"where'd all my wild things go?", an open letter by kate the dreamer
Photo credit: Whitney Otte
It all started with one, silly email that changed my life. That email was a start to a whole other life that I knew nothing about at the time. It’s what led me to creating my very first solo project, kate the dreamer.
At first I was scared – the thought of moving across the country by myself, starting a new job, going through a breakup, and knowing no one to help guide me through it all. I’ve always been one to take risks and worry later, and I’ve found over the years that every time I’ve followed my gut, it has led me closer to myself. I am a big believer that timing is everything, and with time, I was able to write this collection of songs that really feel like me for the first time.
I was always told throughout my music career that I needed to look a certain way, sing better, write about particular subjects, and to be honest, that never really felt like me. My debut EP ‘where’d all my wild things go?’ is the raw version of who I am, which is really scary, but also very exciting all at the same time. It's an ode to childhood, growing up, moving through your twenties, and everything in between. It has a song for every emotion I’ve felt over the past eight years in my 20’s and the project continues to remind me just how far I’ve come. I hope these songs find you exactly when you need them and remind you that growth is allowed to be scary, emotional, sad, exciting, happy, and wild – all at the same time.
Track One: Even If
One night back in 2020 (pre-pandemic), me and my roommates went out and got margaritas. I had just moved to LA and already felt like I had found my family on the west coast with them. I started opening up about a break up I had recently gone through that really hurt me. I had this line in my notes that read “watching my heart break in slow motion.” One of my roommates, OSTON (also an amazing songwriter and artist), added in “just like a wave breaks, and flows back into the ocean…I’m gonna watch my heart break in slow motion.” That line set the tone for the rest of the song. It’s an introductory track that speaks to one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through – a break up with a best friend, a partner, and a bandmate. Pieces of the email that I spoke about earlier are being spoken over the track, and the wave sound is from my favorite beach in the North Shore of Boston. This track is the beginning of the end of coming to terms with the breakup and the start of who I am on my own.
Track Two: I Don’t Wanna Know You Anymore
This song had been sitting in my brain for two years before I fully wrote and recorded it. I always struggled with the concept of sharing my anger in such a public way, worried about other people’s feelings and how it might affect them. Instead, I often keep these feelings to myself (or talk to my friends until they're sick of hearing me). But when this chorus flew out of me one night during the early months of quarantine, I knew it belonged to me. I was able to cope by expressing my anger and sadness, it really helped me to stand in my thoughts and face them.
Although my feelings about this topic have shifted through the years, I’m so proud of this song and where it has brought me mentally. I hope it finds you on a day you didn’t think you could get through; I hope you scream it at the top of your lungs on a highway somewhere; and I hope it helps you remember that things really do get better in time.
Track Three: My Whole Life
Created during a classic quarantine writing session, this song was written over Zoom with one of my amazing producers, Nydge. I had been listening to a lot of Shy Martin at the time (because of sad COVID vibes) and wanted to write something really raw about a subject that is really hard to talk about. It’s a play on all the things kids say when they are making a wish – “Waste every wish on these shooting stars…pray to a God that I don’t believe in…cross my heart, hope to die…been like that my whole life.”
This song faces the sadness I’ve felt growing up and learning how to love – it’s quite literally a page out of my notebook. I still don’t feel 100% comfortable sharing it with people, and it makes me very scared to put this one out into the world, but I hope that it finds the right person at the right time, so they know that they aren’t alone. It has reminded me to be more gentle with the world around me – you never truly know what someone is going through behind closed doors.
Track Four: Wild Things (Title Track)
When we wrote “Wild Things” in the backyard of our Airbnb in Big Bear, I knew it was special. It felt like I had truly found my sound as kate the dreamer, and I was able to write exactly how I was feeling about growing older. From there, I came up with the project name as it’s a play on my favorite childhood movie, Where the Wild Things Are. I‘ve always related to the main character Max – never fully fitting in or understanding myself, but always connected to the world around me, wanting to explore, and feeling my emotions all at once. As he moves through the movie, he becomes King of the Wild Things, which as a child always spoke to me. It felt like Max had finally found acceptance for being himself, which is something I always craved as a child, and has now followed me into adulthood.
This song feels like running through a field of flowers in a foreign country after you just broke up with your high school boyfriend of 3 years. “Wild Things” encompasses the childhood sense of wonder, not caring about what other people think of you, and realizing that the most beautiful part of growing up is accepting yourself for exactly who you are – just like a child would.
Track Five: Call U When I Land
This track became an anthem for me when I first heard the demo. It reminded me why I moved to LA and what I was capable of. I've gone through waves of anger with the concept behind this song, but at the end of the day, it really fuels my fire. Moving to the other side of the country away from everything I've ever known has been by far one of the most difficult things I've ever done, but also one of the most necessary. With that growth comes hard conversations – sometimes with the people you love the most.
This song is a reminder that not everyone is going to believe in you in the way that you believe in yourself. It’s so important to surround yourself with the right people, creating music that really feels authentic to you. That’s the reason this song exists for me and my project.
Track Six: Lovely
“Lovely” started off as a couple of lines from my notebook, “I wish I could fly away and be someone I’m not, hang out with the aliens, make friends with astronauts” and, “if I live up in the clouds away from Earth, if I never come back down I can’t get hurt.” At the time, it didn’t mean much more to me than exactly that – running away would be a lot easier than facing myself.
I hate not having control of the way people affect my feelings. It’s something I have struggled with my whole life. “Lovely” is the song for the days you feel like you don’t belong, or the heartbreak that comes with falling in and out of love, or the realness of watching your parents grow old. It’s about growth, but not fully wanting to move through it because sometimes the world feels dark, and running away feels so much better. I think writing this one with some of my best friends allowed me to be even more vulnerable with my feelings, and tap into a sound I’ve never done before. For that, I am so grateful.
I know I am not alone in this feeling, but the ability to be able to put it into art has given me so much power to move through the harder times in my life. And I hope it does the same for everyone else who hears it.
Track Seven: Something Better
This song was probably the hardest one to write. It resembles the rawest of thoughts in my head put into a song, where I allowed myself to speak on exactly how I was feeling. I wrote this one a few months into the pandemic, and at that time it was just a collection of words, thrown into a few chords. I had just started using The Artist Way guidebook where you wake up everyday and write exactly what you are feeling without trying to actually make sense of it. I just wrote down the line “everyone around me falls in love without me,” which at the time had no meaning to me and I wasn't even sure if it made sense.
This track takes you through a story, starting with the sadness I would feel driving down the coast of Malibu when I first moved to LA by myself. The second verse speaks more to the lost love in my past, and how I would drive to this beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea just to feel like I was close to the person I used to be. The last part of the song is really a collection of sounds that feels like the inner workings of my brain. It ends with how I feel now – “I wanna be somebody…I wanna be.” This is a line that really hits me hard everytime I hear it. For me, it means that I want to be that somebody for myself. It’s the perfect way to end this EP, as it marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life – one where I really trust myself and step into the truest form of who I am.
THANK YOU for caring about these little pieces of my brain – I really hope these songs find you when you need them.
keep dreamin’
- ktd