And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 198: Stephan Moccio

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

This week’s guest is a prolific pianist, composer, songwriter, and producer. Hailing from Canada, this writer began his piano studies at the ripe age of three years old. Raised by an Italian-Canadian father and a French-Canadian mother, our guest grew up with various musical influences. After studying performance and classical piano and completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in composition and piano performance, our guest began his career as a session musician, in-house producer, arranger, and composer. Known for his captivating piano skills, this writer is a sought-after collaborator who has worked with stars such as Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman, Josh Groban, and Miley Cyrus. And The Writer Is…Stephan Moccio! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Follow our socials and share your music with the and the Writer is community. See you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Today's podcast is brought to you by Ben the writer is. Banzo.

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successful career in music. They're easy to understand and powerful analytics on over 10 million artists and 100 million tracks will help answer all of your questions from tracking your stats to discovering new talents. Throughout this season, we'll be showcasing chart metric data to reveal insights about our featured artists. Plans start as low as $10 a month. Learn more and get started today at chartmetric.com. Chart metric is proud to sponsor the upcoming season of And The Writer is. As the go-to source for up-to-date global social streaming and audience data for artists and music industry professionals, chart metric strives to ensure everyone can have a successful career in music.

They're easy to understand and powerful analytics on over 10 million artists and 100 million tracks will help answer all of your questions from tracking your stats to discovering new talents. Throughout this season, we'll be showcasing chart metric data to reveal insights about our featured artists. Plans start as low as $10 a month. Learn more and get started today at chartmetric.com. Welcome to End the Writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. This week's virtuoso is not the...

just an accomplished classical pianist. Nope. He's also, in his day job, written and produced multiple evergreens we all know and love. Sure, he began his journey at the ripe age of three years old and has since collaborated with divas like Celine Dionne, Sarah Brightman, Andrea Pachelli, and Josh Grobin. But what many of our listeners know him for is the definitive Miley Cyrus Smash and the classic weekend six-eight ballad. all the way from Canada, North America, this artist is committed to being a steward of the songwriting community. And the writer is my friend, Stefan Machio.

Wow. What's that, bro? It's a privilege to get an introduction by you, isn't it? I've been waiting for this one for like years. I mean, we've written together. So I feel like people should know full disclosure that I do this every time I see him. I give them. I don't even know where to start.

I mean, you know, I guess we should start from the beginning because I feel like I know you well enough that I could jump forward. And we should just kind of give a little bit of the groundwork and the pretend like I don't know you at all. You were born in Canada. Canada. I was born in a town called St. Catharines to south of Toronto to French, Canadian. mom and Italian father. How's your Italian? I understand it.

Enough to work with Andrebocelli. Oh, there you go. How's your French? My French is my mother tongue. It's excellent. It's Stefan. Just be French. So I'm French Canadian,

and I went to French school in Ontario. Got it. Mom's a piano player. I come from a family of pianists. I started piano lessons at the age of three, the conservatory. When you say family of pianists, How far back are we talking?

We're talking my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, and my brother, who's a music teacher as well. Who's the best? I am, of course. No, no, it's not even the question of that. With all jokes aside, it's a question of, I guess I'm the one who made it my life and who just devoted all the good, the bad, the ugly that comes with being a musician, a songwriter, the risk, the glory, and the pain, actually, a lot of the pain that comes with it and the sacrifice.

So it's, my brother's... Not to jump, but that's pretty, probably the most accurate description of what it is to be a songwriter. And a lot of times people are like, who, you know,

whose niece or nephew want to get in the music business, they're like, can they talk to you? I'm like, no, you should listen to this podcast because this will really give you the right idea of what it is to be a songwriter. When you say the pain of it and the glory of it what's the ratio of glory to pain in your life i think glory 10% if you're lucky

pain 90% because you know it's as cliche as it is passion is the only thing that's going to carry through this right and um i mean i don't need to tell you about it either but you know the pain's and everything from the sacrifice the time away from your family and the impact that does on your loved ones you know i'm a father as well and i'm re-evaluating what my career over the last 20 years and the decisions I've made, how that has impacted my children, you know, my family, in my situation. And then there's other pains that we don't discuss. It's the sort of white elephant in the room.

