Small Talk

Song Sheet - Disc One / Story Single

Fan hook. If you've ever wanted to skip the weather conversation and go straight to what's actually wrong — this song is for you.

I have never been good at small talk.

Asking someone how they are when neither of us actually wants the real answer feels like a tiny lie we've all agreed to tell each other. I don't really get it. I'd much rather skip the script and go straight to the part where you tell me what you're actually thinking about at 2 a.m.

This makes me bad at parties.

It also makes me very good at one specific thing: meeting someone who breaks the rules with me first. Once, the very first time I met someone, they told me their entire life story before we'd even ordered coffee. Childhood, divorce, the weird stuff, all of it. Most people would have been weirded out.

I remember thinking the opposite. You didn't weird me out. You weirded me in.

That's my kind of conversation. That's my kind of person. And that's where this song came from.

• Performing small talk for decades while screaming inside — never knowing why it was so exhausting
• Being called "too much" or "too intense" by people who couldn't keep up with real conversation
• Feeling like everyone got a social rulebook you never received
• Masking so well for so long you stopped knowing what "yourself" actually felt like
• Meeting someone who finally matched your depth and realizing you'd been starving for that your whole life
• Not having the language (AUDHD, neurodivergent) until well into adulthood — and the grief that follows
• The exhaustion of masking 24/7 around most people — and the overwhelming relief of that one friend (or those few people) where the mask just... comes off
• Sitting with that person for hours, pouring everything out, feeling completely understood — and realizing that's what you've been starving for your whole life
• The contrast between who you perform for the world and who you actually are — and how rare it is to find someone who gets to see both

• "If you've ever had to mentally rehearse a casual conversation before you had it — this song is for you."
• "For everyone who's been in a room full of people and still felt completely alone because nobody was saying anything real."
• "I wrote this for the person who gets called 'a lot' by people who just can't handle depth."
• "If small talk has always felt like a test you never got the study guide for — I see you."
• "This is for the person who found their person — the one who didn't run when you stopped performing normal."
• "Wrote this before I had the word for it. Turns out the word was AuDHD."
• "For anyone who has ever loved someone because they weirded you in instead of out."
• "For everyone who has that one friend where you sit down and suddenly it's 3am and you've said everything you've never been able to say to anyone else."
• "This is for the person who makes you feel safe enough to take your mask off."
• "If you have to perform for most people but there's that one person where you just... don't — this song is for both of you."
• "Neurodivergent people mask all day, every day. And then there's that one person. You know who they are."
• "For the friend who gets your weird. The one you can sit with for six hours and it still doesn't feel like enough."

• "Weirded me in" hooks — the lyric living in the wild (Swipe #015 adjacent)
• Masking / safe person hooks: "I can't do small talk but I found my person" / "the one person you don't have to mask for"
• AuDHD social connection hooks — the exhaustion of small talk as a neurodivergent experience
• "God I hate / God I love" format — Small Talk version: "God I hate that I can't do small talk" → "God I love that I found someone I don't have to"
• Sounds like: Kacey Musgraves adjacent — warm, witty, emotionally honest
• Seed video #3 (weirded me in — HIGH PRIORITY): https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZqiRBNO2g8/

• Seed video #1 (logged): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8gkVsvC/ — engaged audience, strong tone match. Use as reference first.
• Seed video #3 (logged — "weirded me in" — HIGH PRIORITY): https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZqiRBNO2g8/ — creator saying "you think you weirded me out but she weirded me in." This is the lyric living in the wild. Two options: stitch it directly with KB cutting to that exact lyric in the song, OR use it as inspiration to create KB's own version of the same story. Either way this is the highest-priority stitch target for Small Talk — the audience has already made the connection, KB just needs to meet them there.
• Cut 1: Find creator talking about hating small talk / not getting social cues → cut to: "I never understood the between the lines"
• Cut 2: Find creator talking about being "too much" or weirding people out → cut to: "you think you weirded me out when you weirded me in"
• Cut 3: Find creator talking about masking / performing small talk while exhausted → cut to chorus
• Cut 4 — new: Find creator talking about that one friend where the mask comes off / sitting for hours just talking → cut to: "a safe place to take your mask off"
• Search terms: "autism hate small talk" / "ADHD social cues" / "reading between the lines neurodivergent" / "found my person AuDHD"
• Top hashtags to search: #actuallyautistic #autisticadult #AuDHD #ADHDtiktok #latediagnosedautistic #smalltalkistheworst #neurodivergent
• Work tape: [ Log the work tape file or recording location here when found — even a bad phone memo works. Format: open with 10–20 sec of raw tape → transition to finished track. ]

• @paigelayle — 2.6M followers, AuDHD. Goes viral on lived experience. Best for the "between the lines" moment.
• @morgaanfoley — 634K followers, AuDHD. Covers masking and social exhaustion. Good for the small talk performance angle.
• @audhdlauren — 35.7K followers, psychotherapist + AuDHD coach. High credibility, loyal audience.

• "wrote this for everyone who never got the memo about small talk"
• "I never understood the between the lines — and I finally stopped pretending I did."
• "you think you weirded me out when you weirded me in. that's the whole song."
• "for the person who has to rehearse casual conversation. you're not broken. you're just wired differently."
• "this one's for the people who skip the surface and go straight to the soul."
• "found the person who matched my weird. wrote a song about it."
• "." [just a period — let the lyric do the work. high performer for this audience.]
• "for the friend you can sit with for six hours and still not be done talking."
• "a safe place to take your mask off. that's all this song is about."
• "most people get the performance. a few people get the real thing. this song is for those few people."

• The duet partner is a marketing asset. If Blue Foley is on this track, his audience is a second launch pad. Don't treat the feature as just a vocal credit — coordinate release content across both audiences simultaneously. Two people who genuinely get each other is the whole thesis of the song, visible in real life.
• Comments are content. When this lyric drops, the comment section will do the marketing. Seed it by asking a question in the caption: "what's the one thing you say just to get through small talk?" Let the audience tell their own version of the story.
• The "Kitchen Table Talk" connection is a rollout tool. If Small Talk and Kitchen Table Talk release in proximity, the Easter egg ("I'm talking kitchen table talk" in verse 2) becomes a content moment — point it out and let the deep listeners feel rewarded.
• Email list angle: This song has a strong "personal story" email — the one where you tell the real version of why you wrote it, not the polished version. That email will convert listeners to fans faster than any social post.

• Confirmed: every single in the campaign gets its own billboard. Not a phase-4 or cash-flow-permitting extra — a locked part of each release.
• Billboard copy: To add — write this song's billboard line here.