Page 227 of Haunt Me

How do I peel myself off the floor for the rest of the shows?

Not to mention, my new album is coming out in a week.

Aweek.

I have so much I need to do. Gritting my teeth won’t cut it. I know what I need: I need a pill.

Think. What do you really need?

I needher. I don’t have her—might never have her.

I need a pill.

I don’t end up taking it, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like barely surviving, and I can’t keep doing that night after night. I can’t keep doing these shows, standing there, singing in front of thousands of people, with my heart ripped out of my chest, still bleeding profusely from the rib cage where it used to be.

Music Media Outlets

Headline: Surprise Double Album Drop from the Prince of Pop

Video: [Issy Woo announces New Albums in Press Release video]

My new release, ‘Isaiah’, is a double album.

It features one album with all new songs, songs I wrote during the summer. They will reveal t0 you my personal truth in a way it’s never been revealed before. It is called, simply,Isaiah. My name. The real one. The name by which I now want to be known.

From now on, everyone who has listened toIsaiahknows me better than anyone else in the world. Maybe better than I know myself.

But there is a second, secret album that accompanies the release ofIsaiah. It is calledHeartmender. This isn’t a completely new album, per se. It’sHeartbreaker, renamed. It’sHeartbreaker, rebranded.

Heartbreaker, redeemed. Heartbreaker, mended.

I have altered the lyrics to some of the songs from my first albumHeartbreakerand rerecorded them with various changes: Changes in lyrics, additional verses, slight alterations in melody and major changes in performance. Everything has been recorded brand-new.

I collected the rewritten songs and put them in a new album, which I called ‘Heartmender’. It also features two original singles. While the original lyrics to the songs still stand on their own, as a testimony to what I once felt and went through, I experienced the need to revise them, as they no longer represent my heart.

I wish to share the new versions of the songs, as well as the new version of myself, with you, the ones who have been listening to me from day one.

I will be singing both the revised and the old versions in my live shows from now on. I invite you to sing along to either version, depending on how you feel in the moment: broken or mended. This way, we can follow each other’s journeys as we travel through this beautiful, broken world of love and pain intertwined. I hope it will be a lifelong experience that binds us together in music.

Thank you for being with me through all the heartbreak, yours and mine. Thank you for being the main reason I have enough heart left beating, so that it might one day be mended. I will live the rest of my life on that hope.

I hope, if any of you are facing heartbreak as well, that you will join me.

In truth and heartbreak,

Isaiah

Europe

forty-two

My album comes out in the last week of February.

It’s a surprise double album drop, which sends my fans into a frenzy. My team is ecstatic—I’m just numb.Isaiahis out into the world.Heartmendertoo.

The second album is exclusively for Eden, although I don’t think she will listen to either of them now.

“After this album, they will know,” Skye tells me. “They will now you, Isaiah, better than your own mother knows you.” Jude is nodding. “Are you ready for that?”