Some songs are conceived in the studio, and some are in the quiet of a quiet room, but the writing of “Break Out the Cutters” is physically and emotionally kinetic. When a panic attack hit, Curtis Millen was sitting on a train to Amsterdam, traveling to a gig. With no way out and no solution, he turned to the one thing that never let him down: a blank page.
“Break Out the Cutters” began as a poem, a raw, unvarnished explosion of anxiety and self-loathing, and eventually emerged as something else. Reading the words back to himself, Millen heard a rhythm, a pulse. And then he had a thought: What would Gregory Porter do with this? A song was in motion, with a voice note recorded quickly on the train.
“Break Out the Cutters” is about breaking away from the past, learning to tune out the voices that try to pull you back, and marching confidently into a growth phase. It’s a song you don’t just sit with, but that moves you, unlike how Millen was forced to put pen to paper during his own struggle.
“Break Out the Cutters” reminds us that we grow in discomfort and continually grow, which is worth celebrating. Sometimes, it takes a moment of crisis on a train in a foreign country to crack open a song that expresses something universal. Curtis Millen has spoken an anthem for the restless dreamers and the few ready to escape.
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