Paper Thin: The Story Behind My First Co-Write With John Riziki
John and Dave at Mosaic, MI open Mic
John Riziki showed up at my place with his guitar about a year ago and sat down in the chair he always sits in. He started playing some chords. I started playing along on piano. And somewhere in the first few minutes, I remembered to hit record on my phone.
That recording became "Paper Thin," and it's the first song John and I ever wrote together.
We stayed in the glorious mess of songwriting, and eventually the song emerged…
For a while we thought it was in 3/4. "Oh, it's kind of a 3/4 tune," we said, pretty confidently. Then at some point it just... wasn't anymore. Neither of us noticed exactly when it changed. It just drifted into something else and never went back.
That's kind of how the whole session went. We weren't building a song so much as following one around.
The question that cracked it open
At one point, John asked me something I don't ask myself nearly enough when I'm writing: "What emotion do you get from these chords?"
It stopped me cold, in a good way. I'd been circling the mechanics, the "maybe it's this chord, maybe it's that one" part of songwriting, and John's question yanked me out of my head. When I actually sat with it, I landed on melancholy. Sadness. The feeling of being left behind.
But underneath that, there was a tinge of hope too.
We'd originally been calling it "Beggar Song." It became "Paper Thin" once we found the line that held both of those feelings at once: paper thin, yet stronger than I've ever been. Lonely, but somehow emboldened by it.
John felt the same thing sitting across from me. He put it simply: "The idea was there. The grasping for it was there. The emotion was there."
Making the soup
I keep coming back to a cooking metaphor when I think about that day. We were in the kitchen, chopping up ingredients without knowing yet what dish we were making. A little of this chord, a little of that lyric fragment, one line we fished around for and almost lost.
"Holding some words I never said" started as exactly that: fishing. John and I went back and forth on the phrasing until it landed, and it made it into the final song almost word for word.
Some of what we cooked up that day didn't make the cut. There's a whole three-quarter-time version of a section that never returned. There are melodies we tried once and never touched again. My voice teacher Clare Maloney used to say everything's compost. So it comforts me to know that nothing we tried that day was wasted, even the parts that ended up back in the soil.
Where the best lines actually show up
A lot of my favorite lyrics don't happen at the piano. They happen away from it. On a walk. In the car, with the engine running in the background of the voice memo. I sent John a recording of me working out lyrics that way, and some of those lines made it straight into the song.
If you're a songwriter and you're not recording yourself, start immediately. You'll forget more good ideas than you realize, and some of them are the ones you'll want back most. You also hear your old ideas from a fresh new perspective. It’s a really exciting and rewarding way to recognize your own artistry.
What the song asked of both of us
John told me something that stuck with me. He said working on "Paper Thin" pulled him toward a different side of himself, one he doesn't usually reach for. Left to his own instincts, he figured he'd write something shinier and more upbeat seven times out of ten. This one asked him to sing differently, feel differently, and lean on an instrument he'd never actually released a song on.
That's the part I love most about writing with someone else. You can write a song alone, and we've both done it plenty. But there's something that happens when two people trust each other enough to sit in the mess together. You're not handing over a finished thing and asking for a verdict. You're offering a fraction of an idea and asking, "What do you think about that?" Then building from there. Yes, and. Yes, and.
We talked about John Lennon and Paul McCartney while we worked, and I think I understand a little better now why that kind of partnership can be so powerful. You balance each other out. You gain something you couldn't have found alone.
"Paper Thin" was the first time John and I sat down to write together, not knowing each other especially well yet. We proved something that day, even if neither of us said it out loud until we listened back a year later.
Paper Thin
by John Riziki and Dave Hill Jr.
I woke up alone
Could have sworn we were still by the sea
Looked at my phone
It hasn’t lit up in over a week
I breathe like a storm
I just can’t get to my feet
My feelings are torn
I’m happy you found your way
Tossed in the storm
Got lost in our mistake
Paper thin
And torn in the wind
Paper thin
Yet stronger than I’ve ever been
Paper thin
And blown in the wind
Paper thin
And healing from within
I look at the sky
The gray just reminds me of me
I stopped asking why
You forgave me by the skin of my teeth
So this is now
It’s how we’re gonna be
How we’re gonna be
Paper thin
Torn in the wind
Paper thin
Yet stronger than I’ve ever been
Paper thin
And blown in the wind
Paper Thin
And healing from within
Holding some words
I didn’t have to say it, talk to me
If I see you in town, please don’t mind if I look at the ground
I don’t mind if you can’t see you and me
Paper thin
And torn in the wind
Paper thin
Yet stronger than I’ve ever been
Paper thin
And blown in the wind
Paper Thin
And healing from within
Healing from within
Credits:
Music and Lyrics by John Bosco Riziki and Dave Hill Jr.
Produced by Dave Hill Jr.
Piano, percussion, and drum programming by Dave Hill Jr.
Mixed by Jonathan Plum at London Bridge Studios
Mastered by Matthew Wolk
Paper Thin will be released in July 2026
