I don’t need to feel guilty about this and neither do you

by Laura Kidd

I’m a songwriter, not a tabloid journalist…

Last Wednesday I released “Emotional Tourist”, my first new song in two years and the first single from my seventh solo album “House Of Stories”.

It’s like this:

Fierce, wonky and unapologetic, it details the demise of a relationship where I was ground down by a narcissist to the point where he tried to set fire to the house and “I didn’t even think to scream”.

The song reasserts my right to tell my own story in my own words, after being told again and again it was wrong of me to do so: shameful, predatory, arrogant. Selfish.

When you’re told by your chosen person that the thing you do best, that you care about the most, is a grubby endeavour – that can be tough to shake, even if it never quite rang true.

Come on…I’m a songwriter, not a tabloid journalist.

The thing is, every one of the 77 songs I’ve released so far is about a person I know, and/or an actual thing that happened in my life.

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Songwriting is how I process stuff: I work out how I feel by writing it down, thinking about it and, 77 times to date, spending many hours and many ££s crafting my thoughts and feelings into a song to share with other people.

It’s not not a weird thing to do, but there are a lot of human behaviours I find more peculiar. See above.

Writing personal songs and sharing them is nothing new. But it is a new thing for me to share so bluntly the real-life events¹ that propelled a song into being.

My songs are an invitation: containers of time, sound and space for you to pour your own experiences into. You’re smart; you don’t need me to over-explain them. At a certain point, they’re not even about me any more.

In the case of “Emotional Tourist”, though, it felt important to explain that the “smoke in the house” isn’t a metaphor for me. It can be, and hopefully is, for everyone else hearing the song – and that goes for every factual snippet from my life that I bury in the poetry of my lyrics.

“In the particular is contained the universal”, wrote James Joyce to a friend. I agree. Unfortunately, the particular type of situation I was in isn’t an unusual one. That’s why I made it into a song, and why I’m writing about it outside of the lyrics.

The song has been publicly available for 8 days, and I’ve already had four people get in touch to thank me for validating their own experiences. In turn, that helped to validate mine.

This is what art does: it holds up a mirror, it supports us, it connects us, sometimes it even heals us. Making it – and immersing myself in art created by others – has helped heal me so many times I’ve lost count.

Every day since releasing the song, the video and this piece detailing what the song is really about, I’ve wondered if I’ll hear from that person, or from his family. What would they say? What would I say?

I don’t think what I’ve done is wrong.
I don’t feel guilty about this.
Everyone has a right to tell their side of the story.
Not everyone has to like me, agree with me, or like what I do.

That feels good to write.

A dear friend shared “Emotional Tourist” online last week, describing it as “an infectious, rightfully scathing (I remember the guy) yet beautifully melodic synth-rock-pop song that should be a dead cert for the drive-time radio A-list”. That was a real boost, thank you Ben². 

Because, yeah, it’s uncomfortable to extract something so personal, reversing the abstraction from poetry to prose. But when I feel nervous about something, thinking maybe it is – or indeed I am – “too much”, I remember being told so bluntly that “I shouldn’t write about what’s real” and I think about the ways we make ourselves small for other people, and I think “fuck you” and I make, write or share the thing.

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I am thankful and grateful and all the -fuls for the secure, happy, nourishing relationship I’ve been in for the past 10 years, and not only because it has helped push my songwriting beyond the more reactive angles of my earliest work.

As I continue to create albums, it’s my job to continually fill the well of creativity so there’s always something to write about. I thank the sun, moon and stars that my day-to-day personal life is almost completely drama-free, which prompts me to look outside myself more often and go deeper into pivotal moments from my past.

Even with 77 songs out in the world, there are plenty of unprocessed moments to take care of, plenty of dawning realisations that something I thought was normal really REALLY wasn’t.

In 2022-2023 those shadows kept creeping up and tapping me on the shoulder with cold, bony fingers, dragging me back into the past on a much-too-regular basis.

That’s why I decided making my new album “House Of Stories” would help me bravely turn back and face up to some of the most intense and/or heartbreaking episodes of my life. Not to blame or shame any individual, not to elevate my own status, but to:

1. Figure out why these things still had the power to bring me to my knees, in a bid to reclaim that power for myself;

2. Create something beautiful out of my experiences, hopefully making something helpful (for me and others) out of some really shitty situations;

3. Use my now-very-VERY great wisdom to reflect on all the things that happened which are still bothering me, for which the common denominator is always MOI, in a bid to learn and grow and go forward in life avoiding unnecessary drama;

4. Forgive myself where appropriate, even if others involved don’t think they were in any way at fault and/or don’t remember what happened.

I make sad songs to make you feel better™³, and I’m happy to report they make me feel better too.

Have a wonderful day and PLEASE make, write and/or share the thing. I believe in you.

Love,
Laura xxx


PS my new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available to order NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books.

Get two songs in your inbox immediately, with another every month til the release date in April (before anyone else gets to listen).

PPS Lab coats and pointers make you feel – and look – clever. The evidence:

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1. “Calling a motherf*^ker a motherf@%ker”
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2. Ben makes GREAT music.
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3. I’ve been describing my music this way for years and I just love it. I also describe it as ‘‘music for people who love handwritten letters” but that might be more about justifying my typewriter collection. ↩︎

Emotional Tourist Essays Letterbox Process