“Every day waking up during quarantine was its own mental battle for me,” Calvin Langman tells American Songwriter. “Prior to the pandemic, I was constantly on the road in what felt like a never-ending pursuit of my dream to be a songwriter. Once COVID hit, however, I found myself succumbing to my bad habits almost religiously.”
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Like a lot of musicians around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic was a disorienting and disruptive time for Langman (who performs as part of the Brooklyn-based band, The Happy Fits). At first, he thought he might go back to college, but after trying some online school he felt like the only thing he was doing was “distracting myself from controlling my self-destructive ways.”
That’s when Langman tried something else: picking up the guitar again. Exploring his newfound pandemic funk through songs, he quickly remembered just how powerful music is. “When I started writing our next album, I noticed that feeling of complacency and inspiration I had while on tour before the pandemic returned to my heart,” he said. “I learned over the past year that following my dream isn’t always going to be all roses and rainbows and that it’s totally okay to go through periods of malaise and discontent. As I’m still trying to cope and coexist with my bad habits, as long as I let the child-like wonder I have for songwriting be my muse and drive me forward, I know I will be alright.”
All of these realizations ultimately manifested into The Happy Fits’ new single: “Another Try,” out August 11.
With the refrain “It’s just the madness of reality/ is that nothing really matters,” the song has an anthemic lift to it, almost in contradiction with the apathy it alludes to. Ultimately, the song is a multi-layered expression in the midst of complex times. Langman hopes listeners can use it as a rallying cry for the importance of living a healthy life.
“I feel like there’s such an immense, unspoken pressure to make something of your life,” he explained. “Like always in the back of my head, I have a voice that is unsatisfied and it tells me I must keep achieving to be happy. This drive isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, in my case, I think I’ve weaponized that desire against myself too often and it’s taken a toll on my mental health. When something like the pandemic happens and shuts down the world for a year, it can be hard to keep achieving and keep driving forward with your career. I hope people can relate to the two foil voices in the song and use the song as a reminder to stay patient with themselves.”
The Happy Fits new single “Another Try” is out now—watch the lyric video for it below:
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