Close-up: apolumni – Stop Following Me

(written by apolumni)

“The idea for this song came to me during the lockdown. I was alone in the apartment and replayed many past events in my head. I wrote a couple of lines about the person that I could not let go of for a long time, got stuck, and decided to leave it be. 
A bit later, I had a dream about him and woke up with mixed feelings: I felt like I wanted to go to sleep so that I could see him again, but at the same time, I was angry at him for showing up because I was moving on. After the dream, the song wrote itself. 

I had a couple of lines written before, so I tried singing them while playing various chords on my ukulele. At some point, it clicked, and I had the main melody for the chorus and verse. 
When I finished the lyrics, I was a bit confused as I don’t make music. The guy I collaborated with last time was not excited about this song.  I still wanted to release it, so I went to a recording studio in Moscow and asked if they could help me with the music. They did. 
We have met a couple of times to discuss what the song is going to sound like. Ilya (the one who made the music to the track) had made a draft to see if he got my idea right, then we recorded uke and vocals, and I left Moscow to do my masters. We continued to discuss versions of the song online, my sister helped with the cover idea and in the end, we’ve got the final recording that you are listening to now.

As for the song’s name, at first, I wanted it to be Sleep Forever, but after a discussion with one of my friends, I сhose Stop Following Me instead as it reflected the idea of the track while also adding a bit of mystery to it. 

My message was: it’s okay to think about the person you loved while moving on, and it takes time and patience to really let him/her go.  It comes and goes in waves, and you might feel like you want to sleep forever simply to see him/her again. You might also feel sick of being tortured or followed by all those thoughts. It might be scary to stop living in a dream, but when you have let yourself feel it through, you would become a better version of yourself.”

Find out more about apolumni here:

Follow/share the frequently updated spotify playlist “In Scope” and listen to “Stop Following Me” and more awesome tracks featured on kms reviews!

The ‘Close-up’ series contains insight provided by artists about their work.

Back to top button