It's the financial pain, you know, the amount of risk that you take on yourself. I was a kid from Canada. I took a lot of risk to become a producer, to become a writer, to write that first Celine hit and demoing the song that it would sound like a Royals Royce for Celine when I had no money. you know, in reality, my, you know, my bank account when I was 27 years old when I wrote that. And so, and then of course the glory is glorious. It makes up for it. It's kind of like pregnancy.

You almost forget the pain, right? So that's why you do it over and over again. But if you're lucky enough, like us, to have had whatever, just some of those, as you call them evergreens, it keeps you going. It keeps it going through it. And, And just because you've had one or two or 10 or 20, it doesn't mean it becomes more difficult, right? It was David Foster who told me after my first big one, a new day with Celine. When I wrote that, he says,

congratulations, you did it now. You've got like a number one song globally. And he says, but honestly, the second one's the more difficult one to get. And he was right. Second one was for me, wrecking ball. There was 10-year gap in between. But in between all of that,

I had a lot going on in Canada, which we can talk about. But right now. When you, when, you know, you, you talk about the impact, the choice of being a musician has had on your family, your loved ones and yourself. Is there any, is there, I mean, this is a question I would end the thing with normally, but like, do you, are there regrets in that? Not regrets. And nor can you say you do anything differently because music is within all of us, all of us who choose this mitya, this path, right? It's cliché as it is.

You say we didn't choose it. It chose us. Now, what I have done things differently, you know, the amount of time I've devoted to some mega artists and given my life to them, I would certainly reevaluate that. Certainly, I drove my kids to school every day, but I wasn't there for pickup. And for many, many months, perhaps many years,

I wasn't there for bedtime either. Because, you know, you get to the studio by 9 a.m. after you drive the kids to school and you're there until midnight. It's the ratio of trying to get a hit song. And I never got in this business, number one, to write hits. I never gotten this business. to make money. That was a byproduct of what I did. The initial reason for me getting into music was

I was wanting to create art that would give some people some reprieve, some solace, a place to sort of escape to because that's what music did for me as a kid. My parents divorced. Music was steadfast. It was there. It was the crutch. So I just wrote music to give back to people for them to feel good to get lost in to sort of just lose and wall of their own emotions with with the fact that somebody else may be feeling the same way that you are yeah it's weird there's a how dad's view providing for their family and some view it as providing for their family as time you know spent with the family and some view it as like funding the family and that you know all those it's really interesting like the idea of how you

view your role in the family, how traditional, you know, it should be. I've got a lot to say on just that alone. I mean, that's a really great point. I mean, we should know it's our duty, our spiritual duty as writers, that our role as a father, it's both. It's financial and emotional, but if you have to choose one, it would be emotional. I mean, songs are built on. And I know that. I certainly make every minute, every moment count with my kids now. As they're 18 and 13. And I'm like, where the fuck did it all go? You know, what happened at the time?

And, you know, just yesterday I moved here with a young family. And six days into moving here, Recking Ball was the biggest song in the world. Our furniture hadn't arrived yet from Canada. And then I was doing what we all do. And I was in every writer's room and I was burning out within six months. And I said, this is not who I am. I don't, I mean, I'm prolific, but I don't like to be prolific on a, like a speed dating, in a speed dating kind of way.

And because, you know, as I look back now, I'm old enough, I'm 51. I could look back and go, okay, every big hit song that I've been a part of, it was written when I didn't want to even show up to the writer's room. It was just written from a moment of cathartic, just, okay, I'll go in. You know, we want you to meet this guy called Abel Tesfe. Okay, you know, it was a Friday night. I hadn't had a Friday night with my kids.

I said, I'll spend the Friday night with Abel. And the wrecking ball was the same thing. I was living in Canada, and I had left on Thursday to come back to Toronto for an Olympic event that I was involved with with the music. And my former publisher, my former publisher, Jim, Valuato, it's someone. He says, listen, I want to get you in the room with these two people to write a song for Beyonce and a guy called Sasha Scarbeck and Maureen MacDonald. And they wanted me back in that room on Monday. I was like, fuck, man, I got to get back on a plane. I said, I'll do it. Get back on the

plane that day ends up changing your life. But you don't plan for these things. You know, I'm not the kind of guy who goes in and says, okay, we're going to write the number one song today. It does, for me, doesn't work that way. I just, you know, I just, you know, as they say, just be prepared for it, open to it. And if it's in the air that day and if the plan is in God's plan to make it happen, then it happens. You can only, you know, to kind of go in there, you know, I was listening to you and Noah Khan talk recently.

