Lily Zager Talks “Half Alive,” Writing From Real Life and the Moments That Stay With You

There is a very specific feeling at the center of Lily Zager’s latest single, “Half Alive.”

It is six in the morning. The streets are empty. She is driving home with someone she doesn’t want to leave yet, and for a few hours, it feels like they are the only two people awake.

Released June 30, “Half Alive” takes that fleeting moment and stretches it out a little longer. It is intimate without feeling closed off, nostalgic without fully living in the past, and built around something almost anyone can recognize: wanting more time with someone when you already know the moment cannot last.

For Lily, that story was entirely real.

“I actually wrote the song while I was seeing someone at the time periodically, and every time we were together, I never wanted it to end,” she tells Everyday Jams. With the person often away or on tour, their time together was limited. After he wrote and produced a song about her, Zager began writing one in return.

What began as something deeply personal eventually became a song she intentionally opened up to everyone else.

“I intentionally kept ‘Half Alive’ simple because I think so many people know what it feels like to want just a little more time with someone,” she says.

A six a.m. drive

Lily tends to write from moments rather than concepts.

“Half Alive” can be traced back to one in particular: an early morning drive when the streets were completely empty and the world around her seemed to disappear.

“It felt like we were the only two people in the world,” she remembers.

That is often where her songs begin. Not with a perfectly constructed hook or an idea of what a record should become, but with something she actually felt.

“Most of my songs are true stories that capture one particular moment or emotion,” Lily says. “Songwriting is like my personal diary.”

The earliest voice memo for the song was even called “6 a.m.” For a while, that was going to be the title. But as the song developed, Lily realized she wanted to leave more room for listeners to bring their own lives into it.

“I wanted it to be more broad so other people can also connect with it,” she says.

That decision is part of what makes “Half Alive” work. You do not need to know who was sitting beside her or exactly where they were going. The song is more interested in the strange suspension of time that happens when you are somewhere you desperately want to stay.

Finding the feeling in the production

If the lyrics tell you where Lily was, the production tells you how it felt.

Working alongside producers Jonah Cuddy and Jack Becker, and fellow songwriter Ryann Barnes, Lily approached the record with melodies and chords already living in her head. She would sing what she was imagining, allowing the pair to translate those ideas into instrumentation.

Then came the bridge.

Layered guitars enter and suddenly “Half Alive” feels wider, almost cinematic. For Lily, it was the moment the recording finally became the memory.

“When they added the layered guitars during the bridge and the instrumental section, that’s when I knew,” she says. “I feel like I’m reliving that moment again.”

She remembers hearing it and realizing, “Wow, we really captured that moment with this person.”

The song is made primarily with live instrumentation, recorded with Cuddy and Becker at their home studio in the Silver Lake/Echo Park area.

There is some Parachutes-era Coldplay woven into its DNA, too. Zager had been listening to “Yellow,” and remembers listening to the full Parachutes album with the person who inspired “Half Alive.” That atmosphere followed her into the studio.

But beneath the warmth is something sadder.

“I think ‘Half Alive’ is not very happy. It’s very melancholy,” Lily says. “The lyrics seem happy, but the music behind it is very melancholic.”

That contradiction is where the song really settles in. It captures the happiness of being completely present with someone alongside the quiet knowledge that you cannot freeze the night exactly where it is.

Lily hopes listeners find their own memories somewhere inside that tension.

“I’d love for them to step into their own memories or emotions and feel completely immersed in the song,” she says.

Writing what is true

There is no elaborate rule behind how much Lily is willing to reveal in a song.

“I just try to write what’s true,” she says. “Every song I write is based on something I’ve actually experienced.”

It is an approach that leaves her music inherently vulnerable, but Lily sees specificity as something that can bring a listener closer rather than push them away.

“Even the most personal or specific moments can end up connecting with someone else,” she says. “Whether they relate to the story itself or simply the emotion behind it, music has a way of making people feel understood.”

That understanding has shaped the way she sees herself as a songwriter.

Lily grew up singing and describes herself as a musical theater kid. During the pandemic, she began writing with her brother, eventually creating Blackout, a project released during her senior year of high school. A music production class pushed her further toward songwriting, but it was an interaction after performing the title track at UCLA that made the path feel real.

Girls approached her after the performance crying because they had connected with the song.

“That was definitely the biggest thing for me where I was like, I want to be a songwriter,” she remembers.

Looking back at those earlier songs now, she can see the person she was when she wrote them. Heartbreak that once felt consuming has become distant enough to turn into something else.

“I’m like, wow, I can create something beautiful out of something so awful at the time,” she says.

Her songwriting has shifted with her.

“I’ve definitely become much more confident in the musical side of songwriting since Blackout, because sometimes the melody and production can say just as much as the lyrics,” Lily says.

Rather than relying entirely on words to carry a story, she has become more interested in making the entire song hold the emotion.

“I feel like I’ve gotten better at using melodies to capture exactly what I was feeling in those moments.”

“Half Alive” feels like a natural result of that growth.

A little more time

When asked what the song says about where she is now, Lily connects “Half Alive” to her inner child.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t really think about time,” she says. “It kind of just exists, and the world feels brighter and more alive.”

She sees something similar in the way being around the right person can temporarily change your relationship with time. You get excited. You become giddy. For a little while, nothing outside of the moment feels particularly important.

Maybe that is why a song about knowing something cannot last never feels entirely sad.

“Half Alive” lives somewhere between holding on and letting go. Lily knows the drive ends. She knows relationships sometimes do too. But rather than trying to rewrite that ending, she preserves what existed before it.

And she is not finished with the song yet.

Lily is currently working on her first music video for “Half Alive,” while more music is beginning to take shape behind the scenes. She isn't revealing much about what comes next just yet, other than confirming there are more songs on the way.

For now, “Half Alive” feels like an introduction to where Lily Zager is headed: writing from real life, trusting the details and letting the music carry everything that words alone cannot.

Some moments end.

The good songs find a way to keep them around.

“Half Alive” by Lily Zager is out now.

Photography: Johnny Ortega