TOWAMENCIN- Megan Aquias, a senior at North Penn, recently released her first single. This might sound like a somewhat normal thing if it wasn’t a high schooler who wrote, recorded, and produced the song completely by herself. “Bad Timing” is the title of her single. I sat down with Megan in order to get all the details on her process and the song itself.

Megan has always been in love with music. Beginning at a young age, she sang in choirs through school and has been singing ever since. She is also self taught on piano, ukulele, and guitar. However, deciding to make music was a recent choice.

“Around mid-January, I decided to put myself out there and make music after seeing other people in school releasing music too. I knew about other people who released music last year and thought it would be cool to finally try it out myself,” Aquias explained.

It did not take long for her to put it together. For a high schooler who already has so many other things on her mind, she worked especially hard in order to complete the song and release it on Valentine’s day of last month. That was a little less than a month after she decided she was going to give it a shot. It all actually started with a little competition, all in good fun of course.

“Well I was joking around one day at lunch that I would essentially “compete” with SoundCloud rappers at North Penn, but then I realized how

cool it would be to actually create a song. Everything I needed was at the palm of my hands, so I just decided to take a chance on it! With school, choir, and college to worry about, I only worked on this song for about an hour or so every few days over a span of three weeks,” said Aquias.

It was actually good timing for her to write the song, as it is about her own life experiences.

“My song is very personal to me, and it tells a story of what I was feeling about a certain part of my life at the time I wrote it. I think the lyrics are very straightforward, so there isn’t too much guesswork if you know me well. I was a little hesitant before I officially released the song on YouTube due to how vulnerable the lyrics are for me, but based on the responses I’ve been getting from people so far, I’m glad I did.”

The most impressive part of all of this was that it was all her own creation. It is amazing that a seventeen year old can produce music all on her own. It started with jotting down some lyrics here and there. With a little help from friends and family, she was on her way to making music.

“I wrote the song, created the instrumentals, and recorded myself singing on my own, but I also did get help from my dad to set up a mic and figure out how to record with it, and Molly Hofstaedter, a music theory genius, helped me figure out the chord progression I was singing when I sent her a rough recording of myself singing acapella. The picture of me on the cover art was taken by Jay Patel, who is an amazing photographer, and I edited the picture to how I liked it. Although there were a couple of versions of the cover art, and I have to give credit to my friends for helping me decide which was the best!”

Megan plans to continue making music after high school. It is a good creative outlet and her friends and family definitely support the mini music career she has started for herself. You can listen to “Bad Timing” on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, and Google Play. If you search “Megan Aquias,” you will be able to listen to it.