About the song
A story for this song hasn’t been added yet.
Words from the artist’s archive
STILL RENDERING lyrics
Artist-supplied lyric sheet, matched by title. The sheet may differ from this released performance. Production notes and alternate promotional cuts are omitted.
Read the lyric sheet
Intro
Three in the morning, version fourteen
Verse 1
Foam panels held with command strips, one peeling off the drywall Condenser mic got a tube sock on it, pop filter cracked last fall Monitor's got a dead pixel cluster top right shaped like Florida Scroll past a promoted post, AI track, 1.2 million plays I don't feel nothing about it, that's the part that should concern me I just drag an EQ band two decibels up and keep working Headphones smell like yesterday, left cup splitting at the foam 808 rattles something in the drawer every time the sub comes home
Pre-chorus
Fourteen takes and I kept the worst one 'Cause the worst one meant it
Chorus
Still rendering, still rendering The file's not done, I'm not done Still rendering, still rendering Screen says seventy percent and I believe it
Verse 2
Recorded the verse fourteen times, kept take nine for the breath catch Moved one syllable three milliseconds left, nobody hearing that But I heard it, and the version where I didn't sounds like giving up Voice clone features now, singer never showed up Point-zero-zero-three per stream, I did the math, that's negative money Adjusting reverb decay by four milliseconds at 3 AM Wet sounds like a parking garage, dry sounds like my den
Pre-chorus
Fourteen takes and I kept the worst one 'Cause the worst one had a crack in it
Chorus
Still rendering, still rendering The file's not done, I'm not done Still rendering, still rendering Screen says seventy percent and I believe it
Verse 3
Forum tab, independent artists, survival thread Someone said watermark your masters, someone said get a real job instead I closed the tab, went back to the mix, bar twelve, second take My voice does this thing where it almost hesitates Not a mistake, not a choice, somewhere underneath both A prompt can't type "almost hesitate," it don't know what doubt costs That half-breath is the whole record, everything else is sauce
Bridge
I'm not competing with the algorithm I'm competing with the idea that this is content This is a table I made by hand The grain goes wrong on one leg That's how you know a person was here
Verse 4
The sock on the mic is a credential Fourteen takes ain't inefficiency, that's devotional A carpenter don't compete with the printer making particle board They sand the joint till the wood remembers what it's for Every millisecond I moved tonight, fingerprint on the frequency Nobody asked, nobody's waiting, that's not the point of the thing to me
Verse 5
Export, march underscore nineteen underscore v14 WAV, 44.1, 24-bit, same settings as every time Close the laptop, power strip blinks green like a lighthouse For a ship already docked, room already quiet Don't post it, don't write the caption, let the file exist Dawn crawls under the curtain, checking if I'm still here
Chorus
Still rendering, still rendering The file's not done, I'm not done Still rendering, still rendering Screen says seventy percent and I believe it
Outro
(Foley: laptop close, power strip hum) (Hard stop) [Silence]
Inside the recording
Three in the morning, version fourteen
Fourteen takes and I kept the worst one 'Cause the worst one meant it
Still rendering, still rendering The file's not done, I'm not done
Excerpts from artist-supplied lyric files matched by title. Lyric sheets may differ from the released performance.