Nothing's Real

Album: Nothing's Real (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song was inspired by a midnight panic attack where Shura was convinced she was dying. She told the BBC: "I was taken to hospital, then the doctors did a lot of tests and said I was fine. That was really strange - to feel like you're dying and it not be true. It was like living in a video game, where you have multiple lives."
  • The song became the title track of Shura's debut album. "I'm really freaked out by time," she told MTV News. "How, for instance, what I did last week is not real in the sense that it's happened. It's just a memory that's filed away in my brain. There's that Laura Marling song, 'Short Movie' - that's how I feel about life. You're kind of interacting with it, but at the same time you're not."
  • Shura co-wrote and co-produced the track with Joel Pott who is the lead vocalist and guitarist of the British band Athlete. Pott's best known song, "Wires," was also inspired by a hospital visit. In his instance, it was the experience of seeing his baby daughter in intensive care after she suffered a seizure.

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