PORTLAND, Ore. — The recent breakup between aspiring singer-songwriter Davy Briggs and girlfriend of two months Evelyn Hanna was deemed insufficiently traumatic to inspire a soul-searching breakthrough album that will touch millions of sensitive souls, sources say.
“I was kind of devastated when Evelyn broke up with me,” Briggs explained. “So I naturally started laying down some tracks before the anguish subsided. Then I realized she was actually pretty cool and upfront about why she didn’t see a future with me and, honestly, neither one of us had all that much invested. Plus, we’re going to see each other around town and it’ll just be awkward to pretend that two months of hanging out is a pivotal moment in my artistic development. I mean, I didn’t even have a toothbrush at her place. I don’t think that’s a decent bar for 12 tracks of contemplative acoustic melancholy.”
Juliana Barroso, a longtime friend, sometime musical collaborator, and frequent reluctant listener of demos of Briggs’, agreed with his assessment of the collapsed relationship’s inability to summon the very spirit of lacerating heartbreak in musical form.
“From my understanding, it was a mutual breakup and he was only sad for a good 36 hours,” said Barroso. “However, he was looking up how much it cost to rent out an isolated cabin where the bittersweet memories of love could transform into an album that spoke for his dashed hopes and dreams, but when he saw the price-tag on those things, he was just like ‘fuck that.’ I thought the two of them were a cute couple, but let’s be honest: they met on Tinder, went to see a movie three or four times, and, apparently, did hand stuff regularly. Not exactly a relationship that needs to be immortalized forever.”
Dr. Martha Carter, a behavioral therapist, says that realizing that not every breakup has the necessary amount of creative trauma potential to create a masterpiece is actually a very good sign for Briggs’ mental health.
“It’s quite normal for the recently dumped to think that their romantic failure could be the source for a generational collection of songs,” said Carter. “But frankly, Briggs and Hanna’s relationship merits may be a B-side or an EP with more than one remixed version of a song, at best. The fact that he can acknowledge is actually a huge step forward for him, though given that he’s a wannabe indie musician, he’s got a fuckton of work to do on himself regardless.”
As of press time, Hanna was realizing that she didn’t feel like listening to “Jagged Little Pill” anymore and couldn’t relate to any part of it.