My bandmate and I are a two-person rock band. I love her like a little sister, but as a bandmate, she has been frustrating and kind of worrying me for a while.
When we formed the band, we were both moderately well-known as solo artists, enough to gather a little base of fans on social media when we had only released 1 song. I had slowly gained listeners over the course of about 4-5 years, while she had blown up pretty quickly with a couple of great singles over the course of maybe 2 years. We split band duties approximately 50/50. She does a lot of the visible stuff (guitars, vocals), while I handle drums and other things, and some of the non-music behind-the-scenes stuff. Let me stress that she's crazy talented and has come up with some amazingly creative song ideas, and when we do vibe together on a song it sounds amazing and it's a ton of fun.
The first problem is, she is a huge perfectionist, and very sensitive. We formed this band about 2 years ago and we have made anywhere between 10 to 15 whole songs. I'd say we have the material for an excellent 4-song EP, right now. We have *released* only 1 song since we started. She fiddles with songs, adding elements long after they were already perfect. I think we are done with a track, and then, to my dismay, she tells me the newest draft of version 20 of a dong is in the Dropbox, with several all-new breakdowns, solos, verses, choruses...etc etc. Every song ends up sounding like the musical version of when you mix every paint together. Her creative ideas end up being smothered by tons of effects and random extra stuff. Every time I try to walk these changes back and strip them down, or even just get her to let me release a finished song, she gets *very* anxious and uncomfortable (sometimes seemingly on the verge of a panic attack) until I drop it.
Early on in our project she got a girlfriend. I'm happy for them, but her girlfriend has no interest in the type of music we make and really enables her addiction to video games and anime. She insists on dragging her along to our recording sessions and turning them into a hangout instead of an actual attempt at making music. And of course, I can't talk about setting a timetable for releasing anything with her present.
She spends *all day* on social media. All. Day. 99% of her posts are not related to music, which is fine, but she won't respond to any of my messages until a day or two later because she is too busy posting about the newest movie or video game or anime she's into, or the newest weird internet drama that has gripped her attention. She has month-long cycles of absolute inactivity with music, which leads to guilt on her part and apologies and everything, followed by exuberant speeches where she says we are REALLY CLOSE to blowing up once we release our music, and then long strings of hype posts where she will (without my input) tell our fans (without my input) that the EP is dropping REALLY SOON - which of course we never follow up on.
Her social media presence has gradually become weirdly toxic and strange too. The two of us have always been politically active and vocal, but she has become completely obsessed with politics and takes harsh, borderline dogmatic stances on ongoing stories, alternately changing her views rapidly or doubling down hard on obscure events I've never heard of. She is currently obsessed with this weird subculture that apparently revolves around digging up dirt on and "cancelling" various podcast hosts or YouTube/Twitter personalities or...something. Her likes are public and it's just a bad look, and even worse, some of the posts she has liked have a creepy dog-whistley tone to them. It feels like when your friends go down YouTube rabbit holes and end up turning into QAnon conspiracy people. It's all very aggressive and alienating and I have her muted so I don't have to see her pos1ts, reposts, or likes anymore.
We've (in my view) missed a couple opportunities by now, where a couple of bands/artists who are really REALLY well known at the moment have shown interest in us - and we have had nothing to show we are actually a band at all. She also screenshotted the conversations and immediately talked about them on social media to show followers, which no doubt alienated them. This is one of the most frustrating things about all of this, and the one I've brought up to her a couple of times as an example of how we're letting this all pass us by.
Here is the thing: she is still a great friend. She is incredibly loyal, always talks about how great I am as a friend, she's generally a joy to hang out with, we just vibe perfectly. I hate to see how anxious and guilty she gets about these things. Other people I've talked to about this have said I should basically gently abandon the band, which I didn't realize I was already in the process of doing. I've been focusing solely on my solo music and steadily growing my own fanbase and generally making good progress, making up for lost time. She has never said a single, solitary negative thing to me, never even said she didn't like a drum loop of mine or anything. I don't want to abandon *her* but I'm just exhausted at having to do so much work with no payoff. I don't know how to do this, though.
TL;DR: My bandmate is completely addicted to social media and video games, won't let our band release the music we have made, and frequently makes promises she can't keep. It's not fun for me anymore. I don't know if I need to state things in a different way to make her understand my POV or just quietly give up on the project.
Submitted January 03, 2020 at 02:39PM by throwaway_010320 https://ift.tt/2MRINZ1
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