And Noah said something really incredible. He said he didn't want the pressure of writing with those hit writers. and that really resonated for me because you mentioned as well this writer in particular who was writing at the mercy of a huge artist and I've worked with clearly some huge artists and there was one in particular as well

who had promised me next single was going to be coming out to the world there was a million point two you know it was a million dollar video attached to it big piece of business that I had spent four months on this one song I was a producer and I was a co-writer on this track. And for personal reasons, this massive artist decided to forego on this single.

And that's when I said, I can't, I can't do it anymore. I can't live in this volatile world. I was, when I got the call, I was cutting strings for Celendian in London in 2018. Not her last big album, Courage that you were on as well. And I said, it's okay. You know, I'm in London, and I had that cathartic moment where BBC 3 was playing Bon Williams, a classical piece of music. I came back to my room that day after the session, and I started crying.

I said, what the fuck am I doing in L.A.? With this big, shiny city, I said, I never got into music to make money. But when you become a father and you live in as expensive city as L.A., you have to sort of fund it somehow, right? Because I had studio, I had staff. I had a ginorma studio in Santa Monica at the time. So I'm going to return back to my roots and do solo piano music. And that was for me where everything changed in the best way possible.

And I just kind of regain control of my art, regain control of who I was as a person. I didn't feel like I was in service anymore to anybody. Listen, there's nothing more exciting than writing an incredible song with writers. And I still do it, but I just don't go in there with the sort of same agenda. I don't put myself in the situation where I'm having to write four or five days a week. Yeah, it's a weird choice when the writers like the maxes of the world in pop and Ashley Gourley and Country and who seem to have the ability to, they're songwriters, they're so focused on being songwriters, they've no desire to be artists.

They do both have tremendous publishing companies and they're great mentors to their to their staff, to their people. Their focus is so admirable to me because it's not, it's just not how I work. Like, I want to do that so bad. I want to know, I want to think that I could go and do 20, 30, 40 years of going into a session, doing the thing. but somewhere in the okay now that I've had now that I've run the bell a couple times here you know let's see if I can write a musical nobody like let's see what the podcast thing is let's see what let's see what like I'm so interested in exploring the other stuff that some of these writers that and producers who are just laser focused on writing smashes for other people defining their careers over and over again it's so admirable.

and it's so not actually who I am, no matter how much I want to do that. This is not really me. And I look at, you know, this is your story and not mine, but I see some similarities. And you know, you've run the bell a few times,

but like your heart is also in, it's not to say you abandon the ability to write for other people or with other people, but your heart is really in something that's the rest of the pop community isn't even looking at. Correct.

like the instrumental, you know, piano stuff. And it's like you, you have to kind of keep your head down and be like, who am I really? What serves my soul? You know, do you feel fulfilled by by focusing a good amount of your energy on, you know, the classical stuff instead of the writing for others? God. I was I am I was passionate to come and speak with you because I know that my my trajectory over the last say two decades two and a half decades is is unique. I moved here to LA when I was 40 years old 39 turning 40 with with wrecking ball having had already hit song but in between all of that I had just finished writing the Olympic theme for Vancouver for you know

the rest of the world probably doesn't know, but in Canada, it was its national treasure. It became, you know, the evergreen, you know, the most famous piece of music at that time. And I had spent two and a half years carving out 257 variations based on the theme and a song for the winter games. And that was, and I came here with the intention of becoming more or less a film composer because I do, I did and I do a lot of film compositions still for television, especially back in Canada. I do the hockey theme, I do the baseball theme, the news theme, and all that stuff. Then there's elements that are important

to sort of talk about and how that funded. See, people would come to my studio in Santa Monica and say, wow, fuck, he's made it. But they didn't realize that it wasn't just the hit songs that was funding

that fancy, shiny building. It was my television music. And, you know, there's a lot of money to be made in film and television. It's almost a dirty little secret with composers. They just don't like to share it.

and tell people about it because once you know you've got a theme that airs. I do the baseball theme for the Blue Jays, for example, and that airs 25, 35 times a day. And you don't want your friend taking it from you. But that was funding in a lot of ways, the experiment that I was, why I was able to write, I want to believe that the sort of songs that I'm involved with are different. You mentioned earned it. It was a ballad, a ballad written for at the time, it's still at the time, one of the biggest artists of all time for the weekend.

