Dr. Don did not set out to write a song about mental health challenges. He was just following the same creative rhythm that had defined much of his recent work, the alternating fast and slow, short and long, letting his piano guide the melody before layering in bass and a synthetic violin called La Pesque. Escape Reality was meant to be a quiet counterbalance to the upbeat, radio-ready Ruled by Time, his fastest song to date.
The title came to him after dozens of failed ideas. It felt right. Simple, grounded, a little evasive. He started recording on June 21. The lyrics came on June 30.
“I thought this was turning out pretty dark,” Dr. Don shared in an email.
A Bridge Toward Something Better
The song does not flinch from sadness. It opens with lines about life and pain, about how easy it is to pretend to be okay while quietly unraveling. But then something shifts. In the bridge, the narrator regains control. The lyrics do not preach or pander. They simply point to a different ending.
“Today, luck gonna change,” he sings. “No longer my way or the highway.”
It is a turn, written into the chords as if Dr. Don knows someone needs to hear it.
His drummer, Matt, brought his own grief to the track. After losing a close friend, Matt recorded the percussion with that memory in mind. There is pain in the rhythm if you listen for it.
And there is hope, too.
Beautiful Vibes Was the Answer He Needed Next
Still, Dr. Don could not leave his listeners, let alone himself, in that emotional fog. So, he pivoted. Beautiful Vibes is the kind of song that wraps itself around you like sunlight. Upbeat, melodic, and deeply human, it opens with a simple idea: kindness is free, and it matters more than most things.
“Cost nothing to do / Think beautiful vibes / Right over to you / I send beautiful vibes,” he sings in the chorus.
Where Escape Reality lingers in the ache of uncertainty, Beautiful Vibes offers clarity: community matters, friendship heals, music lifts.
The two songs were recorded just days apart in July 2025 and released together as a kind of emotional diptych. One track for the sleepless nights. One for the mornings that still feel possible.
A Musician Who Writes the Way He Lives
There is a rawness to Dr. Don’s work that makes it hard to look away. He does not write to impress. He writes to understand. His lyrics land somewhere between journal entries and late-night confessions. The effect is intimate, like receiving a voice note from someone who actually means it when they ask how you are doing.
He has said that he cried for the first time while writing down the lyrics to the song. And yet he still finished it. Still handed it over to Matt. Still released it to the world.
Dr. Don has no need for manufactured drama. His real life is more than enough. What he offers instead is presence. With over 115,000 subscribers on YouTube and a growing catalog of genre-crossing songs, he is quietly building something rare: music that resonates because it is unguarded.
From Studio to Soul Work
Behind every piano riff and baritone hook is someone trying to make sense of life, the only way he knows how. Some days it sounds like Feeling Lazy or I’ll Listen. Lately, it sounds like Escape Reality and Beautiful Vibes—two songs that could not be more different; released together because that is how emotions actually work.
One minute, you are struggling with mental health challenges. The next, you are smiling at a stranger. Life is never just one thing.
Dr. Don knows this. He does not just write about it. He lives it.
This story originally appeared on Hollywoodlife
