INFINITE NORMAL track 10: “precariat”

My internet friend ilyBBY introduced this term to me – it refers to a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security of income, affecting material or psychological welfare. Lots of people I know are sadly in this state. I am grateful to not be, but I worry a lot about it. This song is very directly & specifically about that.

The piano that drives this song is a short piece I recorded back in 2017, I think around the time I was exploring song ideas that ended up forming the basis for RUINED CASTLE. It was left to be a piano piece at the time, but in late 2024 I found myself playing it again on the piano. I wanted to release as a short solo piano piece, but found myself humming parts of the melody & gradually wrote lyrics to accompany it. There’s not much else to the production.

The song technically is about 3 1/2 mins long, but has an extended solo piano coda. I had another solo piano piece I’d been noodling on at the same time, which after writing “precariat”'s lyrics felt like a manifestation of that feeling of your world being turned upside down when you lose a job. (This has happened to me twice.) The coda here serves as a bizarro reflection of the otherwise serene pop song and transition into the next track.

Enjoy: https://buff.ly/BSW1oEi