The Truth Behind the Song #4 – Rachel Reinert’s ‘Dark Star’

 

Welcome to our brand new feature, ‘The Truth Behind the Song’. For the feature, we’ve asked a number of our favourite artists to give us in-depth piece about a song that has a special place in their heart. Today we feature the incredible Rachel Reinert, who gives us an insight into the ‘truth’ behind ‘Dark Star’.

“Dark Star” is a song that came from a place of honesty, frustration, reflection, optimism, and hopefulness. I wrote it with Joe Pisapia and KS Rhoads back in the spring of 2017, at a time when I was hearing some rumors that I was no longer doing music after leaving the band I was in to pursue my solo career just a year and a half prior. I think there was this expectation for me to turn around and release music right on the heels of my departure from the band, but when that didn’t happen, there were some assumptions being made about my future as a solo artist.

In reality, I was taking my time. I withdrew myself from the spotlight so that I could find myself as an artist and also as a person. I needed the time to just BE, write/create/experiment, and discover my identity that didn’t have any attachment to my past.

This process was essential for me, as it forced me to really face my biggest fears of being forgotten, or worse, remembered for things I didn’t want to be remembered by. I wanted to talk about that with this song, as well as speak my truth about my process as a whole, which came with many difficulties and challenges along the way. In that moment, I really felt like I was just free falling through the atmosphere, on my own out in the darkness, but I knew I had this light within me that people had not seen or heard yet. We immediately drew the comparison to that of a dark star. We also wanted the lyric to be ambiguous enough that other people could relate to it in their own lives.

I think anytime you make a huge decision and choose to follow your heart, there will almost always be adversity, but you have to maintain hope and belief in yourself and that’s what this song is ultimately about.”