Those Were Mine

A songwriter who ghost-produces hits for other people's names slips into the last row of a sold-out arena to hear the group everyone is obsessed with — and freezes when the lead singer performs a bridge lyric lifted, word for word, from a demo she abandoned three years ago and never released to anyone but him. She corners him backstage expecting a thief and finds the boy she used to write songs with at 2 a.m. in a garage, now locked into a five-year contract that owns every melody he hums. He offers her a deal: write his next single with him in secret, under the label's nose, for one night a week, and she can finally hear her own words sung to eighty thousand people. Every session pulls them back toward what they were before the fame, but the label's producers are already circling, convinced their golden act has 'lost his edge' without knowing why — and threatening to replace him with a rival singer if the next single doesn't chart in three weeks.