MHS student and emerging talented musical artist Tyler Rotunno (‘22) will be releasing a new track, “rainforest cafe !!”, in February 2022. This release has come with its own challenges and successes, providing an extremely different experience for Tyler than the creation of “take a hint !!”, which he produced alongside fellow artist Alec Mueller.

Throughout Tyler’s musical career, his strengths have been most prominent when it came to musical concepts, video production, marketing, and other areas related to his art. “[But] for the longest time, for the life of me, I could not write lyrics,” he said.

In the case of “rainforest cafe !!”, the lyrics came shockingly quickly and naturally.

Tyler said, “For some reason those lyrics came naturally to me. That is the first time that has ever happened… it was so crazy.”

The official track name went from the original “hammer and nail !!” to “rainforest cafe !!” after a spontaneous title change. After listening to his recorded track, Tyler came up with the concept of a hammer and nail, which he then built off of, creating a metaphorical “house” experiencing life trials that weather it down that he references in his song.

The change from “hammer and nail !!” to “rainforest cafe !!” was both an advertising decision and better connected the aesthetic of the song itself to its title.

Even without the rain sound effects Tyler personally recorded and positioned throughout the track, the song is centered around the sound, feeling, and mood of sitting by the window of a local cafe and watching the rain pour down outside.

After reaching out to Alec Mueller, musically known as Hint of Blue, they both agreed the lyrics of “rainforest cafe !!” were especially powerful for a variety of listeners because they weren’t a “dead giveaway about what [the song was] about”.

According to Tyler, the song itself leaves a lot up to interpretation and “makes you think”, which means “everyone has their own personalized version of the song”.

Tyler shared that the struggles he’s been through in his life have encouraged him to give his listeners a resource to turn to when facing similar trials — a resource that he didn’t have access to in the past.

“I want to make this art for other people to listen to [and] be that guidance that I didn’t have,” said Tyler.

Because of the overall “vagueness” of the song — both in the lyrics and future music video and marketing — the details of the situations people are going through isn’t essential to conveying the message listeners need; Tyler said people can “interpret it as anything to help them in that [specific] context”.

Tyler makes sure to keep track of all of his spur-of-the-moment thoughts that could someday contribute to building the worlds he works to create for others through his music.

“All these phrases and all these colors and all these places —they can add up together to make the world I’m trying to paint,” he said.

His future music video will work to enhance the metaphorical “house” that is the central theme of this new release. He’s working to ensure the video both enhances the song for listeners and viewers as well as dives even deeper into the raw ideas conveyed through the lyrics.

“rainforest cafe !!” will be dropping under Ty_Makes_Music on Feb. 22, 2022 and can be found on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and many other musical outlets.