Hidden Tracks: Every song hides a story. These are the ones you didn't see coming. ⬇️

THE FICTION INSIDE THE TAPE

I grew up in the 80s. Which means at some point, probably in somebody’s basement or a bedroom with the door shut, I put on a cassette and something shifted that didn’t shift back.

Not because the songs were pretty. Because they were honest in a way nothing else around me was being honest. Skid Row. Metallica. Judas Priest. Maiden. Bon Jovi. They were songs about kids with no exits. About soldiers who were never coming home. About the permanent cost of one wrong second.

What I heard in those songs, when I was the right age to let them all the way in, was simple. Other kids were struggling too.

That was enough. That was everything.

Hidden Tracks is my attempt to pass something on. Each story takes its title from a song I thought I understood. Then I twisted it. Took it somewhere darker than the song was willing to go. You don’t need to know the songs to get the stories. But if you do know them, the next time one comes on, it’s going to sit differently. That’s not an accident. That’s the whole point.

These stories show up in my Friday newsletter when a song won’t leave me alone. Sometimes that’s every week. Sometimes it isn’t.
All Hidden Tracks stories are available to every subscriber. You also get liner notes at the end of each story, where I get into the behind-the-scenes stuff: what sparked it, what changed in revision, what got cut, and what stayed.
Start wherever you want.

The stories so far:

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