‘Goodbye Dreams’: How a forgotten demo from Arunachal found its voice in Seoul

There's something deliciously ironic about a song called "Goodbye Dreams" actually fulfilling someone's dreams. But that's exactly what happened when Takar Nabam, an indie artist from India's northeastern frontier, stumbled upon an old recording that would eventually bloom into an Indo-Korean collaboration neither artist saw coming.

It's sometime during the post-COVID haze, and Takar is doing what every musician does when they're procrastinating on new material—diving into old files. There, buried in the digital detritus of his hard drive, sits a demo so raw and vulnerable that his first reaction was, "Damn, I sounded so depressed here!"

The accidental archaeology of emotion

Most artistes would have quickly moved on to the next file. But Takar, whose musical DNA carries traces of everything from Metallica (he opened for them in 2011) to John Mayer's smooth jazz inflections, decided to subject his friends to this sonic time capsule. Their verdict? It was honest. Almost too honest.

"I felt it was a really raw track and a little too sad to put out," Takar admits, "but they liked it for its honesty." Sometimes the songs we're most reluctant to share are the ones that need to be heard most.

The track captures a claustrophobic intimacy; walls that confine not just physically but emotionally, where "the life that once was" feels like watching someone else's movie. But this wasn't meant to be a solo journey. Enter Donna, a Korean singer-songwriter who would stumble into this story in the most beautifully mundane way possible.

When Seoul meets Arunachal

The meeting happened at a songwriting camp in India in 2024, one of those industry gatherings where strangers become collaborators over shared chord progressions and late-night creative sessions. Donna heard "Goodbye Dreams" by chance on Takar's phone, and instead of politely nodding and moving on, she felt something deeper.

"To me, it was a song made purely for Takar — his story, his emotions," Donna reflects. "Rather than creating something new from scratch, I felt the identity within that demo was strong enough to be preserved and shared."

This wasn't about two artistes creating something commercially viable or culturally exotic. It was about recognising a truth that transcended borders: "We all have unfulfilled dreams gathering dust in the corners of our hearts".

The archaeology of longing

The lyrics of "Goodbye Dreams" read like fragments of a relationship autopsy, clinical yet tender, dissecting the slow death of intimacy. "I'm stuck within these walls / I have not been able to see / the life that once was" creates an immediate sense of imprisonment, but these aren't prison walls. They're the invisible barriers that grief builds around us, making even familiar spaces feel foreign.

The repetition of this opening verse functions like a mantra of helplessness, each iteration driving deeper into the speaker's isolation. When the song shifts to "Oh my sweet dreams / how far about are we now," it's not just addressing lost love, it's mourning the distance between who we were and who we've become.

The middle section offers the cruellest gift: memory as both comfort and torment. "Remember the time / all I could think about was you" before the inevitable turn: "But as time went by / I couldn't help but I'd kissed you goodbye." That grammatical awkwardness—"I'd kissed you goodbye"—feels intentional, like someone struggling to articulate the moment everything changed.

Visually, the accompanying video amplifies this emotional architecture. The camera moves like a soft evening breeze, slow, quiet, and heavy with unspoken weight. Most scenes unfold in dimly lit spaces, with warm shadows from lamps or streetlights casting gentle glows that feel more like memory than reality. The camera lingers on details that speak louder than dialogue: an unmade bed, fingers tracing nothing, faces caught mid-thought.

The colour palette leans into muted blues, greys, and browns, creating what feels like a sleepy, dream-left-behind aesthetic.

Then comes the moment that breaks the pattern: cherry blossoms falling in slow motion, soft pink petals creating a brief flash of something once beautiful but now distant. It's a visual metaphor that captures the song's central tension, holding on while letting go, beauty that exists precisely because it's ephemeral.

The art of musical archaeology

What makes "Goodbye Dreams" fascinating isn't just its cross-cultural collaboration; it's how it challenges our assumptions about creative timelines. In an industry obsessed with the next big thing, here were two artistes willing to excavate something old and make it breathe again.

Takar's journey from metal head to jazz-informed songwriter reads like a musical bildungsroman. His influences span from Charlie Parker to Mac DeMarco, creating what one critic called "a true representation of Indian Indie, both in his sheer musical prowess and how he retains his accent while singing in Nyishi dialect."

But it was his exposure to jazz that gave him the harmonic vocabulary to write songs like this. "Had it not been for my exposure to Jazz music, I probably wouldn't have appreciated Lofi Jazz, Neo soul music," he explains, before diving into the kind of chord theory that would make Berkeley graduates weep with joy, or terror.

