American Sadboi by Matty Frank
Sad boys have soft smiles. I read something like this on tumblr a few years ago. Embarrassing that you’re about to find out Tumblr inspired some of this ep! The mystique of skinny straight white boys holding - not necessarily smoking - cigarettes and being sad for the aesthetic was popular in small parts of this small part of the internet. Jokes about it being sad boy hour, soft smiles only, etc; I’m not sure if I have the vernacular precise but basically the abstract concept of Timothee Chalamet was trendy before he was.
I thought that if sadness is something you're able to try on to feel the feeling but also to feel cool in a way, then things are probably not all bad for you. As a gay person who grew up alongside the trajectory of queerness becoming normalized in media and watching gay marriage become legal while I was in college, I felt that of course things were still bad for queer people, but they were not all bad anymore. I would still worry about walking too gay on the way to a house party but then have no problem making out with a boy on the sidelines when I got there. I would still feel weird about painting my nails but then discover I love drag. I would discover the open wound of the "no fems" community on grindr but then expose myself to hyperfemininity and the love from my effeminate friends to heal that wound in myself. Soft smiling with my first boyfriend when he took too much pride in being able to make girls think he was straight, I felt like a gay sad boy, but boi feels less binary so we're going with that.
All that gay ass stuff is a lot of what I was thinking about when I started writing these songs in 2019. There's also a lot in here about evolving, shedding skin, and reflecting on your old lizard layers, maybe putting some on like a new coat and taking them with you to your new apartment like how I did when I first moved out in the summer of that year. I guess more generally it’s about how your feeling-out-of-placeness drives you places. Corny? Even if you’re a lizard, otherness is universal and I hope you will feel like I'm singing about you at some point within these six songs no matter who you are. Would love it if this turns you gay too though!
Tracklist
| 1. | moonboi | 1:29 |
| 2. | American Sadboi | 4:49 |
| 3. | Flowers for Boys | 2:48 |
| 4. | ILYGirl | 4:03 |
| 5. | Don't Give Me That Look You Know It Kills Me | 5:12 |
| 6. | Pollen (feat. Christian O'Keefe) | 4:30 |
Credits
I'm so grateful for the reception these songs have gotten at my live shows and I hope these recorded versions are welcomed just as warmly :) I have a lot of people to thank, including everyone who listened to me talk about this and/or watched me perform some of these at a show or an open mic or in my apartment rehearsing, but to be specific:
Thank you to Ryan Schumer for these fabulous mixes.
Thank you to Johnny O for the incredible mastering.
Thank you to Jacob Zachariah for the drums on the title track.
Thank you to Christian O'Keefe for the delectable feature on Pollen.
Thank you to Pedro for the RITCH background vocals on Pollen and for taking this photo and for loving me and keeping me excited about this EP.
License
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Self-taught in almost all of his musical and engineering skills, multi instrumentalist and vocalist Matty Frank combines pop and r&b vocal runs with introspective indie folk rock sound palettes inspired by the genre's saddest of lesbians. With lyricism at once infinitesimally specific and boundlessly universal, Matty Frank shows that queer people have more to talk about than same sex attraction.