Dillon Pakele’s Nothing Now is a beautiful song about the importance of moving forward by starting your healing process

Photo courtesy of Dillon Pakele.

Hawaii-based musician, Dillon Pakele recently released a beautiful song about the importance of moving forward by starting your healing process. When you listen to Nothing Now you are taken aback by Dillon’s incredible voice, his thoughtful lyrics, and the beautiful music. When we listen to Dillon sing time stands still and we feel in the moment. Dailyreggae.com caught up with Dillon to learn more about his music and the special meaning behind Nothing Now.

Nothing Now is a great song Dillon! Tell us about you!

I am from Hawaii. I was born on the Big Island, the Hawaii Island, and I was raised on Oahu in Makakilo/Kapolei. I spent a good portion of my life in Kapolei. I love basketball and I love music. I only started doing music about two years ago and it’s been a crazy journey ever since. 

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Nothing Now? It’s a very poetic, powerful song and the bass line is incredible!

Let me tell you a little story about Nothing Now. That is a song I actually wrote about four or five years back. It’s when I was about 18 or 19. I’m 23 now. It was a breakup that I was going through at the time. You put all this time, energy and sacrifice into a relationship that you think one day could possibly lead to marrying this person and spending the rest of your life with them. For things to not come through at the end is like wow; I put all of that in just for there to be nothing. My goal with the song was to really paint that picture and feeling of there being nothing. When people hear the song my goal is by the end of the song for them to feel nothing. 

I feel like a lot of people have been down that path and I wanted to write something that people could relate to and take them to a healing process because the most important thing is picking up and to keep on moving. You cannot be stuck at the nothing. 

My father passed away May 25, 2020 and we were working on this project before he passed. He played a bass line that was on the track. I took that track to the studio after my Dad passed and I asked Imua Garza, who produced Nothing Now, to replicate the bass line, so when you hear the reggae come in, that’s my Dad. It’s not actually him but I wanted it to feel like he was a part of the song. He’s still playing the music alongside with us. That’s another reason the song is so special to me, because it was my Dad’s idea for the bass line. 

The song is written about two different relationships. The first verse is written about a relationship back in high school and for about three or four years, I didn’t have a second verse for it. I couldn’t figure out. I went through another relationship around the time my Dad passed and I realized the second verse was not meant to be written about that first relationship, it was meant to be written about that relationship. It’s crazy how everything kind of happens for a reason. 

Nothing Now by Dillon Pakele is the Daily Reggae Song of the Day.