Colby <3 (2024)
Part of the Benevolent Sin Collection.
Colby <3 is my second album, with 19 songs running 56 minutes. The album discusses challenges of growing up and learning how to love, ending with the great ego-death that is gender transition. This project was written over the course of three years, encapsulating the most formative and jarring shifts in my identity and worldview. The lyrical themes and instrumentals follow these shifts, fluctuating between beautiful and grotesque throughout the narrative. I wrote extensively about the experience of writing this album in the 2025 issue of Burst Magazine, which can be seen here: https://issuu.com/millikinenglish/docs/burst_2025
Deep Dive: The Tracklist
01: Long Day
“Life will never be the same.”
Colby <3 begins shortly after my first album, Still Here, ends. The COVID-19 lockdown was over. I was more than ready to return to the normality I was used to in pre-pandemic life. Yet I quickly had to accept that the events of the past year had irrevocably altered my life. I couldn’t go back to the way things were. This was not the end of a story, but the beginning of a new one.
The album opens with a dreamy monologue sequence. It sets an eerie tone for what’s to come and establishes a few necessary facts for the listener: this is a story, and not everything is as it seems.
This introductory segment was my final addition to the album before release, and I felt it was necessary following the major life changes I had undergone throughout production. This album took me more than three years to write, record, mix, and master. And over the course of those years, I had fallen in and out of love, moved to a new city, rebranded myself, and accepted my identity as a transgender woman. Naturally, the project’s core identity shifted wildly, and a significant amount of content had to be scrapped and retrofitted multiple times. In the end, I decided to embrace this album as a product of its time, lest it remain stuck in this production hell forever. I stopped trying to reconfigure the entire project every time a lyric or song became outdated, and instead packaged the music as a story of a troubled transitional period in my life, highlighting the mistakes and uncomfortable moments that once felt like a complete expression of me.
The opening track for this album was one of the project’s landmarks in both scale and production challenge. I wanted Colby <3 to feel cinematic and larger than life, but I had limited resources to make it happen. Looking back, I still love the layered chorus of horns, strings, and vocal passages. It’s an explosive energy that immediately makes the album feel bright and momentous—an energy that will slowly be dimmed and distorted throughout the project’s runtime. Still, my ambition was somewhat hindered by my capabilities. “Long Day” was made for live instrumentation, and at the time, that simply wasn’t something I could afford. I did my best to realize this vision using virtual instruments and complex processing chains. It isn’t perfect, but I think it’s a crucial piece of the album and a fascinating precursor to where my work would go in the future.
02: Love Is in the Smog
“My future’s looking rough, my love is dying in the smog.
Romance lost its luster in our files and our logs.”
Gossip had spread. Words had been exchanged in confidence. And I was in love. Wishful thinking and misinformed speculation had me convinced she loved me too. I had never felt a pain as deep as when I learned she had eyes for someone else.
Track two starts with a seamless transition into the album’s “Love Is in the Air” leitmotif—a gentle, fragile depiction of innocence and optimism in love. But soon enough, this brief reprise of hope is broken down, and an all-too-familiar dread floods in. The song’s main instrumental has an oppressive loudness to it, with distorted, industrial synths pounding through the mix.
