On May 9, Bec Plexus threw a 24-hour party, via livestream, to honor the release of her newest album, STICKLIP, in which she created 10 psychedelic music videos to accompany the songs on the record. The videos mimic the live performances she had prepared prior to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Road to Sound is premiering each of these videos over the next ten weeks. This is the eighth article in our series. You can catch up on the whole series here.
The eighth installation of Bec Plexus’ video release spree is her only composition on the album, “busy making steps.” Stemming from her exhaustion and disillusionment after finishing a massive project, the song chronicles her gradual recapturing of her identity after shrinking herself down. A thumping anxiety pervades the disorderly music, until it finally bursts with Plexus’ powerful declarations of “I.”
In Plexus’ own words:
“‘Busy making steps’ is the one song that I wrote on this record. The song is my obsession with always trying to move forward, to be productive, and to grow. I wrote it in late 2018. I had just written an opera and had it premiered, and was doing all sorts of other projects at the same time. I had just finished conservatory a year before, and I felt really suffocated by the pressure. It was all in my head, but as an effect, what I noticed at some point in that period was that I had started trying to omit the entire idea of me in my whole daily life. Because of working really hard, I didn’t wanna get in touch with my emotions or my body, I just wanted to stick to the plan. But then it got to the point that in my emails to people, I would start rewriting and rephrasing sentences so they wouldn’t mention “I,” which is such a weird twist, but I just wanted to fully distance from myself for some reason. It was simpler, probably, because I was overworked, and getting in touch with myself would probably mean I would have to slow down or stop, so I didn’t do that for a while.
For the lyrics of the song, I omitted “I,” so that’s why all the sentences are kind of weird. There’s this really repetitive section, which emphasizes this more, more, more, more attitude, until the final section, where I ask ‘where am I?’ and then the gates open and it’s this full, final section where the only word is “I,” because the moment you say it, the moment you connect, there’s no way back. All the shit breaks loose!
The introductory monologue actually really resonates with my own story to the song, even though I didn’t write it myself. Because we also program our own lights, for stage lights, and we already had those ready for the live show, we decided to film this specific song with the three of us together, to set up the lights, and to just let that be the video.”