DOG EAT DOG!

Part of the Benevolent Sin Collection.

"DOG EAT DOG!" was my submission to the Suite 704 48-hour song challenge in 2022. The song was written, composed, recorded, mixed, and mastered all over the span of two days, making it by far my fastest turnaround for a single release. Despite the tight deadline, I knew I didn’t want to play it safe. I came to win. Even somewhat early in my independent music career, I strived to showcase my full range of performance and production styles. Beyond the prizes, I desperately wanted to prove myself to a new community of peers and create something I’d always be able to point to as irrefutable evidence of my talent and potential.

I began by brainstorming instrumentals, lyrics, and overarching concepts, landing on a final idea within the first few hours. Lyrically, this piece was my first dive into the nuances of our modern capitalist dystopia. I considered what it means to be a citizen of the internet, and how data and online influences affect my daily life in unseen ways. The instrumental has three notable shifts to give the song a sense of natural progression in my signature style of songwriting. It opens with a high-energy distorted rap beat, eventually transitioning into a bouncy, hard-hitting boom-bap groove around halfway through. In its most notable final moments, the track dies down into a solemn piano melody before building into a lush melodic chorus, contrasting the aggressive production in the main body of the single.

Throughout those 48 hours, I faced challenges that were all too common in the early stages of my career. At that time, I had no professional equipment and no dedicated recording space. Plus, I only had a bare-bones understanding of how to maximize my limited resources. “DOG EAT DOG!” was recorded in a noisy, cramped university practice room using a laptop and a cheap USB microphone. This fact is readily apparent in the final mix. It’s an unfortunate detraction from an otherwise well-produced idea, and while this would never pass my current quality-control standards, the rough, unpolished nature of this track does give it a certain lo-fi charm. And as I continue to grow as an artist, I think it’s important to accept the limitations of my earlier work and find ways to appreciate the authentic artistic vision I worked so hard to express.

The song was selected as one of three winners for the 48-hour song challenge, and was my first major award as an independent music producer and songwriter. I later released “DOG EAT DOG!” to the public under my since-discontinued stage name, Stevesaintjames. The single’s cover art was the first original music graphic that I felt truly proud of. Designed using a collage of different public domain photos and harsh color separation, I captured the feeling of this song in a way that felt authentic to me. Looking back, this was an incredible milestone and a powerful motivating force for projects yet to come. Still, I had no idea how much growth and evolution I would undergo in the coming years. While I still do consider this song an important success, the best was certainly yet to come.

- Colby Wygal