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Donnie continued, “But we have a list of tracks that are already fully developed. All you need to do is get in the studio and do your magic.”
“What do you mean, fully developed tracks?” James asked.
“We called in some of the best songwriters in the industry,” Max cut in, nodding my way. “It’s the greatest news. Warren Lee wrote the tracks.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Warren Lee?”
“Yes.” Max nodded. Warren was one of the best writers in the industry, if not the best. Working with him meant Grammys and money. Everything he touched turned to platinum records. But what did using his songs mean for us?
It wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t ours.
“We create our own music,” Marcus said, with his hands clasped together and a determined look on his face.
“Yes, but you don’t have the time to create your own music. You said it yourself. It took you forever to create those tracks. So we took the hard part out of your job. Now, you just go in the studio and do what we tell you.”
“We aren’t robots.” Eric sighed, taking off his glasses and pinching his nose. “We don’t just do that cookie-cutter bullshit.”
“Yeah, didn’t we tell you that from day one, Max? We wanted to be us—the Wreckage. Not some bullshit manufactured band that doesn’t have a voice of their own,” James added in.
I sat there quiet, unsure of what to say, because one: I was a tad bit drunk. And two: I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that all of those months of our work were gone. Everything we’d sacrificed to create that album meant nothing.
All the time I could’ve been back in Eres with Hazel, growing our connection ...
What?
No.
Whiskey was supposed to drown out my thoughts of Hazel, not make them heavier.
But still, the lost time creating music that ended up being worthless hurt.
Fuck. What was the point of it all?
“That was before this leak happened. Look, you guys, I’m pissed off too. You think I wanted this to happen? Of course not. But this is where we are. This is the place we are sitting, and we can moan and whine about it all damn day, or we can get to fucking work. Besides, Warren Lee makes superstars, and you are going to be superstars if you get out of your own fucking way.”
The mood of the whole space was pretty damn disheartening. My bandmates looked as if they’d been hit by a semitruck. Eric kept going on and on about how he didn’t understand how something so major could happen with the record company’s security system.
How did a whole album just get fucking leaked?
“And if we refuse to use Warren’s songs?” I asked.
Donnie pushed his lips together and gave me a hard look. “Listen, you signed a contract with Mindset Records, and we know this issue wasn’t a fault of yours, but to put it frankly, you owe us music. Time is ticking, and I don’t want to have to bring in the legal department on this.”
Of course.
We were being pushed in a corner, forced to create something that wasn’t authentic, something that wasn’t ours.
It was literally an artist’s worst nightmare.
Why did it feel as if the world was crashing around us? Why did it feel as if our dream was slowly but surely shifting into something that wasn’t ours to hold anymore?
We were in the hands of a record label that had the power to control our every move with the threats of lawsuits—lawsuits that I was certain we’d lose in a heartbeat.
I cleared my throat. “Can we have a minute to talk with the band alone?”
“Sure. But don’t waste too much time trying to figure out a way around this,” Donnie mentioned as he stood, along with the lemmings who followed after him. “We don’t have time for diva artists.”
Diva artists.
