The Great Regression

The Great Regression marks my first studio album since forever. And rather than driving myself crazy asking “What took so long???”, the question I find myself wondering more and more is: why now?

For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have something important to say. More significantly, I feel empowered enough to say it.

Mental health has been front and centre of our generation’s zeitgeist for awhile now, and though the conversation isn’t new, I still find myself taking old approaches.

The worst of which was bottling it in, keeping those problems to myself because I felt like nobody wanted to hear it. Nobody wants to hear the guy who’s on TV and advertisements and magazine covers talk about his problems. “They’re not real” I would tell myself.

But they became more and more real as time passed. The insecurities take shape, the bleak feelings start to become more debilitating...the negative self talk manifests into neglect. I was no longer able to create distance between my problems and myself. (Thanks, Pandemic.)

It took a lot of time to work through these things, and even more time to then translate it to some kind of musical output. But the process, though trying, has been some of the most rewarding art I’ve been involved in creating.

Writing about the pain in an honest way made me learn to love my pain, love my music, love myself. While the journey of self love may have a long hard road ahead, I am learning to trust myself more and more in the process. And that has translated to me putting more of myself in this album than anything I’ve ever done.

The Great Regression isn’t just a depression project, it’s been a journey in finding “Nathan Hartono” again, learning to love him more, trust him more, and accepting all the loveliness and ugliness that comes with this insane career path.