Taking Pride in Your Work: Making the What You've Done EP

Can you be proud of your work while simultaneously thinking that it’s not that good? It’s so weird to say this, but that’s how I think of my debut EP – What You’ve Done – that I wrote, recorded, marketed and promoted for my senior project at Drexel University.

Album cover for What You’ve Done

As a Music Industry major with a concentration in Business, I was expected to pick a senior project that illustrated what I had learned in school as well as showed off what I would like to do in the business. It was tricky for me because I am a songwriter, and the whole reason I chose to study the Music Industry was that I could understand the backend of things. Ultimately, I decided that I would record an EP with my original songs, and the project part would be doing the business end of things.

I was extremely nervous.

No one had really heard my songs before, and I had such bad stage fright that I barely let people hear me sing at all. However, I went ahead with it anyway because, even though I was nervous and had stage fright, one of my favorite things in the world is the songwriting and the recording process. There is a weight that comes off the heart once you put your feelings into a song and then actually go through with producing it, recording it, and putting it out.

But, the process took longer than originally expected. So, to fill the void and get people ready for the EP, I decided to do the Studio A Cover Sessions. I picked a few songs that I really like, and then did it all in a day, with the awesome help of my friends Matt Kopyt, Eli Wilson, Connor Levesque, Nikki Tardiff, and Noah Levine. The collaboration in the air on that day was amazing and everyone in that room made the place so creatively welcome. (Connor even rapped a funny freestyle about Cardi B while he was testing a mic!) I ended up doing covers of “I Fall Apart” by Post Malone, “Waving Through a Window” from Dear Evan Hansen, “Real Friends” by Camila Cabello, and “Perfect Places” by Lorde. 

Eventually, the actual EP started coming together, and I released two singles: “Bullet” and “Seattle.” “Bullet” was a song that I had been sitting on for a while. It is about love, and who/what you love enough to take a bullet for. “Seattle” was a song that I wrote while on study abroad in Australia where I became homesick for the little things that made Seattle what it is. It’s probably my favorite song on the EP.

When I finally got around to releasing the EP (several months late), I was upset. You see, my producer hadn’t been on top of things and was the main reason for the delays. When I heard the rest of the EP, I knew that there were many fixes still to be made and that it just didn’t sound…good. At all. But, the year was coming to a close and, without an EP out, I would fail my senior project.

So, that’s how I released an EP that I didn’t think was good. But, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m proud of it. The songs are real expressions of real feelings and sentiments. The recording process took many hours in the studio, sometimes staying there all night. I had to strategize, market, plan, and all of the other business things that involve releasing music. And, for that, I am extremely proud of myself.

What’s more, let’s normalize not being good at the beginning of your career. Everyone starts somewhere, and most people start bad, regardless of how old they are when they start. The purpose of my EP was not to “blow up” but instead to simply show that I can do it.  

And I’ve shown that I can.

Take a breath, follow your dream.

xx Selma