Exponent Essays #1: "Feels So Good"

Essays by Erin Barra on her new EP "Exponent"

Stream "Feels So Good" Here!

“Feels So Good” is the single from my newest release, Exponent. It’s the first new music I’ve put out since 2019 - and my first body of recordings since 2016 - so in a very real way, this song is the sound of a door finally opening. It marks the end of what became a ten-year silence. Not because I stopped being creative and making things, but because I stopped forcing myself to stand in the center of my own work.

The song actually began its life around 2013. I wrote it with - and for - another artist, Rita Boudreau. She never released it. And yet, out of everything we made together, this was the one track I couldn’t let go of. It stayed in my hard drive like a little ember - small, quiet, alive. Every few years I’d stumble across it and feel the heat again. It meant something to me then, and over the years it kept gainit - like it was quietly waiting for the version of me who could finally feel the full truth inside it.

When I think back to that time, I can see how close I was to everything that would become my world. I was on the edge of becoming an Associate Professor at Berklee. I was building the first version of what would become We Make Noise (back then, Beats By Girlz). I was falling into the relationship that would become my marriage to my husband Caesar. I was standing in a doorway flooded with possibility - almost like my future had cracked the door just enough for me to smell the air.

But to make room for those beautiful things, something else needed to shift - and it did, almost without my permission. I didn’t sit down and decide to stop centering my life around being an artist, writer, and producer. It happened the way big transformations happen: not with a single dramatic choice, but with a series of “good” opportunities and practical decisions that felt responsible, even lucky. And then one day you look up and realize you’ve wandered miles from the shoreline of the identity you swore you’d never leave. You’re still in the same world, but the map in your hands no longer matches the land under your feet.

That distance triggered a decade-long identity crisis.

If you’ve ever devoted your whole existence to being an artist, you know the particular kind of psychological wreckage that comes from loosening your grip on that label. The industry teaches you to measure your worth by proximity to success: the size of the crowd, the placement, the streams, the hype, the validation, the “social proof.” And if those things don’t show up in the right quantity, you start telling yourself a set of brutal, quiet lies: Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m falling behind. Maybe this is embarrassing. Maybe this was never real.

The worst part is how normal those lies sound - because the industry repeats them so casually, like background noise you don’t even notice you’re breathing in.

And the irony is, I had done so many of the “right” things. I had a legitimate manager. Label deals. PR and legal. Touring. Sponsorships. Publishers. I played SXSW as an official artist. I sold out my album release show at Webster Hall. I was writing, producing, and building live rigs for other artists. On paper, it looked like I was holding the thing everyone was reaching for. But inside, it still never felt like enough. Every time I reached a benchmark, the goalposts slid a little farther away - like I was running toward a horizon that kept receding no matter how fast I moved. I was exhausted. I was miserable. I was chasing something I couldn’t name.

Making art is hard. Trying to make art your livelihood can be the hardest thing you ever do - because it asks you to turn the most sacred part of yourself into a product. And I didn’t realize until later that what I was searching for wasn’t another milestone… it was peace.

At some point, in a moment of desperation and clarity, I rewrote my definition of success.

Success stopped being “making a living off my own creative output.” It became “building a life I actually love while staying inside the work.” It stopped being “having a manager or a label.” It became “only doing projects I’m creatively invested in.” It stopped being “touring.” It became “being happy.” That shift cracked something open in me - like a pressure valve releasing - suddenly I had room to breathe, room to meet the parts of myself I’d been starving in the name of a singular dream.

But with that space came the scariest question: If I’m not the artist I said I was, then who am I?

It was equal parts shame and possibility. The shame came from my own standards. I’m someone who does what she says she’ll do - and I said I wanted to be an artist. When the decade stretched on, it felt like failure. Like I’d betrayed a younger version of me and everyone who believed in her. But underneath that shame was a quiet, growing excitement: what if I was actually becoming something bigger than the narrow container I kept trying to squeeze myself into?

Because “artist” was too narrow a word for the multitude of things I actually am.

When I added educator, entrepreneur, leader, advocate, fundraiser… I didn’t get smaller. I got exponentially larger. I built a nonprofit from the ground up. I took a job at the school where I earned my undergrad and left a legacy there. I led real research. I traveled the world teaching masterclasses. I built platforms and courses. I consulted on wild, diverse projects. I built installations. I founded academic programs. I got married. I had two kids. I created a life - in THIS industry - through MUSIC. A really good, stable, and fulfilling life. (emphatic exhale!)   

It might sound simple - even cliché - but at this point, I’m only making music for one person: me. Not for the algorithm, not for the industry, not to prove I still belong. Just for the part of me that’s always been listening. That sense of arrival is what “Feels So Good” is about.

It’s about the moment you stop reaching for a version of yourself you think you should be, and start inhabiting the one you already are. It’s about becoming. It’s about opening. It’s about taking the next step without needing to know where the whole road goes. It’s about arriving where you currently are. 

I don’t feel like I’m endlessly looking for something anymore. And this song is the sound of that truth landing in my body. It’s that endless pull of ‘ti’ to ‘do’. It feels (ti) so (ti) good (do).

By Erin Barra

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