anything you want

about the music

Being unknown is all that I own / I don’t wanna be taken apart again / Pacing my way up and down the shame / I’ve stayed after the strike but then

You say you want nothing that I don’t want to give / And I don’t think that’s true / But anyway, I can’t keep my secrets / Even when I want to

“Anything You Want” by Eliza McLamb (2023)

let me get the business out of the way. i put out a new song — one of my favorites off of my upcoming debut record — and announced my very first headlining tour. i’ll be in brand new places singing brand new songs, and i can’t wait to see you there. you can grab tickets for those shows at the link below with presale code “GLITTER” <3

“anything you want” is a B side song. historically, the B side of a record has been for non-singles, the fan deep cuts, the second fiddle to the A side. the B side of my record, however, is necessary context for everything else. it’s the place where i realize that i cannot hide from myself.

clawing my way out from the veneer that i really am a ramshackle bitch who cares for no one and who nobody cares for, “anything you want” is a negotiation with allowing myself humanity. fitting that its release comes during scorpio season, it’s the story of an old cycle ending in blood and flames, with me being not quite ready to let go.

one time, before we were dating, i began to tell my not-then-boyfriend about the various sexual indiscretions i’d endured in my time being a woman. indiscretion is a polite word, used here in place of things like assault or violation or any number of terms that may make me feel adjacent to a sort of victim, or which may, demonstrably, have made men feel uncomfortable. i use them here as i did then, for protection.

i had reached a point in my talking when i realized that he had fallen entirely silent, which usually, with men, was the cue that i was to end my sentence whenever most convenient before changing the subject entirely. we were going camping. i trailed off.

“we probably won’t need a totally weather-proof tent for the trip given the season, you think?” i pivot, driving, and still looking at the road. most men, when confronted with such an abrupt change in subject, find it a blessing — a kindness that is done to them, over and over, by women, to affirm their own comfort. i expected him to play along. i almost wanted him to.

but instead, he reached over the console to cover my hand with his.

“we don’t have to move on from what you’re talking about if you don’t want to,” he said, his earnest blue eyes burning into the side of my cheek as i stared forward, onto the road which at any point could become hazardous with obstacles. “it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but don’t feel like you have to change the subject on my account.” and then, as if to address his own silence, “i was just listening.”

the idea that someone, instead of silently pleading that my mouth would close and i would move forward from the recantation of whatever horror had befell me before his time in my life, would listen with intent, was baffling. i was used to talking with no audience — only child, feminist club president at a north carolina high school, speaking into the vacant state of bartenders who wanted to fuck me. now that i had a listener, i wasn’t sure that being heard was comfortable for me. in fact, in the moment, i was finding it expressly uncomfortable.

but discomfort is the vehicle which takes us from one stage of life to the other, from emotion to emotion, from “something” into “anything.”

i hope you enjoy the music.

e