SPOTLIGHT: More Than a Song: Drucker on Storytelling and ‘Wake Me Up’
SPOTLIGHT
SPOTLIGHT
☆ BY PATRICK ZAVORSKAS ☆
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A STORY APPEARS TO END, BUT YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY STOPPED GRIEVING?—For some, it is truly forgetting and letting go of what caused you that heartache in the first place. But for others, it could mean diving headfirst into that agony and discovering potential other paths of dealing with your grief. The thing about grief is that it truly never takes you where you expect it to. And if there is anyone who truly understands this, it is the Montréal musician Drucker, who intricately weaves vulnerability and heartache through the narratives he creates in each of his songs.
Because for Drucker, even grief has a story to tell. Long before he found his voice as a musician, he found it through creative writing—learning how to build characters, emotions and narratives long before he began putting those stories to music. That instinct toward storytelling has become central to his approach to songwriting, particularly as he explores the grief and uncertainty that can follow the end of a relationship. Across his music, that story unfolds gradually: from the initial loss through the process of letting go to an apparent resolution found in the single "See Myself Out."
But let's get one thing straight, however: endings are not always what they seem.
With his latest single, "Wake Me Up," Drucker returns to that emotional landscape built up in his album See Myself Out, but from a different perspective. Rather than offering a sweet conclusion or a sense of final closure, the song serves as an epilogue—a reminder that even after a relationship has ended, the grief surrounding it can remain.
In conversation with Luna, Drucker discusses the unexpected path that led him to music, the development of his storytelling voice, and the way his songs have allowed him to explore a relationship whose ending isn't quite as simple as it first appeared.
“My journey into it [music] is a little bit late, I would guess, compared to most,” Drucker begins to say over Zoom when answering a question about how he got his start in the music scene. “I didn’t grow up playing an instrument…I wasn’t like some child pageant star or one of those types of things.” For him, music came about in university. During one November night, he came out to a common area outside of his dorm room to a bunch of people playing instruments. “I had a couple friends there who wound up showing me what a C chord or G chord was on a guitar…that kind of thing. From there, honestly, I was hooked. It genuinely stuck deep into my soul.” The problem for Drucker, however, was his inability to play other people’s songs. As he puts it, he did not have the “backbone” or technical skills to learn all the correct chords.
His solution: write music that was within his ability to play. “Creative writing was something that I always enjoyed. So they [creative writing and guitar playing] very quickly married themselves into songwriting.” From there, Drucker spent about three years writing two songs a day—a task that helped him grow his abilities in narrative songwriting and world-building within his music. He debuted in 2022, the single “Defunct Baseball Team”—a song about falling in love and having a beautiful connection with a woman on a train, only to never see her again —being the first glimpse into his universe.
“I always loved the idea of establishing a world around what I’m creating. For myself, when I started to put music out there, it was all about adding characters and locations and geographies and textures to this world. I wanted to create something that is all-encompassing…” For him, this means weaving the character of Drucker in through the songs he creates, especially on his first EP, See Myself Out. The character of Drucker becomes this person who can never fully win at love or at life, but who tries hard and fights every step of the way. He is not two-dimensional, but rather someone who is messily yet delicately spinning through each phrase of grief at the loss of a relationship and is trying to get to a point of acceptance. This aspect only builds the emotional intent and truth behind each song, and allows the listener to fully connect to the characters and stories being told.
“You know, there is a lot of that ‘sensibility of introspection for the sake of introspection’ in music lately, but it is not really grounded in an emotional truth. It is not something that someone can always associate with, and can empathize with, or can do something for them. And for me, that’s important.”
This is why songs like “See Myself Out” and “Wake Me Up” work so perfectly together. “See Myself Out” acts as a trial for the five stages of grief. The main character of the song is trying to fully accept the end of a relationship, but with the idea of wanting to be remembered. The relationship can move on and become distant, but as long as there is some continued fleeting memory of each other, there can be an idea of closure. This issue is, closure does not come from maintaining attachment or fully not seeing the reality of the end. “Wake Me Up” sets out to prove that Drucker still has a bit of work to do in breaking through his grief.
“We made a short film series for the See Myself Out EP, and within the last song [“See Myself Out”] we did this Groundhog Day style thing in the video. There's a corridor with two doors to the end, and he goes through. But then he keeps getting caught back up at the beginning of the door. And he keeps kind of repeating the loop. The idea is, though, that with self-acceptance, he is finally able to get through that final door and step out.
What we see with ‘Wake Me Up’ is that just because he thought he was good doesn't mean he is. Drucker is kind of stuck in this nightmarish hellscape.”
With “Wake Me Up,” we begin to understand that Drucker cannot fully heal without the help of someone or something. There are still emotional scars, trauma and other bruises that he is carrying that cannot be dealt with simply on his own. There is an honesty to the pain and vulnerability felt in that song and in that moment. Sometimes acceptance isn't about becoming untouched by what happened, but learning to live alongside the marks it left behind.
For Drucker, that process remains ongoing for now. “He is very Sisyphean in that way—he's gonna keep pushing that ball up the hill. He's gonna keep striving. He never gets there, but he's gonna keep trying.” He knows and understands that there is meaning in continuing.
Drucker knows that the stories of See Myself Out and “Wake Me Up” aren’t the final chapters of his story. There are still plenty of pages to be written and shared with his community. And for an artist who began his journey as a storyteller, there is quite a lot of beauty in that.
Want to explore more of Drucker’s world? Here is a playlist curated by him to help:
“See Myself Out” by Drucker
“Say My Name In Your Sleep” by Maisie Peters
“jesus in a baby tee” by Tom Siletto
“Can Old Lovers Just Be Friends” by Tom Odell
“Wake Me Up” by Drucker
