Russ | How He Built An Indie Empire: Business, Burnout & Self-Belief
Russ is one of my favorite success stories in the music space because there was no viral hit for him. He kept dropping tracks every week and each one slowly got my attention and plays than the last.
"And The Writer Is" is a great platform if you're looking to hear interviews with songwriters about songwriting. Russ has to be one of their more interesting guest because he is songwiter in addition to being artist and producer. This makes his views and philosophies on songwriter pay pretty fascinating. Do to his multifaceted role in his own music as well as owning his masters, Russ actually learns a few things in this interview he didn't know -- such as why are songwriters doing writing camps and how are they being paid for it?
How Skylar Grey Became Eminem's Most Trusted Songwriter
Skylar sort of gives multiple perspectives on songwriting. Over the course of this interview she talks about being a songwriter both before and after gaining notoriety and the one-thing-leading-to-another aspect of eventually getting placement on a big record.
My favorite part was when she talks about how she had always wrote songs without a beat at first due to having more freedom with chord progressions, but the record "Stan" by Eminem and Dido inspired her to want to sing on rap records. This lead to her eventually writing songs to beats that would get sent to her by producers she knew.
She even goes in depth on misconceptions about writer's block the she had. An interesting thing I didn't know about her that she made very clear in the is interview was that writing for other artists was never her real interest in the beginning of her career and she kind of fell into writing songs for others (I didn't know she wrote "Gangsta" by Kehlani, probably my personal favorite Kehlani song. Skylar actually thought it was going to be her own song but she talks about how that ended up not happening). Her true desire is to be the vocalist on the records she writes going forward.
Get to Know Rosie Gault As She Talks “How to Write a Song”
Great introductory video from an indie songwriter on her songwriting process