Ukulele Giveaway

Yesterday I shared on my Instagram that I’ve partnered with Photo Savings for a UKULELE GIVEAWAY! Very excited to announce that we’re giving away a beautiful Kala Brand Striped Ebony Soprano Ukulele! This is a wonderful opportunity for musicians and non-musicians to get a new instrument to learn and play!

Photo Savings and I have done other wonderful giveaways in the past including a violin giveaway and a guitar giveaway. The winners have been thrilled to receive their new instrument and have shared their nice comments with us. It makes me so happy to make others happy by using the power of musical instruments! Not to mention a FREE instrument!

All you have to do to enter is
1. ✨Follow @candiceleemusic and @photo.savings on Instagram✓
2. ✨Create your own Instagram reel using the “Permission - Candice Lee” audio
3. ✨BONUS ENTRY (optional) share this post on your story ✓

One winner will be announced on Friday, June 17th! We will also be sharing our favorite entries on our Instagram stories!🤩 *Must have U.S. mailing address*

The instagram reel can be anything at all, so get creative! Can’t wait to see all your entries!

The Stories Behind My Songs - Lyrics Edition

I’m always writing new music and can’t wait to release new music. But in the meantime, let’s talk about the inspiration behind all of my music that is released! I love writing lyrics that draw from my personal experiences and situations that I’ve observed in other people’s lives. My hope is that this produces a sincere sense of familiarity and relatability for people to be able to connect with. 

*All songs are linked if you click on the title of the song and click the words ‘music video’ to be directed to the video.

 

I currently have six singles out on all platforms, including one collaboration track called ‘Feel the Same’ with producer KXA. My debut single ‘Magnet’ (2018) was written about feeling so attracted to someone and not being able to detach yourself, even if you know it’s bad for you. ‘Invisible’ (2019) is self-explanatory based on the title but was written about feeling ignored and unnoticed. This song has a music video available on YouTube. ‘The Charm’ (2019) is inspired by an actual experience. I was sitting in a restaurant with my friend when a guy sitting at another table, confidently walked over to me and handed me his phone number written on his receipt. I took that idea and made it the cover art. As I was writing this song, it gradually morphed into me expressing my foolish ways regarding multiple past relationships. It became the story of how I tend to fall in love with the idea of a perfect partner only to realize that I’ve made it all up in my head.

 

‘Feel the Same’ (2020) is about wondering if you’re on the same page as someone in any type of relationship, whether it’s in terms of feelings, attraction, and/or values. It’s an electric blend of future bass and dance synths with lyrics that reflect on how it feels to be confused about where you stand in a relationship. I had the pleasure of collaborating with KXA on this track. 

 

“How We Used To” is an acoustic pop song that shifts from anxious feelings to images of hope, as a reminder that although we face common human emotions, struggles, and challenges, we will ultimately transition to a brighter time. Inspired by the pandemic, but intended to endure, we all long for the stability of what was. The song features the harp and classical guitar. I love to incorporate the harp in my pop music, and I really wanted it to be prominent in this song. This song was made during the pandemic, so I recorded all instruments (harp, guitar, and vocals) at my house and in my parents’ closet. There’s a music video on YouTube that my mom videotaped, and I edited. It was all done in my kitchen! 

 

Most recently, I released an electronic pop/rock song “Permission”. This is an empowerment anthem about standing up for yourself and knowing your worth. I wrote this song after being lied to and after finding out that people were talking behind my back. This song represents my breaking point and serves as a reminder to not let people take advantage. There’s also a music video for Permission on my YouTube channel!

 

Which song is your favorite and which do you relate to the most? :)

Ed Sheeran duetted me on TikTok

Let’s talk about the time Ed Sheeran duetted me on TikTok!!! It’s still so hard for me to believe that this happened. I’ll attach the video below. It has almost 14 million views…. like WHAT!!

The moment I found out:

I was in the car with my family and I had received a DM request on Instagram saying “Ed Sheeran duetted you on TikTok” and I was like umm… what? I was so confused and had no idea what he could’ve even duetted so I went to TikTok. Sure enough I opened my app and notifications were flooding in - new followers, likes, comments, etc.

I had posted a “duet this and sing with me” video of his song “Bad Habits”, not thinking that Ed Sheeran HIMSELF would actually duet it. He casually answers, “okay” and then proceeds to sing his designated lines with me. Unreal. Plus, I had posted the original video 2 whole months before he duetted it

Forever grateful for this!!!!

Honestly, TikTok can be really exhausting and I have felt very defeated on that app for a long time. So when this happened it was really encouraging and reminded me that you truly never know what could happen which is why it’s so important to keep posting and putting yourself out there! So that’s my advice to everyone out there reading this too. Never give up and don’t be afraid to go for it, because you never know what could happen!

