One of my favorite things in the world
is the combination of music and animation.
Something about, a quick series of shots of beloved characters
in these little slices of life
and dramatic moments cut to really emotionally intense music.
Like, it just gets me every time.
Fiction is really, really important in people's everyday lives.
The stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we bear witness to,
they really inform the way that we see the world.
And I think that ultimately,
this song ended up becoming this synthesis of sad story scenarios
and what I was going through in real life.
I became close with this group of friends, right before the pandemic.
And the thing that sort of kept us together
was everyone hanging out and playing League together.
Once I actually grew to sincerely love the game
and its world and Arcane, I was like, I want to do something.
That was actually part of what spawned my interest
in reaching out to Riot.
I was like, I would just really love to be involved in this world, especially musically.
And so I think once we reached out, it was an immediate,
yes, what can we do? Actually, I think we have something
that might be perfect for you with Star Guardian.
So much of the League media is focused on
how powerful the characters are and how tough they are
and what it looks like when they're fighting.
I felt like it'd be really cool for the players to be able to sort of
get sentimental and feel a certain kind of, love for their characters
and what their everyday lives might be like in the Star Guardian world.
The idea that I had was when you take the oath
to become a Star Guardian, you get to live this life as this hero.
But everybody that knew you before will forget about you.
So the lyrics of the song came from this
perspective of the last night together,
and focusing on the tragedy of that.
The way that I typically approach music is that I'll write a short
instrumental section that hooks me.
That's the thing I'm looking for first when I'm in the studio is a nice little musical motif
that I'm like "Ooh, this is a world I want to explore further."
In the case of this song, I chopped up this sample
that created the initial hook that you hear in the beginning that goes:
The thing I wanted to center a lot of the song around
was the second line of the chorus, which is the part that's like:
♪ Don't look for me, I'm just a story you've been told... ♪
Um, just that—that, like—that felt like such a big lyric to me.
Because you feel the, the love that's sort of inherent in that.
It's like... don't look for me, but I know you're going to.
Try to treat me as though... you never knew me.
It's the kind of thing that makes your ears perk up
and go, what happened here?
So I typically tend to work in, total isolation.
I don't bounce things off of people very often.
It was a different way of working for me.
And I doubted, at some points, whether or not I was gonna
be able to come up with something that wasn't
creatively compromised by the fact that I was working
with a major game studio. That was really important to me.
And it was so great working with Brendon Williams from Riot.
He just made really, really consistently good suggestions
that moved the song to where it needed to be.
When I'm first writing a song, I'm auditioning several different choruses
and a bajillion different ideas for what, what—how the chorus might flow.
It was such a struggle, and for the longest time
I only had the first two lines.
I rewrote the lyrics again and again and again,
and I ended up talking pretty significantly about
somebody who I love and the struggle that they're going through right now.
My fiancée was just going through some really severe
anxiety and agoraphobia.
It had just been really, really difficult for both of us.
And I guess once I shifted the focus of the song from this imaginary scenario
to what it's like when someone you love is really suffering
and you're trying to help them through that.
It just clicked.
And that was when the magic for me reached 100%.
Because... I'm always chasing after complete sincerity.
I feel full as an artist when... I feel I'm telling the truth.
It's really, really hard for me to write
about something that just doesn't resonate with me deep down as true.
And I think that's because... what I'm always trying to do in the studio
is I'm trying to write my own favorite song.
I'm really happy with the balance in the end.
I want players to be like, this world is so cool
and I've had so many memories with this game and in this universe.
The distillation of all the highs and lows,
and all the emotions you felt, all the memories you formed,
all the friendships you had, all the
times you got frustrated and all the times that you triumph.
And the reason that you keep going.
Life is like that, too. And I think there's just something
extremely beautiful about seeing life in full view.