November 11, 2020

Our thoughts about the song :

There are young artists who will always surprise us with their maturity. And Conner Pearl is one of them. The young artist (only 21 years old) knows perfectly well how to sort out his feelings, which ones to keep inside him, and which ones to put down on paper. 'Subliminal Feeling' reminded us of some great R'n'B vibes from Justin Timberlake for example. A warm atmosphere, a fairly fast flow of words and above all an enormous emotional potential. Carried by a huge production, the track has all the power to become a hit. Already more than 5K streams in less than a month for this debut single, it's a promising start! Included in our "Indie Pop" playlist, and of course, you will now hear this amazing track on the Indie Music Radio.

Conner Pearl's point of view :

I had been working on writing this song for a while, I was originally working with one producer about a year ago. I was really inspired by the disco feel of “Dancing With A Stranger”, so I originally wrote the prechorus going for something similar of the hook in that song. I went home during college break and he sent me this beat/instrumental and I just played it on my car speakers over and over again. I really was vibing with the syncopated feel and started feeling a much more rhythmic section for the chorus the more I listened. Suddenly “Subliminal Feeling” just came into my head, mostly cause I think those words fit the rhythm and the ethereal feel I was going for. I ended up kind of writing the rest of the song thinking about one person in particular. I had been in a sort of secret relationship with this person for a year, in which we never really told each other how we felt about one another. I ended up getting really hurt by this person, it kept me up at night and made every day feel like I was living in misery. That’s kind of the point of the song is figuring out why I was hurting so badly and where it was coming from, realizing this person was breaking my heart, and singing through that frustration. In that sense, “Subliminal Feeling” was me reconciling all the things that I had spent a lifetime suppressing. Allowing people you love to hurt you, rejecting your own sexuality, living with discomfort, accepting hurt from other people and taking it on as your own. Once you become so used to living like that you don’t realize how miserable you are until one day you wake up and ask yourself why you’re in so much pain. I realized that I had gotten so used to people hurting me, that I just accepted unacceptable behavior in my intimate relationships as normal. I see “Subliminal Feeling” as a conversation with myself. At the time, I was so unhappy, so hurt, so resentful. But any time those feelings came to my mind, I told myself that I could get over it, that I’d be fine—it’s just a subliminal feeling that means nothing. But after letting all those thoughts operate and fester below my consciousness, I finally allowed myself to feel the heartbreak I was going through and admit to myself that what was happening between me and this person wasn’t right and that I deserved better. Since then I realized that this song was truly my subconscious talking to me. That day “subliminal feeling” came to my head I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to say. but I’ve come to understand that it was me singing through that muscle memory of repressing undesirable thoughts and feelings that I spent a lifetime avoiding. And after coronavirus hit, I took the song from the original producer to my roommate. Then me and my roommate made it during quarantine.