And somehow we made it work and we made it cool. And that came from a lot of trial and error. I mean, when Abel and I write together, I mean, the amount of iterations on a song are, we're insane, especially on that first album, Beauty Behind the Madness. You know, real life is now the big song on that album. And the amount of versions of that song,

in many ways only to come back to the beginning part of it. But I digress. I just, I think you just have to follow your heart. You know, that sounds cliche and what does that mean? It's, you kind of know, you have a barometer. Everybody has an instinct and a, you know, a feeling of when they're doing something that fulfills them or not. And you just become better with time to listening to that voice.

And hopefully you have the courage to sort of react accordingly. Let's go back a little bit because I know we jumped ahead partly I knew this is going to happen just because I know you and I have other questions that are about the contemporary stuff going on. But, you know, your family does music. You were about to talk about your brother. But, you know, skipping forward, being a three-year-old who can play piano to being somebody at 27 who has its first notable song. Right. Give me like, what's the journey from three years old to that? Thank you.

Conservatory classical. I went, got my degree at University of Western Ontario in performance and composition. Who's your favorite, who's your favorite classical composer? Do you like, do you like, are you a, you know, I'm an impressionist. You're an impressionist. In many ways, but there's a composer. So like more debut. or are you more like a Sassikovic maybe like that's a little bit after that right

I love Ravel as well it's just the voicing's a lot of Debussy excuse me but voicing end up in my piano playing yeah of course I studied a lot of Debussy John Paul Bracey my teacher had studied with Nadia Boulanger who taught also Quincy Jones and a lot of people so I had like learned the entire two books of preludes by you know there's a lot of jazz and Debussy. There's a lot of, and in Cetee, and it's, and I found a lot of those voicings ended up in, and earned it, for example, with the weekend. But my favorite composer, if I had to make a, you know, there's a composer called Ralph von Williams, but pronounced Ray von Williams. He's English. And he's, he was, you know, alive 100 years ago, but he still sounds very modern today,

for example. So today's modern living composers, such as, say, Alexandra Desplat or Thomas Newman, who are composing for film are highly influenced by Rayvon Williams. And, but listen, I, I had the classical upbringing, a very supportive family when he came to music. And I went to school, got a degree, got a scholarship to Berkeley, jazz school in Boston, declined it because I got signed to Sony at a young age, Sony Music Canada as a producer immediately. I was like 22 years old, 21, staff producer. And then that three to four year period in Toronto, I was studying with Yucca Sarastasdi, who's the conductor of the Toronto Symphony. I was like sneaking into the Toronto Symphony rehearsals with my scores of Beethoven and Von Williams.

And just it was a good education because I ended up becoming a string arranger for a lot of hits when budgets were still a thing back in the day. And meanwhile, this was an important part of my upbringing. I played for almost three years in a row at the four seasons. The head four seasons in Toronto, because that's where the four seasons is from, from Toronto. And during the film festival, I was like the jazz piano player,

the lounge guy, and I had to learn the entire American songbook. So that's where I really cut my teeth into learning, you know, Berlin, Gershwin, all the greats, you know, it's, and all those great songs.

And I would play them, you know, you know, every night for almost three years in a row, six days a week between five and eight and then eventually i had my crack my first hit in canada um well there's a big jump there i mean okay being somebody who can uh earn a living from playing live piano in a hotel and then uh writing songs on the side even if you had that production deal or whatever you had with Sony, Canada, what were you at night after the performing? You were going to sessions. Correct.

And who was booking your sessions? Live and breathed it. So Sony was booking my sessions. I was signed, you know, they recognized the talent at an early age. They just said, dude's got talent. We'd believe in them. And that was the time where they were just kind of giving, you know, little publishing deals a handshake in $15,000 or $20,000 cash.

and I would be spending it on my gear. I'd say it would be going right to gear. There's a lot of, again, there's these details that were so pivotal. I had written a very important show theme, a talk show theme back in the late 90s for Camilla Scott on our CTV, which is our sort of privatized network like NBC.

