Between the Notes: The creative mind of Michael E.

That's what happened when I sat down with Michael E.

M.E grew up in Africa and had real success in music years ago — then vanished from it for nearly 20 years. Not many people walk away from that business on their own terms, and even fewer come back without trying to re-create some earlier version of themselves. He didn't come across that way at all. If anything, he seemed a little caught off guard to be back doing this.

What brought him back wasn't ego. It was survival.

After a serious health scare, he found himself sinking into a depression he hadn't seen coming. He went looking for music that matched where his head was — something calming, but not fake or overproduced. He couldn't find what he needed.

So he wrote it himself.

The song is called "I Sat With It," and since March it's reached more than half a million streams on Spotify. The title is pretty much the whole philosophy. No breakthroughs, no tidy resolution — just the decision to stay put and let something move through you:

I sat with it / Didn't fold this time / Didn't reach when it crossed my mind / Sat with it / Let it breathe, let it pass / Let it hurt, let it last

It's sophisticated adult contemporary pop-rock, but it doesn't feel labored — more like something that always was there waiting to be recorded. It has that late-era Sting or Peter Gabriel quality, that sense of space where the music can actually breathe. Melodic rock, some jazzy undertones and a vocal that sounds genuinely lived-in.

But honestly, what stuck with me wasn't the streaming numbers or the production. It was how he talked about the messages he's been getting from people who stumbled onto the song at exactly the right moment.

One listener told him they'd been sitting alone in a parked car late at night, playing it on repeat, because it slowed their thoughts down enough to get through the night. A woman said she puts it on every morning before work because it does more for her anxiety than the news ever could. You could see those stories had gotten to him.

There comes a point where music stops being background noise for people. They start leaning on it. That changes things between the artist and the audience, whether the artist is prepared for that or not.

As a psychotherapist, I think about that dynamic a lot. And I think part of what people are responding to is that the song doesn't promise anything. It doesn't tell you that you'll be OK, or that the hard part is almost over. It just keeps you company while you're in it:

Some days tough / Some days light / Some nights long / Some feel right

That kind of honesty is rarer than it sounds.

Most performers want connection — that's natural. But becoming emotionally important to strangers is something else entirely. M.E seems clear-eyed about the fact that if he wants to make music that steadies other people, he has to keep himself reasonably steady, too. He talked less about fame than I expected. Mostly about staying grounded.

The lyrics reflect that. There's no performance of wisdom here, no tying things up with a lesson. Near the end of the song, he strips it all the way back:

No lesson / No bow / Just me / Right now

That's a hard thing to pull off without it feeling like a pose. It doesn't.

There was also something worth noting about how the music came out once he finally opened the door again. It wasn't a slow trickle. He wrote 24 songs in a burst and finished the album in 13 days. I've seen that before with creative people who've been holding things inside for a long time. Once it opens up, everything comes through at once.

The album is called "D.N.A." That title probably hits home for a lot of people right now.

Most lives don't unfold the way we pictured. Careers shift. Relationships fall apart. Health scares show up uninvited. Sometimes the person you planned on becoming just doesn't materialize, and you have to figure out who you are instead. The song captures something of that feeling — not healed, not broken, just still here:

I ain't healed / I ain't broke / I just didn't / Hide from the moment

That feeling runs through the whole record. It doesn't sound calculated or corporate. It sounds like someone working to get his footing back.

Maybe that's exactly why people are responding to it.

The older I get, the more I believe creativity does something beyond entertainment. Good music helps people work through things they don't quite have language for yet. Sometimes artists know that's what they're doing. Often they don't.

I've known people who've carried certain songs in their heads for decades because those songs got attached to a moment that mattered. This album feels like it could become that for some people.

The connection is real either way.