“Slow It Down” has had, funny enough, a slow, years-long journey.
Walking home to my shared one-bedroom apartment from a University of Southern California Performance class, I felt a pit in my stomach that was so familiar. It was a feeling I always seemed to develop when comparing myself to others, stemmed from self-doubt of why I was doing music, which ultimately turned into the question: Why don’t I love myself?
On this walk home, I ran into an old friend who started telling me how he got turned down from two different girls and those rejections were taking control on how he felt about himself. As we parted ways, this idea stuck with me and I realized I’m not the only one who had this crippling self-doubt. While my own insecurities were about my music and myself, others were feeling it in all sorts of other ways. I started wonder why we let outside rejections and appearance affect how we choose to love ourselves.
At last I arrived home and I immediately sat down at the piano. My mind was swirling with trying to unpack why feel empty inside and why we cannot contribute any love to this world. I came to the conclusion that it’s because love doesn’t resonate inside of us.
Self-love is always present and never leaves us, but sometimes it drips and other times it pours. This was the message I wanted to portray, but in a relationship setting: you cannot bring love into this world without loving who you are on the inside.
Ironically, as my mind was spinning, the words “Slow it down, slow it down, down, down” were the first thing that came out of my mouth. I captured that melody on an iPhone voice memo, and when I listened back I knew that was the hook I wanted to write this song around.
As I continued to slowly develop the song over the course of a year, I got an opportunity to record it at Tiny Giant Record Studio with some great producers, Luke Walton and Brandon Woodward, who helped me develop the arrangement based off my ideas in my voice and piano parts.
Yet, when performing this song, I still felt like the message of self-love could be stronger and more emotionally evoking for my listeners.
Two years later, I wrote some poetry around the song’s concept. I decided to share the poem with the band, but knowing this was so out of my comfort zone and unlike anything I’ve done before, I remember thinking they wouldn’t like it.
Before reciting the prose, I told the band, “ I want you guys to vibe off the emotion of the poem and once the poem ends, we begin the song…” When I began, I thought I was getting uncomfortable looks--maybe because I was the one who was uncomfortable--slowly but surely, the band began creating ambient sounds around the poem.
After developing the live performance of the song for that year, we got the opportunity to play it at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. The energy I felt from that audience, playing it with the full band, made me want to rerecord the song with a new sound, something that represented this live performance.
About six months later, began co-writing and working with my good friend and music director Michael Arrom on a new recording of this song. Since he played the Troubadour show with me, he knew exactly the emotion I was talking about to the point that I didn’t even have to explain it.
When the recording was finished, I knew I finally reached the emotion I had been trying for years to perfect. It felt a preview into the live show, and the mix of artistic mediums between spoken word, poetry and music made an ideal combination for me
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this song because the message is so important to me. I feel that people need to remember to love themselves so they can bring more love into this crazy world.
I believe the moment we find love within, will be the moment we can find peace.
Links to Julia Ryan
Website: https://www.juliaryanmusic.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliaryanmusic/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/juliaryanmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliaryanmusic/
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