And again, I'm in my early 20s, Ross. And that combined with gigging at nighttime and eventually having it, handful of number one Canadian hits, which don't generate a lot of money, but was giving me enough money to sort of quit the four seasons, even though it was a really cool thing and then fully immerse and soak myself like from nine to midnight every night in the studio and produce and produce and produce records at Sony at their studio there. The 90s and 2000s produce some of the world's best.

The 90s, 2000s, Canada, produces the, probably the two top diva male and female with like Josh and Alas, Alanis, Alanis, Sarah McLaughlin, later, Bieber, weekend. You know, obviously there's a list of producers too, but the list just seems to be, you know, most recently like the Sean Mendez is of the world. but like Canada seems to produce such iconic artists. And I asked this question to other Canadians who've been on this podcast where the size of Canada population-wise is about the size of California. Correct. The impact Canadian artists at the top seem to have on the world is so disproportionate to the population.

How much of that is cultural? How much of that is. government, how much of that is, you know. Geographics. And geographics as well. When I say geographics, we're looking down our friendly neighbor down south, the U.S. and the almighty U.S. My theory, and I think I've heard even Michael say this on your show at some point,

something to the effect that there's, Canadians aren't harder working per se, but we're just, our work ethic in order to become great and to become excellent, I believe that, you know, we have to work just harder at it. I, you know, I can use examples in just moving here, the immigration alone, just the paperwork, moving a family, moving my publishing company from Canada to a U.S. Corp. And the amount of energy, the finances that that takes. So when you are having to make those laser-sharp decisions, you know exactly what you're

after, the bull's-eye. So Beber, Bubele, you named them all, myself, you know, you got Drake, you've got, you've got Abel. We know what we want and we know that America can help us. So we come here and we mean business. When you get your, you know, you're having a TV theme and paying your bills by doing, still versions, I don't know what the themes sound like, full disclosure,

but, you know, the, still in the world of piano music coming from a family that plays piano, I had a meeting yesterday with somebody who was conflating integrity

and pop music. They feel like pop means that you don't have integrity in a weird sort of way. And I think my music theory teacher and my music history teacher when I was in studying classical in college, those people really look down on pop music. They really didn't think of the integrity of pop composition. Shifting to something like Celine is a good gray area between, you know, classical and pop. pop.

But did your family approve of the music choices? Absolutely. Yeah. I think, but... Did you approve of your own music choices along the way, or did you feel like you were selling out? A few times I think I was selling out. Okay.

Yeah. The early days, okay, I talked about the themes. I talked about the importance of how, if I didn't have those, I couldn't buy the equipment that would allow me to become a producer. Do you know what I'm saying? So are those themes going to go down in history? probably not, but I have probably four or five of them that will. With Canadian culture and they'll remember them forever,

the hockey theme as well being one of them. But the constant battle between and the shunning of pop music not being as important as classical music is complete utter bullshit because I live in both worlds. I grew up as a classical musician first. And if you take a well, well, well-constructed production and pop song, if it's done well, let's just use Max Martin, for example, who builds incredible cars when it comes to this. There should be as much respect paid to the compositional, the architecture, the engineering of that track as a piece of classical music.

And then this opens up a whole can of worms that we don't have time to get into today. But what makes a great piece of classical music as well? We don't know. We won't know probably for 100 years after I die, after we all die, if it's, if it's, sustainable if it worked because only the great ones last. And there's a reason why they do is because they're beautifully built and they're beautiful, they're beautifully built melodically, harmonically, just everything kind of works. I, you know, can only speak from my experience and why I sort of took a sabbatical, if you will. I was just being a classical musician,

I also love being off the grid, off the click and, you know, doing solo. piano music is just me in a room by myself. Just having a conversation with my piano. Therefore, it almost becomes this very visceral, cathartic conversation and therapy session between myself on the piano. And in many ways, that helps heal me with my own pain. Whatever, we all have. You were saying your parents got divorced. Is that the root of your childhood pain? I would say. So it's not like, you know, it's not like I've had tragedy happen. It's just that, I think like a lot of us songwriters were empaths were very emotional people. And I just, they're just, yeah, it really kind of like rattled me at that time.