The vulnerability of export-import business

When Donna entered the picture, she brought something Takar couldn't have planned for: "The vulnerability and the effortlessness in Donna's vocal delivery really uplifted the song for me." Her backing vocals became the emotional counterpoint that transformed his solitary lament into something more complex, a conversation between two voices processing the same universal ache.

The line that hit her hardest? "Oh my sweet dreams, how far about are we now", a lyric that captures the universal ache of distance, whether from our goals, our past selves, or the people we love.

The final polish came from Levi at Hafod Mastering in the UK, who gave the track its cohesive sonic identity. For Donna, coming from Korea's notoriously polished music industry, this collaborative approach represented a different kind of challenge. "K-pop is known globally for its highly produced and dynamic music," she notes, "but there's actually a whole spectrum within the Korean scene, including introspective songs like Takar's."

The technical alchemy

The song's journey from demo to finished track reveals the collaborative magic that happens behind the scenes. While Takar initially struggled with how his voice sounded in isolation, hearing it blend with Donna's backing vocals created something he hadn't anticipated. Andy Dollerson at DoSounds, who had previously worked on Takar's 'Red and Yellow' EP, brought his mixing expertise to bear on the track's subdued kick drums and atmospheric elements, adding what Takar describes as "synth magic" that made the song feel appropriately dreamy and laid-back.

The final polish came from Levi at Hafod Mastering in the UK, who gave the track its cohesive sonic identity. This international chain of collaboration, from Arunachal Pradesh to Seoul to the UK to Japan, mirrors the song's theme of connection across distance.

The unexpected destinations

What started as a forgotten demo evolved into something neither artiste anticipated. The collaboration took them from a home studio setup to shows in Japan, with Donna flying from Seoul to Tokyo for a music video shoot. Director Bernard Lykes, discovered through Fiverr, captured their story across Kyoto and Tokyo's intimate spaces, because sometimes the most meaningful art happens through the most ordinary channels.

"Not in my wildest imagination, I would have predicted this would have happened had I not tried to revisit and rework this old dormant idea," Takar muses. It's a reminder that our discarded drafts sometimes know things we don't.

Cultural identity in the age of collaboration

One of the most refreshing aspects of this partnership is how it avoids the trap of cultural tourism. When asked about maintaining his cultural identity in cross-border collaborations, Takar is pragmatic: "Sonically, it was not possible to do much here, since the very foundation of this song wasn't based on a cultural sort of a setting."

Instead, he found subtler ways to honour his roots, wearing a T-shirt with Nyishi tribal patterns in the music video, a quiet acknowledgement of where he comes from even as his music reaches beyond those boundaries.

The economics of artistic courage

Perhaps the most punk rock thing about "Goodbye Dreams" is how it existed outside market considerations. "Just because a song isn't trendy doesn't mean it's lacking," Donna observes. "Trends are just trends — not the goal."

In an industry that often treats cross-cultural collaboration as a marketing opportunity, these artists approached it as an act of mutual understanding. Takar's advice to young indie artists seeking similar partnerships is refreshingly direct: "You need to be respectful of the other person's different creative background, their experiences and hence, what they may bring to the song may not exactly be what you are looking for, maybe it's even more beautiful than what you had imagined."

The long arc of musical geography

The broader implications of this collaboration extend beyond one song. As Takar notes, "A lot of our people are crazy fans of K-Pop and K dramas," particularly in Northeast India. But this wasn't about capitalising on existing trends, it was about creating something that honoured both artistes' authentic voices.

Donna's perspective is equally telling: "The Indian market is incredibly attractive. And I believe when there's real potential, there's a chance things will come true." Not because of market research, but because of a genuine creative connection.

The courage to resurrect

"Goodbye Dreams" ultimately serves as a manifesto for artistic courage, the willingness to revisit our most vulnerable moments and find beauty in them. It's about trusting that our discarded drafts might have something to teach us, and that collaboration can happen in the most unexpected ways.

As Takar reflects, "Although this was a very old idea, the emotions behind the song felt very raw and true to me and my reality. We all have unfulfilled dreams, wishes, which we had to keep aside... It's relatable to me even today, and I believe everyone feels this way about something or the other, at every level."

In a world that often feels divided by borders and barriers, "Goodbye Dreams" suggests that our most universal experiences, like longing, hope, and the bittersweet nature of memory, can serve as bridges. Sometimes the songs we're most afraid to share are the ones that connect us most deeply.

And sometimes, just sometimes, saying goodbye to dreams is the first step toward making new ones come true.

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