National Anthem at Basketball Game

A couple of nights ago I had the honor to sing the National Anthem at a Drexel University’s men’s basketball game. I’m so thankful that I had this opportunity and I’m very excited to sing it again at the women’s game this upcoming Wednesday. In addition to singing the Anthem on Wednesday, I will also be performing a couple of original songs during halftime. Due to the pandemic, I haven’t been able to perform much recently, so I really appreciate being able to have these experiences. Go dragons!

Permission Music Video

The official music for my newest song Permission is OUT NOW!! I’m so excited to finally share this video with you all and hope you enjoy it. It’s an Escher-like video, since I’m basically walking to nowhere. Sometimes, getting out of a bad relationship and/or friendship can feel like you’re walking to nowhere, as represented in the video. We shot the whole video in 2 days in an office building.

Video Producer: Tyler Haas

Video Editor: Candice Lee and Tyler Haas

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts! What’s your favorite scene?

Galentine’s Day collab with Dune Jewelry

Absolutely love my gorgeous new sandglobe earrings from Dune Jewelry filled with pink daisy flower petals ✨ Daisies were one of my grandpa’s favorite flowers which is why this element is so special to me.

Dune Jewelry is an amazing women-owned small business and all of the pieces that they create are handmade, incredibly unique and can be personalized to you! 💕

My galentine is my mom. Her new heart beaded bracelet has crushed shells from Kauai, Hawaii. Hawaii will always hold a special place in our hearts since her special friend invited our whole family there for a magical vacation. Thanks to Dune Jewelry, she can always feel like she has a little piece of Hawaii with her. ☀️

www.dunejewelry.com use GalPal2022 for 15% off :)

Happy 1st Birthday "How We Used To"

I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I released my single “How We Used To”. This song was inspired by the pandemic but intended to endure, as we all long for the stability of what was. I wrote this song while I was taking a walk at the beginning of the pandemic to help myself cope with all of my intense feelings of anxiety, loneliness, sadness, and uncertainty. I wanted to express these feelings in the way I know best, writing music, with the hopes of helping others. 

I recorded my vocals, guitar, and harp all at my house and worked remotely with producers. A fun fact that most people might not know is that my mom is really the one who pushed me to release this song because she really loves it and believes in it.

I’ve attached the music video that I made in my kitchen! I couldn’t have done it without my mom who videotaped and did my hair/makeup. She also took all of my promo pics for this song!

Trivia questions for fun!

  1. What was the symbol I associated with this song?

  2. Where did I record my vocals? (more specifically than in my house)

  3. Finish the lyrics: The sun shines brighter when you hug me ______

Welcome to my blog + Happy New Year!

Hello and welcome to my blog! I wanted to start this off by sharing my family’s parody of “22” by Taylor Swift and talking about our process making it. This was in place of our traditional holiday card this year.

My family always has a lot of fun with our holiday cards and decided to change it up a bit. Our 2018 holiday “card” was also a song parody. We called it “Another Year Bites the Dust” as a parody of “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. We even recreated the Queen cover photo (attached at the bottom). In addition to the video, we mailed out physical cards and included directions on how to find the video.

In this year’s video, we decided to create, record, and produce the parody in place of sending out cards. We made a reference to our 2018 parody in one of the lyrics in the first verse. See if you can find it. This video took a lot of hard work to complete, but we had a blast doing so!

Behind the scenes look at our process:

The first thing we did was choose a song that we wanted to do a parody of. “22” by Taylor Swift seemed like the most appropriate choice since we were going into 2022. We worked as a family to come up with our lyrics and wanted to make sure we talked about each person and their highlights of the year. One of our lyrics was “stayed up till midnight writing this parody” and that is 100% true. We all sat in the kitchen one night trying to brainstorm our lyrics. This was only a few days before New Year’s Eve, so we didn’t have much time, but we made it work.

Next, I recorded everyone playing their instrument with Logic Pro X. I recorded Alex playing the drums, then recorded myself playing some guitar. Next, I recorded my mom’s electric bass part, and then my dad’s sax part. Finally, everyone recorded their vocals. Usually Zach and I do all the singing, but we thought it would be fun to feature everyone’s voice. All of the recording was done in our music room, a.k.a. our living room.

Once the music was all ready to go, we started filming the video. As soon as we finished filming, I started editing the video with Adobe Premiere Pro. At this point, we were 1 day away from NYE so I was definitely pressured for time, but it was definitely worth it. (Hopefully next year we’ll start planning this a little bit earlier lol.) The final step was to upload it to YouTube and set up a live YouTube Premiere so that anyone could join and participate in the live chat.

I hope you all enjoy the the video and have a happy and healthy new year!

I’d love to tell you more about our family band, Stay Tuned, in a future blog post so if that’s something you’d be interested in reading about let me know :)

- Candice Lee 💕

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