Sixteen - the EP: My Musical Montage of Being Sixteen

by Miranda Gent

EP - ‘Extended Play’, something between a single and a full album; normally includes about three or four tracks.

My EP titled, “Sixteen”, is very important to me as I have always dreamed of recording and releasing my own music but have never really thought that it would happen. However, ‘Sixteen’ will be released both Apple Music and Spotify on November 15th and I am very excited.

The EP is made up of four tracks; Sixteen, Broken, Let Him Go and Aucun Respect (the last of which is in French), and its concept is to explore the life lessons learnt around the age of sixteen, the challenges that sixteen year olds face on a personal level and the complex emotional reactions that they can have to the events in their life, as well as the thought processes that they go through in order to deal with the issues that they face and reaffirm who they are, who they want to be and what does and will make them happy.

Sixteen is the opening song and by far the most positive; it reflects the feeling of freedom, fierce positivity and potential that one can feel at this age as well as alluding to the common social anxieties and expectations of people in this age group. Contrastingly, the song, ‘Broken’, reflects on the ending of a beautiful relationship, expresses denial at the change of events and is unable to accept the loss of someone so close, whereas the song, ‘Let Him Go’, relieves all of this tension by accepting the changing situation and realising that the past is definitive, unchangeable and unwise to dwell in. ‘Aucun Respect’ however discusses and confronts the ongoing issue of bullying in French schools.

I hope that whoever listens to it will appreciate not only the music but the lyrics and everything that these songs mean to me. I find songwriting incredibly cathartic and therapeutic and I hope that this is an experience that other people may be inspired to try.

To conclude, here are my favourite quotes for each of the songs:

Sixteen: “I've never been a queen at school - I'm not into being their idea of cool.”

Broken: “I thought that you would be here forever and now you're walking away.”

Let Him Go: “He's not the only one for you.”

Aucun Respect: “Tes vannes me laissent de marbre.”