Valley Boy Talks Their New Song, "Sad Girl"
Calling all sad girls and boys! LA based duo Valley Boy has just released their latest track, “Sad Girl,” and it’s sure to be your new favorite song. I got the chance to ask bandmates James Alan Ghaleb and Ian Meltzer a few questions about the track. The song is focused and fluid and screams New Year's Resolution—bring a little happy to your 2021!
“SAD GIRL” IS OUT! HOW ARE YOU GUYS FEELING HEADING INTO THIS RELEASE?
James: I’m feeling well considering I’m on day 14 of having Covid and I still have some sense of taste left! Honestly, it’s been a little strange thinking about this song coming out. Generally Ian and I have some sort of celebration to mark a release. Maybe this time we’ll celebrate with a drink over Zoom that I can partially taste.
Ian: I’m really excited for people to hear this one. It’s been living as an infectious ear-worm solely in our friend group for far too long. I’m anxious to see how real people respond to it.
James: Amen. Covid aside, I’m very happy this song is coming out (out by the time people are reading this interview). It’s always been one of my favorite songs and favorite productions.
HOW DID YOU FIRST GET THE IDEA FOR THE SONG?
James: There is a real life sad girl who inspired the song. She and I had begun dating and she was particularly suspicious of happiness and lived by the mantra of “nothing lasts forever”. I can tend towards depression and negativism myself, but it was challenging to be falling in love with someone who didn’t believe in love. The idea for “Sad Girl” was born one day on a balcony in Laurel Canyon after receiving one of many confusing texts from the song’s inspiration.
WHAT WAS THE CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE FOR “SAD GIRL?”
James: Oh, “Sad Girl” was a journey at every turn. It took three separate occasions spaced out over months to fully write the lyrics/chords, and even longer to produce. At one point in the production process, I had begun to second-guess our work so much that we almost started the whole recording over. Luckily, we decided to take a break from the song for a while and when we returned to it I accepted that we’d been on the right path with our original direction and we were able to close the book on it.
Ian: We knew right from the beginning that the song was great and deserved a perfect production. That put pressure on us, which made the process very long and difficult. It turned out really great though and I wouldn’t change a thing.
THE SONG FEELS REALLY BALANCED IN TERMS OF THE LYRICS AND PRODUCTION. HOW DO YOU GUYS WORK TO FIND THAT SWEET SPOT?
James: That is very kind of you to say, and I’m really glad it hit a sweet spot for you. I wish I knew exactly how we found it. I can say that we spent a long, long time with this song and really lived with and evaluated every decision before finally committing to them. There were so many hours of sitting with it all day, making minute adjustments, undoing changes, and feeling like almost nothing was accomplished, and eventually one day it was just done.
Ian: This song was really a lesson in patience and trusting ourselves. There were definitely days where, like James said, we would spend an entire day working and the outcome would be like, a single 3 second moment of the song. But honestly, some of my favorite parts in the song are those little moments.
I JUST SAW THE VIDEO FOR THE SONG! HOW DID THAT COME TOGETHER? WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO COLLABORATE WITH DELACEY
James: Collaborating with Delacey on the video was the ideal because she was the real life sad girl who inspired the song! She’s now my fiancé, so we’d already had some practice doing the things we depict in this video. She’s also a fantastic actor so it was very nice to have her there because I’m really not an actor (in a previous video it took me 20 takes just to turn my head to the left in a natural way). This video is part of a series of videos that will accompany our entire first EP. We were writing the treatment with the director, Zach Johnston, whose musical alias is Sonntag and is very worth checking out, and we had already filmed 2 of the 6 videos. We knew that something had to happen in this video to justify my character being upset and needing cheering up in the video that follows it (for our song “Black Cat”). We also knew we wanted my character to have some interaction with Delacey, but that was pretty much all we had in mind before we sat down to write the treatment. I forget if it was Zach or myself who threw out the idea of the sex tape, but once we had that idea, the video was very easy to shoot. The only challenges were reminding Delacey of how she used to act around me and then getting comfortable simulating sex for a couple of hours while Zach was watching from the doorway.
IS THERE A PART OF THE SONG YOU GUYS ARE MOST PROUD OF?
Ian: I’m honestly proud of the entire production. I listen to it and can’t even remember or believe that we made it. One thing that stands out as a cool decision was to have the lead vocal be a combination of two different takes. I believe that those were the first two takes James did! I accidentally forgot to mute the first one and they both played at the same time and we were instantly into the way they accidentally worked together.
James: Yeah, I am very proud of that decision as well, though I did spend a month trying to outdo it with one new vocal instead of using the two original takes. I am happy to say that I failed to outdo it and I still enjoy those two parallel leads every time I hear them.
Ian: Also, I played the string part on the computer keyboard because I was too lazy to go plug in the midi controller, so I’m proud of that.
James: Yes, that was cool. We very rarely do anything midi in our recordings, but those string parts rock and it rocks that Ian was lazy.
FAVORITE LYRIC?
Ian: “Sad Girl”
WHAT DO YOU HOPE LISTENERS TAKE AWAY FROM THE SONG?
Ian: I hope girls and boys of varying degrees on the happiness/sadness spectrum can relate to the lyrics and connect with the vibe of the production.
James: I hope that this song infects our listeners’ vocabulary of two-syllable words like it has mine. Every two syllable word/phrase can be sung to the melody of “Sad Girl” and it is sung to the melody of “Sad Girl'' in my head. “Pea-nuts, my ex was allergic to Pea-nuts...” “Co-vid, I’m glad I didn’t die from Co-vid” etc, etc.
Ian: “I-an, my mom and dad, they named me I-an”
WHAT DID I MISS? ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT “SAD GIRL” OR THE BAND IN GENERAL?
Ian: Well, a little Easter egg in the song lies in it’s intro. The very beginning of the song is a reference to a Delacey song (the real-life sad girl). Can you figure out which one???
James: Ian and I have been friends since we met in Middle School PE class, but we actually met years before that on a t-ball team coached by Ian’s dad, Josh. Bet you didn’t know that.
“SAD GIRL” IS OUT NOW. YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE TRACK ON STREAMING SERVICES LIKE SPOTIFY AND APPLE MUSIC. MAKE SURE TO SUBSCRIBE TO TWENTY MINUTES LATER OR FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM TO STAY UPDATED ON FUTURE POSTS.
