformation. It comes in small, honest moments. Mine came while listening to a new mix of Ghost 2.0. For the first time, I heard myself clearly. My voice wasn’t the voice of a hopeful amateur anymore. It was a voice with weight. Professional. Emotional. True. And I realised something profound: I had become the artist I once needed someone else to believe I could be.
I had become him without anyone choosing me.
That was the turning point. I stopped craving the lion’s gaze. I stopped feeding the fantasy that someone else needed to lift me. Sobriety sharpened everything. It cut through the illusions I’d held since sixteen. I no longer wanted fame. I wanted truth. I wanted a creative life built on intention, not desperation. I wanted to grow at a pace that didn’t break me.
And in that quiet, everything started growing naturally. Listeners have found me slowly. The right ones. The honest ones. Not masses. Not noise. Just genuine connection.
Now I understand the real story I’ve been living. It was never about becoming a lion myself. It was never about defeating the lion. It wasn’t even about escaping the lion.
The real power is this:
The lamb doesn’t survive by becoming stronger than the lion. The lamb survives by no longer believing the lion is a god.
I am singing again. Not to rewrite the rejection from when I was sixteen. Not to chase the fantasy of overnight success. Not to win the approval of an industry built to feed on people like me.
I am singing because the voice I abandoned didn’t abandon me. It waited, patient and quiet, until I was finally old enough, brave enough, and grounded enough to choose myself.
Over the past few days I’ve been watching a creator called ContraPoints on YouTube, and it’s genuinely been a game-changer for me. Her videos are long, philosophical deep dives into culture, psychology, identity, art, and the way we make sense of the world.
It was exactly what I needed after feeling bored with mindless streaming. Most shows feel average or repetitive, and I’d been craving something that wasn’t afraid to go deep or handle complexity. Her Twilight deep dive surprised me by going into really rich territory about desire, fantasy, and human psychology.
That’s where she talked about yearning and craving, and it hit me harder than I expected.
Yearning is longing for something that doesn’t actually exist. It sounds like: “I miss the good old days,” “I just want things to be like they used to be,” “I want that perfect partner or perfect life I imagine in my head.” It’s a longing for a lost past that can never return or an idealised future that was never real to begin with. Because the thing itself isn’t real, yearning can never be satisfied.
Craving is different. You can satisfy a craving, but only for a short time. It sounds like: “I’m craving a drink,” “I need sugar,” “I want a big night out.” These things can be reached. You can have the drink, the sweets, the night out. But an hour, a day, a week or a month later the craving comes back. It never stays.
That’s when I realised my old idea of success in music lived in the yearning category. It was this vague fantasy version of something I’d never defined or experienced. And craving was the temptation to chase viral moments or quick hits of validation that fade instantly.
Seeing it clearly has reset everything for me.
I’m done with fantasy goals. I’m focusing on real, grounded, intentional progress that I can actually experience and build on. GHOST 2.0 is my first step in that direction.
When I started shaping the artwork for Ghost 2.0, I kept circling back to one of my favourite covers – Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse’s Valerie. There’s something timeless about it: the torn paper edges, that mix of colour and shadow, the raw soul of Amy’s voice spilling through production that feels both retro and modern. It captures what I wanted for Ghost 2.0 – reflection, nostalgia, and a bit of grit under the polish.
Most people know Valerie as an Amy Winehouse song, but it actually began with Liverpool band The Zutons in 2006. Frontman Dave McCabe wrote it about an American woman named Valerie Star, his ex-girlfriend who’d planned to move to the UK before a string of driving offences stopped her. The lyrics – “Did you have to go to jail, put your house up for sale…” – were quite literal. When Ronson and Winehouse reimagined it a year later, they turned a very specific story into something universal: longing, regret, and the messiness of love.
Valerie Star herself later told Vice that she still can’t listen to the song without feeling strange. “It’s kind of surreal,” she said. “I can’t keep the song on my shuffle playlist… I feel like it would come up at the most awkward times. Like, hey, just listening to a song about myself – don’t mind me.”
That blend of truth, irony, and reinvention hooked me. The idea that a song – and even its artwork – can travel through different lives and still hold emotional truth feels close to what Ghost 2.0 stands for. My artwork borrows that torn-paper aesthetic from Valerie, but filters it through a different lens: what happens when you peel back layers of identity, nostalgia, and self-image to see what’s really there.
It struck me that Ghost 2.0 mirrors Valerie in more ways than one. Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse took a song that already existed – The Zutons’ Valerie, released just a year earlier – and reimagined it with new life and emotion. It wasn’t about erasing the original; it was about revealing another layer that had always been there, waiting to be heard.