How old are you, 14, 15? Is that when you, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, is that, what sparked the therapy sessions with your piano? Yes. I mean, I was already improvising and playing long hours at the time. I would say, if anything, too, I would put the head. headphones on and air, air drum to the couch, to everything from Ozzy, Osbourne, to Judas Priest, to the, you know, to the cars, to the big pop acts of the 80s. But I think when a lot of by osmosis,

a lot of my lessons as a producer were learned as well by listening very carefully to what was going on. I mean, Mutt Lang was just starting at that time. And what was going on with those pop records and how they were built because I was listening to it under the microscope of those headphones losing myself from perhaps just not wanting to just deal with the sadness. Yeah. I mean, Muttling and our, you know,

Shania. It's great interview, by the way. Yeah, thank you. That's, what a legend. You know, you have this,

you have this what looks like a lull in a discography. And when I talked to, I remember I was talking to Ali Willis about, former guest and the late Allie Willis about hits and she was like just don't ever ask people about their hits ask about the time between their hits.

It's like the hit comes out and everyone's like wow you're killing it. You're like no, you don't understand. It was the five years I was writing when no one was looking at. I wrote this on this on this music. This album, this, you know, this TV theme, this whatever you're writing.

All happens when nobody's looking. You know? But you end up with, you know, a huge song with the Celine Dionne. And when you're 27, you've been with Sony at that point for five years. You then have, you don't move to Universal for another 10 years about. Correct. You know, what happens in the nine years of, or whatever it was, seven years from the Celine's song to like, I'm going to sign a worldwide publishing deal.

What are you doing with your time? what was your personal life like? What are you doing? Great question. So I've got on a work, that's when I wrote the Olympic theme. That was a big part of my life, big chapter. Perhaps still my proudest iconic moment of music, bigger than the other songs, if you will.

And I was making money. So I was now finally able to sort of travel the world. I had been working and busting my ass off up until that point, you know, for 10 years to get that. first hit. I became a father for the first time in 2005 after Celine. And I decided to, back then with Universal Music Canada, everyone was asking me what's a good chill record. You know, Spotify really wasn't a thing yet in streaming, but they were just wanting music to chill to and cook to. And I said, I can't really think of one other than like Bill Evans,

but it's still, I love Bill Evans, I love Oscar Peterson, but it's just sometimes a little too complex for the average person. So I'm going to do one. I'm going to do the record that I want to do. So I had the time. I had the resources. I had the studio and the piano. And I did one in Toronto and it blew up.

It blew up, it became the biggest instrumental album. And I started touring the country and I was on the pop charts with a classical or contemporary classical record up there, you know, ahead of, at the time, Drake and Bieber back in the day on iTunes, when every time, you know, there was a need for this kind of music. So I did two of those albums, which did so well,

and they just kind of filled me up on a creative level, an artistic level. And then the grass is always greener, right? So when you're doing one thing, you want to do the other thing. It's often the case as just creatives in general. I said I wanted to kind of get back into writing. And I was,

I knew that if I wanted to go big, I had to, got to be careful in how I say this. Because I, you know, some of my favorite publishers in the world are still my Canadian publishers. But I knew that they couldn't do anything because they were still governed by the head office here in the U.S. So I had to sign. I had to get out of my Canadian deal or let it run through and not renew.

And then sign with, you know, Evan Lamberg eventually. and at UMPG. Love Evan. We all love Evan. Yeah, shout out of Evan. We all love Evan. And it was just, it was a real tough decision for me because I become really close with the people I work with. And, you know, Dave Colico, who's a dear friend who runs the Canadian office back there, Sony Publishing, he gave me my first breaks.

He was the first guy who believed in me and just put it all in the line. But there's oftentimes an alignment that you have to have. You know, sometimes it's like having a good manager as well who has the connections, who can put you in those rooms, those necessary rooms that will just get you a little closer to having success. Man, I'm sure from a Canadian that I guarantee that that's true. But most of the relationships I've had that have turned into. commercial success or 50% of them at least nobody in the room when we first started writing had

the you know the commercial success like we all correct made made that room what it was and I think a lot of times there's this idea that man if I was in those rooms I would write hits and the reality is in LA currently at this time there's probably about a hundred rooms of people that have no hits that are just Ferraris. 100%. That could totally write a smash today. And they're itching to do it. And they're sitting there being,

man, if I was in that room with Max Martin, you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like, that's that room. Your room is also powerful. I believe exactly what you're saying that those rooms are more times than not more powerful, the hungry ones, the early ones.

