JOURNAL #1: RED LEATHER
February 1974.

Addy: No one liked any of the earlier drafts I'd shown them of my songs. They said my persona clashed too much with, somehow, itself. Bullshit, much? I knew what the wanted.

 They wanted me to write love songs. Not songs about moving to another city. Not about my friends. They wanted heartbreak. Like, I'm sorry, most of the guys here are either way too sleazy to be considered (read: they have a wife) or they're my age, which means they're immature and in high school. Yeah, I know how hypocritical that sounds. Sue me.

 To please them, I finished one song: Supermodel.

[ SONG JOURNAL; SUPERMODEL DRAFTS ]

Addy: I'd sit in my apartment all day long with my guitar and scribble lyrics. Teddy would drop by now and then to check up on me.

Teddy: She would throw her book at me whenever I disturbed her. It made her break out of her focus.

Addy: There. I thought I'd done it. It was upbeat. It was angsty. It was about someone you couldn't quite get. Because she was untouchable. I didn't know it yet, but ... that song would cause a lot of trouble later on.

Teddy: Supermodel's release led to a lot of people wondering about who it had been written for.

Addy: The whole point of the song was that she was untouchable. You weren't supposed to fuck with her. No one had the guts to. Like, she built herself a new reputation from the ground up.

 They twisted the meaning into someone wanted to fuck her.

 So when the Six (previously the Dunne Brothers) released the song as a single, it caused quite the sensation. 

Teddy: It also resulted in a very annoyed Addy. Because I didn't tell her I'd given the Six the song. She ... found out herself.

 I knew she'd be annoyed, of course. But Supermodel didn't suit her.

 The way she sung it, it was flirtatious, confident. It needed a sort of desperate longing, almost bitter. It needed Billy Dunne.

 Hate me for it, sure. I still believe the Six made it something more than Addy could've. It would've been a hit either way. Addy had enough hit material. The Six needed something. It was a matter of need.

Billy Dunne (lead singer, The Six): Supermodel was released as a single. Number four on the charts. We were thrilled. Fucking elated. Teddy had my back, I knew. The Honeycomb before Honeycomb and best of all? It didn't have Daisy on it. No, this was when we were just the Six.

 I loved Addy for that. She, not so much.

Addy: I didn't know at the start. Teddy told me to work on "This Side of Paradise." It did pretty well. Top five. It hit number one some time after I joined the band on the SevenEightNine tour and it became a regular on the setlist.

 Then I turn on the radio one day and I hear this opening that's vaguely familiar. Guitar, fast-paced. Billy's voice threw me off at the start. I was so used to my own that it took a moment or two to actually process the lyrics.

 "Alone at parties..."

 That was my song, and it was some weird sleazy guy (read: probably married! I just knew these things, okay?) singing it. The entire opening was the one I'd written. I was beyond pissed. Swerving right and just missing a postbox, I pulled up at the nearest record store, panting, and demanded for a vinyl of Supermodel.

 I remember his reaction so clearly. The boy who worked there gave me a lazy glance, pointed at a stack in the front of the store, and told me to get one myself. I stalked home, and played it on loop.

 And the nerve. Except for more backing tracks, they'd changed almost nothing.

Teddy: I waited for Addy to kick down my door. Or burn down my house. Something like that.

🖇 Author's Note: FINALLY!! addy & the six are going to meet very, very, soon. the graphic was super fun to make <33 drama coming, the next chapter.