hey,
this month started off with some new inspiration, seeing a lot of live music for the first time in a long time. i went to laneway festival and then saw a couple of my favourite artists, phoebe bridgers and bon iver play shows, all in the span of a couple weeks. it’s always so inspiring to see artists you look up to doing their thing. it was also just cool to see sydney come together for live music again on such a large scale. it got me feeling sentimental about playing my own shows, so i made this little cut up of some of my favourite moments from last year’s sydney show.
i spent some quality time with friends this month too. a group of us went away to the blue mountains for my friend rachel’s birthday which was super wholesome.
i also invited some friends to help me shoot my next music video. when moving into doing this EP i only had enough budget to shoot 2 music videos, but i’ve always loved the idea of having a visual i can pair with every song i make, so i went the DIY approach for ‘fuck it up!’ and this new one we shot this month, ‘rollercoaster’. funnily, having no budget turned out to be a really good limitation, it made me get super creative about how we could make the best video possible with minimal resources. and this one ended up being one of my favourite videos we’ve done so far. i was so grateful when a bunch of my friends showed up to be involved in it. and my friend nico was a huge help. this clip was an idea i’d had for a long time, and felt so good to make it happen. i’ll talk more about it once it comes out… which will hopefully be soon, before the EP as one last single, perhaps…?
this month also brought a lot of my past to mind for me, particularly around the release of my new song ‘dark side’, the title track from my forthcoming EP. it’s a strange thing releasing songs you wrote months or years ago, you’re kind of drawn back to them as if hearing them for the first time. you’re forced to dive in and analyse your own art. you have to ask yourself questions like “what does this song really mean to me? what was I really writing about? how do i want to present it to the world?”. i find that you rarely have a full understanding of what a song is about during the actual writing process. in the moment i think it’s more of a gut-feel. an instinct. a feeling that you’re chasing. the words fall out as if caught from a stream. the words that come out are like a mirror to your subconscious, bringing things to the surface that you might not even understand the meaning of yet.
in it’s simplest form, ‘dark side’ is about wanting to get to know someone who is afraid to open up. i spoke about this a bit in my last letter, but going deeper, i think i’ve realised that that ‘someone’ could be yourself… maybe ‘dark side’ is about healing parts of yourself that you’re afraid to dig up? when i had this realisation, it rang true that for me, and i feel like this song is a personification of my relationship with music and creativity. for some context, i started writing it in march of 2020, which means at that stage i had only released 2 songs under my name. i was new to releasing music on my own. it was scary. it felt like unknown territory, and i had a super complicated relationship with music at that time because of some things that had happened in my teens that i hadn’t really processed and accepted… some of you might know this story, but it’s something i’ve never really spoken about. so i thought i’d write it down:
music is something that i’ve loved ever since i can remember, and as a kid that passion drove me to taking any opportunities that came my way to be in the music world. i was also interested in acting, and at around 12 years old i started working with an acting agency. they knew i loved music too, so when a new tv series called ‘the voice kids’ came to town, they asked if i wanted to audition, a perfect bridge between being ‘on-screen’ and music... so i ended up doing that, thinking i had nothing to lose as a 13 year old, and in a moment i went from this naive kid with a dream, to being in front of the whole country and becoming a finalist on the show. this lead me into a management contract which lead me into a boyband, all before the age of 15. i was saying yes after yes to all of the things that were coming my way, because this felt like my ticket into the music world. it might all sound super exciting, and to be honest, at that age all of these experiences were exciting. but in hindsight, i think i was waaaay too young to be in those situations. when you’re that young you have no idea who you are or what you stand for, let alone what kind of art you want to bring to the world. there were a lot of people around me with power and expertise that i put my trust in, and they made the decisions for me that i wasn’t ready to make. excessive media coverage, singing songs i didn't write, a recording deal, back to back national tours while simultaneously trying to survive high school. i don’t regret any of that time because of how much i learned from it. i’m also grateful my parents were so supportive through it all, and were always looking out for me. but there were definitely moments where i felt exploited and manipulated by the powerful people i had blindly put my trust in, and that was hard to acknowledge, especially when it felt like such a privilege to have had those opportunities in the first place.
once the band ended i felt completely alone. i had to re-learn how to love music again, and how to love myself. and just like any other 17/18 year old moving into adulthood, i was trying to find my place in the world. it was a journey, but by stepping away from the music industry and figuring out how to produce my own music, and being as independent and autonomous as possible, i was able to unpack a lot of emotions and rediscover my love for music, and remember why i was drawn to it in the first place. i reclaimed my passion and control over my artistic output. to me, those years that i spent playing a character when i was a kid who had no idea who he was and let people take advantage of him for their own gain... those years represent my ‘dark side’. for a while i tried to pretend that it never happened. i thought i could just start fresh and leave it all behind me. but through revisiting and accepting it, and taking the lessons and positives from it, i’ve been able to heal.
now, nearly 10 years on from when that kid went and auditioned for that show (holy shit), this new project ‘dark side’ explores my emotions through this healing process, and i feel like the title track represents this the most. it’s out now if you want to have a listen. i hope you can relate to it in your own way. if you’ve ever felt hurt by someone or something that you’ve been through, but you still care and want to be there and push through the challenges, i hope you find some comfort in this song.
dark side is out now. listen here. we also made a video for it, which i like to call the ‘june purgatory’. at the end of the ‘june’ video, i’m abducted by an alien force, an energy that i can’t outrun. so for the ‘dark side' video, i’m in the void. i’m facing my darkness head-on. the armour is on, but it soon comes off. i’m accepting my fate. i’m surrendering. i’m healing.
more new things are coming sooner than you think.
much love,
- chris
I did not know you before seeing you on my FYP on Tiktok last week. Reading this letter has taken me into a rabbit hole of everything Chris Lanzon - the music, the videos, and then babyface Chris on The Voice 🤣. I don't watch Aus TV so everything about you is new to me, but I am loving this whole journey of discovery. At the moment, Always Forever and June are on endless repeat on my Spotify. Dark Side makes me cry and will likely be added to that list. I would love to see you perform live, but hopefully I will have memorised all your songs before then. Thank you for your music. And thank you for... well.. you.