And I mean, listen, I mean, I have to, I'll bring it back to Sasha and Mo and I. I mean, Sasha and I had already a hit. You know, Sasha had co-written beautiful with James Blunt as well. And Moe was just so cool. It's just a cool artist. But we didn't try, even though we were put in the room to write for Beyonce that day, we forgot about that within the first two seconds.

It's just, let's write a song. And what I do, though. Imagine that song. It's funny because you tell a lot of times, people don't know what to write for i usually say you know just write for riana she's not going to cut the song anyway so like aim for it and at least your like cool factor will be up a level you know because you're like well i can't you know so there's something in the aiming for bianca that creates wrecking ball and it's like i'm sure that bianca never heard it you know she would have fucking

killed it yeah we know but you aim you even if you forget about it in the room going in there at least opening the door, if this room today, we're going to write a Beyonce hit, well, at least you know that the competition are the best songwriters in the world. So you aim for something better than,

I don't know, what should we write today? It's just sort of like us against ourselves. Okay, so I get that. And there's a lot of truth to what you're saying. But I'll go back to Recky Ball within the first five minutes.

And I know that Mo's been on the show as well. And I don't know exactly how she described her story, but let me at least give you the version that, you know, I was late to the session by five, ten minutes in session. Heard, I'd already started fiddle around some stuff. But Mo and forgive me, I think I'm allowed to say this, she was supposed to get married that week, right? And so she was, she was emotionally like there and frail. But she called off her wedding with all the courage because she just knew it wasn't the right thing to do. and you quickly had to put everything aside and kind of be there for this person that you don't even know who was just kind of grieving this massive thing.

So in many ways, it gifted us with that frailty, that fragility, that thing that became wrecking ball. It's also what makes Mozilla so great is that I think she comes in with her heart on her sleeve anyway. She does. And she knows how to tap into something. something that she's willing to be vulnerable and she's willing to bring a room into something deeper than, you know, that she's just, she's, she's like that in real life. She's like,

there's no, she's not a very surface person. So no, no, no. And that that's so great to be able to be in a room of somebody who's opens up, you know, like that. Yeah, within five minutes, we're like, we're like, we're right to it. We, we feel like we've known each other forever. And that, that is Mo. And that's certainly one of her many gifts. but she knows how to get in there and get to the heart of it immediately. The, you know, obviously the success of that song is massive and, you know, and we've talked about it before, but earned it's interesting because having been involved in film composition and television, it becomes essentially one of the themes of 50 Shades of Grey.

And there aren't that many soundtracks, you know, that produce multiple hits. Right. you know in the last few years maybe there's barbies and there's you know the uh obviously like the fast and furious franchise always has has a bunch of hits and but to be part of a soundtrack there's to me sometimes when those things happen i feel like oh man this is sort of the death of this song like i hope it happens but like a lot of big promises with soundtracks but it's so rare for people to follow through and 50 Shades of Gray just ends up being the soundtrack to be on with the artist to be with, you know?

It was, and I had two songs on that album, which was... What was the other one? Skylar Gray, I knew you. Oh, I didn't... Okay, right, right, right, right. So, I mean, the wild story with that, I don't know, maybe it's worth saying, but just quickly, Recky Ball had happened, and still within that same year, Skyler and I wrote this great song, Mike Knoblock, who all know from Universal Pictures, falls in love with it. And he champions

that. It was the end credit song. So I got to know Sam Taylor Johnson through the process. And more importantly, Dana Sano, the music supervisor. She was a huge, huge element in the success of that soundtrack. She just knows music. She has great taste. And then they changed the scene of 50 Shades. And I remember getting the call to write, Sam says, can you come here? I was just, I just moved to LA and we got it I want to show you about we want an R&B song and we need to be sung from a male perspective luckily I had just gotten in the room with Abel and I had you know we had the germ we hadn't really written earned it but we had this um da da and they basically just said just go finish that song read it watch the movie write to picture and the rest is history but and I ended up

so I ended up getting the two end credit songs and that movie, which was just surreal for me. And, and, and it was an exciting time because, I mean, we got the nomination for the Academy Award. And, um, um, everybody wanted to be on that soundtrack. And, but again, I, I, I, I came up. It was just an accident and how it happened. It just, it wasn't like I was like, yeah, you got to be. You want to plan it. It wasn't planned. I mean, you know, I wanted to write with Skyler. I'm a huge fan with Skyler. We wrote this song. And, And it just so happened that Mike loved it and it was great. And, and then with Abel, it just the timing, as we say, was all there.

