Behind The Scenes: Our Ceasing Voice - The Man You Wanted Me To Be (Official Video)

Sebastian, band leader & guitarist: Our Ceasing Voice has always had a strong DIY spirit. It’s not that we don’t appreciate outside perspectives or couldn’t use help - we just genuinely love every part of being a band. writing the music, and everything around it. We’ve always recorded our own songs, booked our own shows, designed the artwork for the new album ourselves, and now we've also made the videos for “Diamond Eyes” and “The Man You Wanted Me to Be.”

We originally wanted to take the video in a completely different direction. We imagined something with a real summertime feel. But once we started putting it together, it just didn’t make sense anymore. It‘s funny because that’s kind of what the song is about, too: ending up somewhere completely different from where you thought you were headed.

So we went with a much simpler idea. We set everything up like a live show, turned down the lights, and hung a huge sheet of plastic between us and the camera, as if we were playing inside the thunderstorm that’s building throughout "The Man You Wanted Me to Be“.

We filmed everything at Kultur am Land, a local venue where we also recorded the drums for the album (huge shoutout to the team there, btw!) Shooting the video took a few tricks. Most of the performance shots were filmed on a tripod, and then we just took turns behind the camera so we could edit everything together and make it look like we were all in the performance at once.

When we started editing, it felt like something was missing. That’s when our friend Jana came in. She ended up becoming the secret star of the video, like a ghost behind the veil.

I wrote the lyrics for the song near Lago di Garda on August 24, 2021. That afternoon, I found myself wondering if I could ever grow into the man the future would ask me to be. I recorded the opening sample right there by the pool where I wrote the lyrics because I wanted to keep as much of that day as I could. The date opens the song, and only later did I realize that one of my favorite songs, Matthew Ryan’s "Beautiful Fool“, starts with the exact same date, too - just 30 years earlier. I don’t know if that means anything, but I love the thought that some days carry more than just a date. When we filmed the video, I felt like we were floating through time. And just like in the song, things didn’t turn out the way we expected. Somehow, though, those unexpected moments become the ones we love the most.

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