A ship song? That I wrote? Trust me, no one is more amazed by this than I am.
It all started about 2 years ago when I decided to write a Bob's Burgers screenplay for my portfolio based on a Sadie Hawkins dance at Wagstaff. If that's an unfamiliar term, a Sadie Hawkins dance is where the girls ask the boys to go, rather than the other way around. Whatever. Anyway, some stuff happens, Jimmy Jr. ends up going with Jocelyn, and Tina and Tammy both end up asking the same boy (a new boy whose placeholder name was "Craig"), who ends up going with a girl from a different school. Tina and Tammy run outside to the front steps, both in tears, both angry at themselves and each other, they start yelling at each other, and their faces get closer and closer together, and then they kiss. I won't go into too much detail, but that's the crux of it. So, that's where it started; I made some cryptic reference on tumblr to ruining canon so much I couldn't look at the source material again for months, and that was the end of it... until last year. Someone on tumblr did a comic where Tammy is playing Juliet and Tina replaces Lenny deStefano as Romeo. Until that point, I didn't really think that anyone considered Tinammy to be a legitimate ship (I wasn't really surprised though), and I thought, "oh, this is too much, I can't pass this up". So, I turned on my Fantom X and I wrote a new song.
Since I had intended it for quick deployment, I didn't worry about the chords too much and just used a 1950s ballad progression (1-m6-4-5, so, in C, that's C-Am-F-G). At the same time, though, I wanted it to sound like the show; that's a thing I think is important in fan-work. It shows a certain respect for the source material if you imitate the styles present there, rather than remaking it in your own image, and that's where the showtune structure came from. The only place where I diverged from the musical style of the show was when I put the string section in. They're not greatly into large orchestras on that show unless they're trying to imitate Broadway. Besides, it's not the show, it's me, and I use strings.
The first time I ever HRT-cried was when I was recording the strings. I'd never been overcome by my own music before, so that was an experience. Unfortunately, that particular take didn't work out... I don't remember what was wrong, but I had to re-record it—the string section as it stands right now did not make me cry. But, I still remember it every time I listen to this song.
So, I intended it for quick deployment to tumblr, but I just... didn't release it at all. I kept meaning to, but things kept happening, and then finally Automattic announced that deal with Midjourney and I decided that tumblr didn't deserve any more of my art. That was fortunate, because it gave me an opportunity to re-record the lyrics. I didn't feel as though I kept in very good tune the first time, owing mostly to the fact I didn't warm up first. Plus, I was still being Two-Takes Tina back then, and this song needed way more than 2 takes. This most recent time, it took 20 takes. Singing like Tina Belcher is way more difficult than I thought it would be! I sat here and sang the song over and over again in various different vocal styles for the better part of 45 minutes before I felt like I'd arrived at anything useful. I guess that's why I don't do lyrics much. It may only take 1:45 to listen to the song, but it took a combined total of 6 hours to make it. And, I'm not really good at writing or setting lyrics—it's just that this time, I didn't think an instrumental-only piece would be able to get the point across.
I'm not really that committed to the Tinammy ship in the first place; I just needed inspiration to write music and it showed up and sat down on my workstation. Am I ever going to do any more Tinammy ship art? Probably not. Well, just this.
--17 July 2024--