Me Not You Q&A Part 2 – Going Home, Social Media, & Releasing Music in 2022

With the December release of do you feel the same? the Me Not You duo of Nikki Taylor and Eric Zeiler put themselves back in the spotlight, but they did so on their own terms.

Featuring an entirely new sound, there were no music videos created for any of the singles, and there was only a minimal social media push, with the band opting to go the organic, gradual route of discovery.

I recently caught up with the duo, and in this second part of our two-part interview they discuss the influence of being back home, the pressures of the social media age, and the pros and cons of releasing music in 2022.

Let’s talk about the title track of the album, do you feel the same? Why was this two minute song the one that stood out as how you wanted to represent the entire album? 

Nikki: I think, first of all, just on a song level, we really loved just the song itself, the simplicity of it.

The lyrics were really meaningful to me in terms of where I was at that stage, and I think encapsulated what the album was about for me.

It’s about a lot of things, but just coming back to the place where you used to be, but seeing it, and understanding it for the first time. I was literally standing on the same ground that I was on when I was a child, but I’m coming back, and spending a lot more time there as an adult with my own kid, seeing it with new eyes, and coming full circle in that way.

There are all these plants and trees around that I used to love as a kid, and I never really thought about them. I came back as an adult, and with my kid we looked up what the plants were, looked up what the birds were.

It was about getting to know that again in a new way, and it felt like that kind of summed up the album, emotionally, for me.

Since the title of the album is a question, what are some other questions you’ve been asking recently, either of yourself, or the world in general? 

Nikki: WTF. {laughs}

Fair enough. I didn’t see any new videos, or show announcements, or anything like that leading up to the release of the album. I may have just missed things, it happens, but if I didn’t, was there a bigger reason behind having less of a lead up to the release? 

Eric: Yeah, well, kind of. The lack of shows was definitely a COVID related thing.

Just letting (the album) stand on its own … we talked about some video stuff, and in the past we had sort of forced ourselves to get video content for each song, and this time we just felt like, or I guess I’ll speak for myself, I felt like maybe we don’t need it.

I wanted the music to stand on its own, and for people to discover it without any context, even people who had never heard our other music, and that was cool.

Now I feel less bad about being two weeks late to the party after the album was released. 

Eric: We didn’t hit it as hard with the self-promotion, and maybe that’s something else I’ve been feeling with Instagram, and everything. It’s just like enough already with the self-promotion.

Nikki and I have both been doing this for a while, and I kind of ebb and flow with how much I want to be promoting myself, and my projects online. For this one I think I felt like, let people discover it, and that’s kind of cool. Our fans are on top of it, but let the new people find it on their own.

I don’t think any of us expected to have to be self-promoters for this long. When social media came into existence we still had PR teams, we still had street teams, and now we’ve spent 15 years posting on social media. Have we reached a breaking point? 

Eric: Totally, and it’s on all levels. This isn’t just something about independent artists, or smaller artists who are undiscovered. Everybody has to do this. Kanye has to do it.

I don’t really see a way out, but it is annoying, and frustrating.

You’ve probably seen all these posts people are doing on Instagram pushing back against the “all hustle all the time” mentality. A lot of artists are promoting the idea of take a fucking break, but it’s like, does that even need to be said? That should be so obvious. It’s crazy that’s become something people have to stand up for.

Give me three pros, and one con, when it comes to releasing music in 2022. 

Eric: A pro is we finished the record, we mixed and mastered it, then we sent it to our distributor, and we chatted with them at that point about what the singles should be, and in what order, but we had full jurisdiction to do whatever we wanted. We took their opinions into account – I think we went with the first single they wanted, and for the second and third we went with our own instinct – but that’s something that I don’t think happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, being an independent artist and having full autonomy.

Nikki: Piggybacking on that, I think people are really valuing honesty, and just really from the heart presentation, and authenticity. I think it goes a lot with the social media thing – people are kind of sick of seeing things that are too produced, or overly faked for Instagram. People really want to hear your true thoughts and feelings, and your true representation as an artist. It feels like a cool time in that respect.

Eric: Yeah, and the quick turnaround, being able to finish music and put it out. Even Little Daylight, which isn’t that long ago, 7 years ago, there would be 6 months, 12 months, 18 months elapsed between when we would write, or finish a song, and when it would come out. By the time it comes out you’re not even the same artist you were when you wrote the song. But this (album), we made the music last summer, we mixed it, it felt so quick, and when it came out I still cared about it, I still felt connected to it. That, to me, is a very modern thing.

Is the con going to be social media, or is there another con you want to mention? 

Eric: I don’t think there’s a true negative.

I guess a con is that when we were kids, how much did we all spend on CDs every month? Now it’s like oh, I spend $10 a month for Spotify, that’s all the money I want to spend. How can artists make any money when the industry has changed so much?

I think the con would be, and I do this, too, I only spend $10 a month on music except for some vinyl, but the fact that people are not really willing to spend much more than that on music these days, artists don’t make much money.

What’s on the horizon for Me Not You for the rest of the year? Are we gonna see some live shows? 

Eric: Maybe.

Nikki: I was gonna say the con of 2022 is I really miss playing live. That’s maybe a personal con, because I know people are out there doing it, but shows are still getting cancelled.

I just miss live music. I miss performing, and seeing live music, and not worrying about it. That’s the con of 2022 for me. I would love to play live.

Eric: Let’s play a show!

Nikki: Yeah, let’s do it!

Eric: We have the drummer, Arthur, who played on the album, who’s a drummer we’d never worked with before, but he felt like the perfect guy for this music, he keeps hitting me up like, “When are we playing the songs? When are we gonna play live?” So we’d be able to work it out pretty easily, I think. It would be pretty fun. So maybe?

 

If you missed part one of my interview with Me Not You, click here to read about the creation of do you feel the same? – which was influenced by their unique pandemic living situations, and a classic rock podcast – and how those things brought about a change in sound.

You can listen to, and purchase, all of Me Not You’s music on Bandcamp.