Singled Out: Sea In The Sky's Neck Romancer

Sea In The Sky recently released their new full-length album 'Everything All At Once' and to celebrate we asked vocalist Sam Kohls to tell us about the song 'Neck Romancer'. Here is the story:

One of my favorite songs on the new album, Everything All At Once, is called "Neck Romancer". When creating most of the Sea In The Sky stuff, I get really caught up on writing lyrics that are bigger than myself. I want to write about things that people relate to, but when I write about my own personal struggles, I always get it in my head that nobody will. I know it's ridiculous, as a ton of my favorite lyricists/lyrics come from a place of complete and personal honesty, but that's just where my mind goes as a musician who's still got a lot of growing to do. I love Neck Romancer because the whole song is a bit of a departure from that "bigger than myself" writing style. At surface level, Neck Romancer comes off as this fun, upbeat kind of funk-driven song. Instrumentally, it's such a dancy, easy to groove to song that highlights a lot of the band member's Jazz, Pop, and R&B-esque roots, but the lyric matter is far from happy. Throughout the song, there's an obvious theme of death. Mix this theme with a basic rhyming scheme and you get something that sounds like a campy, edgy pop song, but that couldn't be further from what it truly is. In reality, Neck Romancer is one of the most thought out, personal songs I've ever written. It's essentially about the death of a relationship with someone I loved deeply, which is why the theme of death is so prominent. I think that when a relationship with somebody you truly love dies, apart of you dies with it, only to be brought back to life by that person or somebody else somewhere down the line (hopefully!). This song explores the thoughts I struggled with after the relationship ended. Is she really the one to bring that part of me alive again? "I don't know if you can bring me back again, but I hope so." Did I love her or the idea of her? "Enamored by a ghost that I had made up, but I loved every skeleton in that closet you're so afraid of". In another part of the song, I tried to take a deeper look into myself and the kind of person I am. Lines like "I'm not a martyr, i'm the thief nailed through the hands besides of him" and "I'm not a monster, i'm the innocent creaks through the house that I grew up in" show the internal battle between wondering if I'm the good person I think I am or the grotesque monster I sometimes feel like. All in all, Neck Romancer is a fun, dancy song, but it's also one of the first songs where I really put myself and my life on display. I hope people come to like it for both reasons!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

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