VTM archive
the music of Vanessa Rose Marcussen Meier 1987 · 2007
Outside her albums

Fifty-two singles.

Songs she finished outside the eight albums she put together. Some are short demos sketched on the way to something longer. Some are full singles she released by themselves on purpose. Press Play All and the page runs from top to bottom. Press play on any single and the rest follows from there.

Seven from one hard drive

Seven songs the albums missed.

Seven singles, all over four minutes, all from 2005 and 2006. Each one is built like an album track: an opening, a build, a release she clearly took her time with. None of them landed on a record. All seven came home in March 2026, when Amanda Miller mailed back a hard drive she'd kept for twenty years.

Familiar Feelings
4:49 · 2005
4:49
It's Not the End
4:37 · 2005
4:37
Make It Happen
4:33 · 2005
4:33
By the Words
4:23 · 2005
4:23
Peace Disturber
4:21 · 2005
4:21
My Deepest Sympathy
4:17 · 2005
4:17
Fall Apart
4:26 · 2006 · with lyrics
4:26
Days of the Past

Four minutes of looking back, at seventeen.

She wrote this at seventeen and gave it a title that already looks back. The build is unhurried; the resolve earns a sigh. Both feel right at once when you play it. Four minutes that take their time without feeling slow.

Days of the Past
4:08 · 2005
4:08
Three from 2007

A wide range, finished in one year.

Three singles dated 2007, all recovered in early 2026. They span the widest range she put into a single year: hardcore production on Run Away, careful vocal writing on No One Knows, and a one-pass home sketch on Turn to Me. Three angles on the same hand.

Run Away (Hardcore RMX)
4:56 · 2007 · with lyrics · hardcore production, soft lyric
4:56
No One Knows
4:13 · 2007 · with lyrics · Todd's voice on the breakdown
4:13
Turn to Me
1:38 · 2007 · finished in one pass · via John A. Fessel
1:38
"Let's go..."

A demo called Race to the Future.

She used to say it out loud, two words, an exhale of relief and energy mixed together. "Let's go." In 2004 she made a demo and called it Race to the Future. It runs three and a half minutes, longer than almost any of her demos, and feels closer to a finished piece than she ever bothered marking it.

Race to the Future (Demo)
3:24 · 2004 · the longest of her demos
3:24
The only non-English title

Hanabi: Japanese for "fireworks."

Of the eighty-six tracks in this archive, one has a non-English title. Hanabi is Japanese for fireworks, and the song lives up to the name: three minutes of instrumental that feels like the sky after they go off. She was seventeen when she made it. She liked anime. Past that the file does the talking.

Hanabi
3:06 · 2005 · instrumental
3:06
Demos and what they became

A thirty-second sketch and the song it became.

A demo, for her, was usually under a minute: an idea sketched fast on the way to something longer. Three pairs survived where both halves came back. Play them in order, and you can hear the moment between a thought and a full song.

Higher State (Demo)
the 33-second demo
0:33
A Higher State
and the finished song
1:57
Wonder Why (Demo)
the 37-second demo
0:37
Wonder Why
and the finished song
1:55
Can't Get Better (Demo)
the rough cut
1:32
Can't Get Better
and what it became
2:31
Songs she came back to

Four songs she recorded twice (or three times).

Some songs she returned to. Two demos of one piece, three takes of another, posted to forums or sent to friends and never wrapped up where she could send a finished file. What survived is the work in progress: same idea, different days, different rooms.

The Way (Demo)
The Way · 0:51 · 2004 · first demo
0:51
The Way (Demo 2)
The Way · 1:54 · 2004 · second take
1:54
Positive Side (Demo)
Positive Side · 1:07 · 2004
1:07
Positive Side (Demo 2)
Positive Side · 1:32 · 2004 · second take
1:32
Fade Away (Demo 2)
Fade Away · 1:42 · 2004
1:42
Fade Away (Blossom Remix Demo)
Fade Away · Blossom remix demo, 0:51 · 2004
0:51
Fade Away (Blossom Remix)
Fade Away · Blossom remix, 0:52 · 2004
0:52
How It Feels
How It Feels · 1:56 · 2004
1:56
Know How It Feels
Know How It Feels · 0:59 · sister piece
0:59
Echoes

Demos of songs we don't have the rest of.

Seven sketches, each the first half-minute or two of a song that never reached us in finished form. Title cards for absent records. They tell you what she was working on; the rest is silence.

Summer Nights (Demo)
1:30 · 2004
1:30
The One (Demo)
1:31 · 2004
1:31
To the Moon (Demo)
0:33 · 2004
0:33
On My Way Home (Demo)
0:43 · 2005
0:43
I Wish (Demo)
1:26 · 2006 · via John A. Fessel
1:26
I'll Dream Tonight (Demo)
1:23 · 2007
1:23
Unwriter's Block
0:36 · 2007 · via John A. Fessel
0:36
Working titles

Sketches she named like files.

Before a song had a name, it had a filename. Seven pieces here carry the names she typed into a save dialog and never replaced. project724. happytune12. 5atmospheric. Some are fragments; some are full songs in everything but the title.

project724
2:18 · 2004
2:18
The Dance of the Sword (Demo)
Dance of the Sword · 1:11
1:11
Project 694
1:02
1:02
happytune12
0:55
0:55
Christiantune
0:36 · 2004
0:36
Video Game Piece (Demo)
Video Game Piece · demo, 0:12 · 2005
0:12
Video Game Piece
Video Game Piece · 0:08 · 2005
0:08
Detours

Pure dance, pure instrumental.

Four tracks that aren't trying to be songs. Two are happy hardcore with the genre dialed loud, two are short instrumentals. Together they map the corners of her catalog: rooms she walked into and rarely stayed.

Ravecore
2:44 · happy hardcore
2:44
March of the Gabbers
1:40 · gabber
1:40
Underwater World
1:43 · instrumental
1:43
SunseTecho (Nellie on Violin)
0:51 · violin
0:51
Outside the album

An alt mix of an album song.

When the Rain Falls is on the album Vision. This is a different mix of it, kept as a separate file: longer, less polished, with the room around the vocal differently shaped. The kind of file you save because the change felt worth keeping.

When the Rain Falls (Alt)
3:49 · alt mix · album version on Vision
3:49
Have Faith

A song in two drafts, three days apart.

She posted Have Faith to the Bliss Corporation Forum in June 2004, the kind of work-in-progress you put up among friends to see what sticks. She tried two versions in three days. The lyric in the archive today restores both: the cleaner verse she settled on, and the original closing line she'd written first.

Have Faith
0:45 · 2004 · the surviving demo
0:45
Late short pieces

Four sketches from the same hand.

Four short pieces recovered from John A. Fessel in early 2026. None is over a minute and a half. Each is a complete idea, sketched fast and finished where it ended.

Ballad of An Angry Snowman
1:30
1:30
Track 15
1:06
1:06
Fairylike
0:44 · 2007
0:44
No Talent
0:42 · 2007
0:42
All fifty-two in one place

Want all fifty-two in one place?

The Listen view filters to singles in one tap. Sort by year, search by title, filter to demos or to songs with surviving lyrics.

Still searching

A few of her singles still haven't come home.

She mentioned songs in interviews and forum posts that don't show up in this list yet. If you have a CD, a hard drive, or an old file from the early 2000s with a title we haven't recovered, we'd love to hear from you.

See what we're looking for →