โThe more, the more that I think โฆ the deeper and deeper I sink.โ
Ah, self-doubt. We all go through it, and a lot of music has been made over the years to express it. The topic hasnโt been terribly fashionable in the larger-than-life, braggadocio-filled world of hip hop, though, until recent years.
But singer-rapper Jordan Bleyer, aka Michael Wavves, found it to be the perfect vehicle to express his own feelings of insecurity and guilt. That first line is from the Lebanon nativeโs just-released new song, โDeeper.โ
Wavves, 30, also teaches 8th-grade social studies at Lebanon Middle School. A graduate of Millersville University, heโs been teaching for five years. His stage name came partly organically and partly via the need to optimize search engine visibility.
โWhen I was first starting out, I used to go by my initials, JMB, which I found to be not very Google friendly,โ Wavves said in a phone interview. โOnce I started to take this much more seriously and treat it as a profession and a career option, I wanted to change my name โฆ to represent the new standard, the better quality music.
โI settled on Michael, my middle name, and I would just search random words [on Google] and I somehow stumbled upon โwaves.โ I was like, Michael Wavves, that kind of sounds cool, and I added two Vs to make it a little more unique, and it stuck,โ he said.
The inner conflict described in the new song arises from his desire to ultimately make a living as a musician.
โIโm well on my way to doing that, but thereโs some nights where it gets very tough and you’re doubting yourself and you start really questioning everything,โ he said. โThat song was a product of some of those thoughts — I still listen back to the song and sometimes I’ll even get emotional because I remember exactly how I felt when I wrote it.โ
That was about two years ago, and out of the many songs heโs written (heโs released music commercially since 2015), he calls โDeeperโ his favorite.
โItโs so special because itโs so authentically open and representative of what I was when I wrote it and [what] I still dip back into,โ he said. โI think a lot of people can relate to that as well, especially during COVID.
Wavves’s new single, “Deeper,” which released on April 23. Note: The song is explicit.
โI had been waiting for the right home for it label-wise and the right rollout plan, and I just thought, the nature of things [now is] so perfect โฆ just the process of overthinking and doubting yourself and not thinking that youโre good enough — the dark side of your mind, the tired, negative side of yourself. You can almost be your own worst enemy sometimes, especially in art and just in life in general,โ he said.
The song isnโt whiny or poor-me, though. It might have a hopeless feel, with lines like โOverthinking all the time,โ โMake me drown in all my doubts and insecurities,โ and โLet that small voice in my head start speaking words to me.โ But it feels succinct, like this was a momentary blip, a venting, not a wallowing in self-pity.
โThat was totally the goal with it,โ he said. โIt was hey, quite frankly, I feel like [crap] and itโs going to make me feel better if I talk openly about it. When you talk about things, even if itโs to yourself, you can kind of help sort it out in your mind a little bit and it doesnโt seem as complex, it doesnโt seem as painful. It was kind of like journaling out loud, if that makes sense.โ
The first lines of the song are about that part of being a musician, Wavves said, that people often donโt understand — โYou gotta love me from a distance cuz Iโm not around/I been out here on the road trying to grip the crown,โ that is, โwhy youโre spending so much time and the money and effort doing it โฆ and having to sacrifice a lot of stuff.โ
He gave an example of that.
Speaking of girlfriend Christie Taormina, who he’s been with for 10 years, Wavves said, โIโm really close to my fiancรฉeโs family and I had to miss her momโs 60th birthday party because I was on tour.” He added, โA lot of people donโt understand that a lot of sacrifices need to be made to accomplish something, especially something that youโre passionate about, [that] you believe is what you were put on this earth to do, and thatโs what music is to me.
โA lot of sacrifices can create a lot of dark thoughts, when youโre thinking, am I a bad person for doing this, or am I selfish for making this decision. Thatโs kind of the place I was at [when he wrote the song] and thatโs kind of a place I dip back into every now and then. I think thatโs the human condition,โ he added.
One of those dark thoughts was giving it up entirely, as he says in the song: โMaybe if I quit then that would heal up all my pain quick.โ
โMy fiance has been my right-hand person — sheโs been dealing with all of this since I was just writing stuff in a notebook,โ he said. โIโve said to her, I kind of wish sometimes, when I’m feeling in a really negative place, [that] I didnโt discover music, because this obsession is something that is painful sometimes.
โI feel like I can’t stop, I can’t take a breath, I need to continue to push forward. Itโs something that’s always on my mind — Iโm not at the summit of the mountain yet, I donโt live off it full time yet, what am I doing wrong or what should I do better. You get in that negative cycle,โ he said.