That’s what this version of Ghost is for me. It’s the same song at its core, but it breathes differently now. I sometimes wonder if The Zutons could go back in time, would they reimagine Valerie themselves? Maybe not to compete with what came after, but to reclaim it – to express how it felt watching their own creation take on a second life.
That’s the beauty of art. Once it’s out in the world, it evolves. Ghost 2.0 is me doing exactly that – revisiting something I already made, not to fix it, but to let it speak in a new voice. GHOST2.0 will be released in January 2026.
When I wrote Ghost, it came from a place of feeling invisible in relationships, like I’d slowly disappear just to keep the peace. Times when I was scared to say what I really felt because honesty might push someone away. It’s that quiet prison where your sensitivity feels like something to hide. I’ve often found myself trapped in my own thoughts, replaying conversations, trying to work out where I went wrong, when really the truth is simpler: I was never seen for who I really am. I was hiding it to feel accepted.
Looking back, I realise that I started off already carrying a lot of emotional damage. Not because of my family or anything dramatic, but because of the world I grew up in. Society made me believe I was wrong. Being gay in the shadow of the AIDS crisis was hard. That fear and stigma hung over everything. It told me that who I was wasn’t safe, that to be myself was to risk rejection or disgust. I grew up absorbing the message that different meant bad.
When I was a teenager, I was extremely emotional. I felt things deeply and was often told that was wrong or too much. I used to think love meant big gestures and endless devotion, the kind of love you hear in songs like Celine Dion’s Because You Loved Me or You Are the Reason. Those songs shaped how I saw love, something pure, consuming, and unconditional. I believed that if I loved someone with that intensity, they’d see me and value me. So when I felt love for the first time, I grabbed onto it with both hands and was terrified to let go. It wasn’t really the person I was clinging to, it was the fantasy of what love could give me, acceptance and belonging.
Over time I learned that real love isn’t about losing yourself in someone else’s story. It’s not about shrinking so someone else can feel comfortable.
Lines like “the light flickers in my head” came from that space of rediscovery. It’s about those moments when I almost remember my worth. It’s there, but it fades. The light represents the truth of what I deserve, kindness, care, honesty, but sometimes it only shines for a second before the doubt returns. The song became a way of processing that grief, the loss of what I hoped love would be, and the realisation that parts of me had been dimmed to survive.
The ghost also represents those false ideas of love that I used to hold onto. The fantasy that love could save me, that being good or patient or endlessly forgiving would somehow make someone stay. I grieved those illusions the same way I grieved people. Every time a relationship ended, it wasn’t just losing them, it was losing another layer of belief in that fairy-tale.
Ghost is about reclaiming the parts of me that went quiet. The sensitive, emotional, hopeful parts I once thought were wrong. It’s about recognising that being unseen doesn’t mean being unworthy, and that sometimes the most haunting presence is that version of me trying to be loved and accepted by others, but now I know that comes from within me. In that way, the ghost isn’t just a loss, it’s also a reminder of everything still waiting to come back to life.
When I was writing Running Away, it carried a lot of meanings for me. It reflects different moments where I realised that how I look at something completely changes how I feel about it. You can see loss, or you can see opportunity. The situation might be the same, but the perspective changes everything.
There were times when I dulled pain, isolated myself, or hid away because I thought I had to be fixed before anyone could see me. That mindset kept me small. What I see now is that those moments weren’t failures, they were signals. They showed me what needed to change and what I was capable of facing.
I’ve been through relationships where I stayed too long because I believed that was all I deserved. But each time I reached that edge, something inside me spoke up. It said you don’t have to stay stuck in this story. That voice became stronger over time. It started guiding me toward curiosity instead of fear, toward understanding instead of escape.
That’s what Running Away represents, not the act of leaving, but the decision to see things differently. It’s about movement, awareness, and how choosing a new lens can turn pain into possibility. The song is that inner voice reminding me that change comes from seeing more clearly.
Every ending holds a beginning. When something falls apart, it clears space for what’s next . Running Away sits in that space between the two – the moment you realise that loss isn’t only about what’s gone, it’s also about what can now grow. The ending is just the point where awareness turns into movement.
Every lyric in Running Away is a conversation between who I was and who I’m becoming. It’s not about rejecting the past but recognising growth. Life will always have its mess, but perspective decides whether it feels heavy or freeing. When you shift how you see it, everything opens up.
