Are there songs that took you much longer than expected to either write or produce purely in the audio department?
sure. most songs produced OUTSIDE of the following 3 time frames: [feb 1, 2014 to dec 18, 2014], [aug 22, 2018 to nov 27, 2018], [feb 11, 2022 until ??], took drastically longer than expected in every department, and expanded mercilessly beyond any expectation