His 2019 EP โPurple Heartโ had what he called โa very similar vibeโ to โDeeperโ — โwhere Iโm being painfully open and vulnerable about a lot of things that I probably donโt even talk to my family or talk to close friends about, but that I can talk about on a song that I put out to the public.โ
Thereโs a lot of vulnerability in the song, with lines like, โIโm working on it though, I battle with it every day,โ and โI guess Iโm kinda embarrassed so I donโt bring it up,โ and โSo I donโt always feel inside like Iโm not enough.โ
โItโs the power of being honest and how that can help heal yourself,โ he said. โI know that I’m at least in a good-enough spot where I can talk about this stuff and Iโm not going to go into this massive spiral. Itโs like, Iโve been through this stuff but Iโm feeling OK today, so how about I talk about it so it’ll help other people heal as well.โ
He makes a big admission in the line, โDo I love myself, yeah I doubt that.โ
โThere definitely still [have been] times in the recent past where, I donโt want to say I donโt love myself, but I could be easier on myself,โ he said. โSelf-hatred is something I go through a lot, as opposed to being like, hey, it’s OK to make a mistake or to think somethingโs right this time and later you find out that it wasn’t the right decision.
โI definitely think Iโm closer to letting myself take a breath and relax, but sometimes those dark thoughts creep back in,โ he said.
The ultimate optimism in the song comes from music itself, that it is a salvation (โSinging all these songs to deal with my ups and downsโ) and a means to get out these feelings (โThe words I put into these songs are ones I usually never sayโ).
โI come from a family where talking about your emotions openly is something that doesnโt happen much,โ he said. โI know thereโs a lot of people out there [who feel like] that, so I’ll be the one to go out on a limb because Iโm lucky enough to have the gift to be able to craft these feelings into a song for somebody else.
โAlso, just being a man talking about emotions, being vulnerable, openly saying like hey, I donโt feel great mentally, Iโm kind of sad, Iโm kind of depressed — those don’t come up in common conversation, even with my closest friends or my family. So behind closed doors by myself, that’s a safe pace to let that stuff out,โ he said.
Wavves has been singing and rapping for about eight or nine years, but his music had its roots in another rhyming art form.
โI remember the beginning stages of it in high school in an English class and I had to write a poem,โ he said. โRhyming words just came naturally easy, I didnโt even have to think about it.โ
In college, he started to โfall in love with hip hop music,โ which heโd listened to in high school, โbut just whatever was on the radio or whatever was popular,โ he said. Later, he got into more serious artists like Drake, Kid Cudi, and the late Mac Miller.
โI kind of became obsessed with it, and the poetry naturally transformed into trying to write songs,โ he said.
He calls singer-songwriter Mike Posner another big influence, for his songwriting in particular.
โI enjoy rapping, but I really enjoy crafting a good song with a good hook and a nice bridge,โ he said. โGuys like Mike Posner were early examples for me of people that were perfecting the songwriting art.โ
After putting out three mixtapes on the internet while at Millersville, Wavves started releasing his own songs, and videos to accompany them. Along with โPurple Heart,โ he released the EP โNights on Vineโ in 2018, as well as a host of singles and about 10 or 15 videos.
Heโs garnered a listener base of 130,000 on Spotify and some positive reviews of his work — in a quote on his website, Marissa Medina of One West Magazine said he โpushes the boundaries of hip-hop music forward, creating an exciting new blend that is as emotionally potent as it is commercially appealing.”
Wavves has toured cities in the East Coast and Northeast; in the last tour he did before COVID-19 hit, over the 2019 holidays, he played Ohio for the first time, in Toledo and Cleveland. He says he โtake[s] a lot of pride in my live show.โ
โI really practice and fine-tune it,โ he said. โWhat Iโm trying to achieve is just an experience for the fan. I want to make sure I put on a show where they can just tap out of their daily life for the hour that Iโm on stage, and they forget about problems and forget about stress and just have a good time and enjoy themselves.
โPeople talk about the dark side of touring — hours of driving and eating crappy food, not sleeping — but those types of moments, where you connect with people, connecting to another human being, those are the moments that make it all worth it,โ he said.
Making that connection is the ultimate goal of โDeeper,โ he said,
โSocial media like Instagram is kind of like a highlight reel of your life,โ he said. โPeople might see me online and go, oh, that guyโs got it all, heโs got it all figured out, it must be great. There’s a lot of people out there who feel some of the same feelings I’ve felt and they don’t necessarily have an outlet to go to, they donโt have somebody to rely on, or they donโt love themselves enough to be able to get through it.
โSo I hope this song can be something that if somebodyโs having a really terrible day or a really terrible time in their life that they put it on and when it’s over, they can feel a little bit better and a little bit more hopeful,โ he said.
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