Pony (It's OK)

Album: Love, Save the Empty (2008)
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Songfacts®:

  • This set the record for the most downloads in an iTunes "Single of the Week" campaign, when the song was featured during the first week of January 2009.
  • This uplifting track seemingly contains a number of references to the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. However, in an interview with the LAist, McCarley denied this was intentional. The singer-songwriter explained: "I don't think I meant to do that. (laughs) I don't really play piano, but that was the first time I wrote on piano, and I was just in my apartment dinking around on this crappy Casio. I was literally playing with two fingers doing this "Chopsticks"-type thing and I just started singing. It's really weird when phrases fly out of your mouth that you're not intending, and you don't even necessarily know what it means at the time. It was just this imagery. I don't know why I went to Yellow Brick Road!"
  • McCarley told LAist her songwriting process: "I usually start with some sort of melody. I'm a vocalist over an instrumentalist, so I'm usually humming a melody in my head, then I'll follow it with a guitar. Usually, if it's something that I'm really into and can feel, some words will come out that reflect the same emotion as the music."

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