After infiltrating our feeds with “Ever After,” MICO is back with another earworm, “Parasite.”
Teaming up with Haiden Henderson, MICO delivers a track about the emotional toll of a one-sided, all-consuming relationship. The string-laden production is a perfect host for the sinisterly good lyrics.
On our latest podcast, we caught up with MICO on his “internet hometown hero” tour to chat about his new music, life on the road, and the the importance of building community.
Excerpt from the podcast (This interview has been edited for clarity)
JBP: You talked a little bit about the collaborations you’ve done, and this new song, “Parasite,” is a collaboration with Haiden Henderson. What was the inspiration behind that song?
MICO: Haiden is actually one of the first people I met in music, both online and in general. We met back in the summer of 2022 on my first LA trip.
So, we’d known each other for a while. I’d always been a fan of his stuff. I actually asked him to open for my tour that happened in the fall of last year, and we got really close.
He had recently gone through something that we bonded over; I had gone through something similar. While we were writing, I realized there was a much clearer story than I’d originally thought. I had written very mindlessly at first, just like, “This is fun.” But everything became a lot clearer once Haiden came into the picture. I ended up rewriting a lot of my parts, even some of the chorus lines. And that’s the great thing about these writing sessions, it just feels like friends in a room, chopping it up.
JBP: I feel like the best songs come out of that; you’re just kind of riffing off each other. The uncomfortable part of trying to bond with a new writer or producer is completely taken out of the mix.
MICO: Yeah, absolutely. This was my first time writing with Haiden, too, so I was a little like, “Are we gonna butt heads?” I didn’t know how artist-to-artist writing was gonna go. The only other time I’d done that was with eaJ, and eaJ was like, “I’m just gonna sit in the back and let everyone do their thing, and I’ll chime in if something comes up.”
I’m still very new to collaborating with other artists, specifically. But yeah; there’s also just such a sense of familiarity that happens when we’re both inherently fans of each other. So when we’re helping each other write, we already know what each other’s music sounds like and the kinds of things we like to do.
He’s telling his story, and I’m casually trying to sneak in really direct one-liners. There’s a lyric in there — “made it look so easy, let a good thing die” — which is a callback to a different song, maybe one in a playlist or something.
A few months prior, Haiden told me he had a “bank” of words he wanted to use, and one of them was “subliminally.” So, we snuck it into the first line of his verse. And then he kind of egged me on to make my first verse more personal — more word-vomit-y and constant, like I usually do.
We both ended up pushing each other to be the best versions of our artist selves, which is awesome.
Featured Photo Credit: Oscar Tam