Takénobu wrote a song depicting everyone’s dream over the past year: quitting the draining and time-consuming traditional job in exchange for something more freeing—the ability to ‘travel light.’
“Traveling Light” is the opening song on Takénobu’s new album, Always Leave a Note. Nick Ogawa, the man behind Takénobu, was inspired to write the song based on his own decision to leave his job in marketing to pursue music full time.
“In 2011, I was really really lucky to have my songs start to take off on Pandora radio and I started to be able to pay my rent from iTunes downloads. When that happened, I was able to quit my job I was unhappy with and pursue music full time. I took a pay cut to do it, but I’ve never looked back or felt regretful about that aspect of things,” Ogawa tells American Songwriter. “I’ve always thought about how liberating it was and with ‘Traveling Light’ I wanted to express both the feeling of being trapped by work and the liberation from feeling exploited by it, even if it means having less or living more simply.”
