Behind 'Glassheart': When the Song Already Knows What You're Afraid Of

I almost deleted Glassheart three times.

The first time was about ten minutes into writing it. The second was during the mix when everything felt too sparse. The third was the night before I uploaded it when I convinced myself it was too personal to publish.

I uploaded it anyway. It became one of the most listened-to tracks in the catalog.

I still don't fully understand why. But I've been thinking about it, and I want to try to explain what went into it.

How It Started

Glassheart came from a chord progression I wasn't trying to write. I was working on something else — a different track, higher energy, completely different direction — and hit a wrong chord while going from one section to another.

Instead of correcting it, I stopped and played it again.

There's a specific quality some chord changes have where they feel like the beginning of a sentence you're not sure you're ready to finish. That's what this had. Something unresolved in a way that felt intentional even though it wasn't.

I spent maybe an hour on just that one transition, building around it, seeing where it wanted to go. By the time I looked up, it was 2 AM and I had something that felt completely different from anything else I'd made.

What "Glassheart" Means

I don't always title tracks based on a concept I planned in advance. More often the title comes after — after I've made something and spent time with it long enough to understand what it's actually about.

Glassheart describes a specific kind of emotional state that I think most people recognize but rarely name directly. It's not heartbreak in the dramatic sense. It's more like: you've been careful with something for a long time, and you're starting to realize that being careful doesn't protect you from breaking. That everything fragile breaks eventually, and the fragility was the point.

I was in that headspace for a few weeks when I made this track. Not in crisis — just in one of those stretches where you're very aware of how much everything costs emotionally, and you're still choosing to do it anyway.

The Production Decisions

The arrangement for Glassheart is more stripped back than most of my work. There's a deliberate restraint in what I added — and more importantly, what I chose not to add.

My instinct with most productions is to layer. Find the empty space and put something there. Glassheart resisted that. Every time I tried to add another element, it made the track feel heavier in the wrong way. The weight I was going for was emotional, not sonic.

There's a moment about two-thirds through where everything drops out except the main progression and one synthesizer line. In the early versions, I had a lot more happening in that section. I kept stripping it back until I was uncomfortable with how bare it was, and then I left it there. The discomfort was the right call.

Dynamics mean more when there's less going on. A quiet moment hits differently when the track hasn't been loud the whole time. I think a lot about this with electronic music specifically — there's a tendency to fill every bar because the tools make it easy. Glassheart was partly an exercise in trusting that less was doing more work.

The Part I Almost Cut

About halfway through the track there's a transition that breaks from the main key for a few bars. It's brief, and it resolves back, but it's not where you'd expect the progression to go.

I wrestled with that section for a long time. My concern was that it felt too jarring — like a structural mistake rather than a deliberate choice. A producer I trust told me the opposite: that it was the most honest moment in the track.

I've thought about that a lot. There's a version of music production where everything is technically correct and emotionally safe. And there's a version where you let the track be as uncertain as the feeling it came from. Glassheart is the second version. That brief departure from the key is where the track tells the truth about what it is.

Why I Almost Didn't Release It

The night before I uploaded Glassheart, I sat with it for a long time trying to decide if it was too much.

Not too much technically — it's a quiet track. Too much personally. There's a transparency to it that I'm not always comfortable with. I can make music that has emotional weight without it being specifically about something I'm actively living through. Glassheart wasn't that. It was too close to where I actually was.

I have a rule about this that I don't always follow: if something scares me to release, that's usually a sign it's worth releasing. The tracks I feel most neutral about before publishing are rarely the ones that connect. The ones that make me second-guess myself are different.

Glassheart was the most second-guessing I'd done on any track. So I uploaded it.

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FAQ

What inspired the name "Glassheart"?

The title came after the production was mostly finished. It describes a specific emotional state — being aware that something you've been protecting is fragile, and choosing to stay vulnerable anyway. Not dramatic heartbreak, but the quieter version of knowing something can break and deciding that's acceptable.

Why is the arrangement so sparse compared to other UNFINISH tracks?

Every time an additional element was added, the emotional weight felt off. The sparseness was a choice made by repeatedly adding things and removing them until only what was essential remained. The bare section two-thirds through was particularly difficult to leave as-is, but the discomfort of the emptiness was part of the point.

What's the unusual chord change in the middle of the track?

About halfway through, the track briefly leaves the main key before resolving back. It was almost cut. A trusted collaborator described it as the most honest moment in the track — a departure that mirrors the emotional uncertainty the song came from. It stayed.

Was this track difficult to release?

Yes. The night before uploading, there was serious consideration of not releasing it because of how personal it felt. A personal rule helped: the tracks that create the most hesitation before release are usually the most worth releasing. Glassheart confirmed that.