And, and Abel also ended up having two songs on that soundtrack. The weekend and had two and Stefan Machio had two. Chart metric is proud to sponsor the upcoming season of And The Writer is. As the go-to source for up-to-date global social streaming and audience data for artists, and music industry professionals, chart metric strives to ensure everyone can have a successful career in music. They're easy to understand and powerful analytics on over 10 million artists and 100 million tracks will help answer all of your questions from tracking your stats to discovering new talents. Throughout this season, we'll be showcasing chart metric data to reveal insights about our featured artists.

plans start as low as $10 a month. Learn more and get started today at chartmetric.com. Not to be cryptic about other people on this podcast again, but I was talking to one recently who was saying that, you know, they release like, they end up on five songs in a year, three to five songs in a year. And this person's catalog sold for a gazillion dollars, because in those three to five songs are just amazing songs.

It's not to say they don't write a lot, but those are, he was talking about, you know, there are these writers who seem to do full albums, which I always think is, which sounds amazing. They just keep doing these full albums,

full albums, full albums with these artists. And in that are hits. Right. And then, but in that our, also eight album tracks here, eight album tracks there, but they seem to be really prolific in writing it, just in releasing a shitload of songs. And then there's some that have, in their,

you know, in their discography, they have the Evergreens, but they don't have like the, you know, obviously you have a lot of songs released with you as an artist, but when it comes to some of these outside songs, it's like there's a missile. You know, it's like your job is to locate the single that needs to be there and execute that. Do you envy the people who do more of the albums? Are you happy that you're not in that, that you're not spending, you know, three, four months with this artist,

three, four months with that artist, three, four months with that artist, instead of your focus on this song at a time. Yeah. And maybe we can't all curate our, discography. So it's like, we, well, we know we can't fully. Well, we can kind of set some boundaries and some goalposts that help at least as get closer to where we want to be. And, and, you know, just that requires, again, some really big decisions and in career choices and stuff like that.

Now, I used to envy, you know, just Tranter's great friend of ours, right? So it's like, you know, I wanted always to be the guy who just would write five days a week and show up and his job would be done at the end of the night. And, you know, because the producers always left. with the pieces and putting the puzzle together. So, for example, if you get together with a, say, Justin, Justin's talented, fast, great and quick. And then nine times out of ten, my demos end up becoming the record anyhow. So whether I end up becoming the quote-unquote producer or I end up becoming the real producer,

the label will end up purchasing the tracks for me. But I had to put in the time. And sometimes, sometimes it's fast. Sometimes the tracks end up getting done in three to five days. there's many times though where I end up spending north of a month or two months on it and and just kind of pleasing everybody and a lot of times as we discussed before those can get dumped as fast as they can you know with we've worked the one project we worked on it we used I remember you spending so much time on on the masters for that and I love that song and yeah but I just I just I just

I just remember feeling like this guy's dedication is unmatched in how far you were going for these records for, you know, a talented and at the time up-and-coming artists, but not, it wasn't working with the weekend. It wasn't, it wasn't, like there was no guarantee. And it's hard to spend that much time on an artist that has no track record. I think that's when I said, I had to draw the line for myself at that point. I had gone through a couple of those artists where I really believed in them. And I still believe to this day they are as talented, as gifted and as worthy of being out there. But sometimes it's a plethora of things. Like I said, it could be the attitude.

It could be that the artist doesn't have enough grit and not, you know, stamina or it's not even that. Maybe the artist has it all going on, but just literally the timing of everything and having every break happen. but when you're the producer and you're the one at the mercy and age plays in a factor too right Ross like your father now as well I was M and was really in the prime of being a father to young children and just kind of questioning and saying what part of this is worth it and what part of this isn't worth it my question is like why why are you why are you slash we so stupid as to being like, you know what? I want to see, I want to see what else is out there. What, what, and of all things, something that isn't quote, like, cool. It's not like, all the kids

that are listening to Miley and to the weekend. Why are you doing this? I, I'm like, I'm a fucking dinosaur, right? It's just like, even though I'm a young person at heart, I've had, remember the career, I have to remind you, I had that a successful career as an instrumentalist in Canada, but what does that mean? It meant I got to tour and pack some, you know, some really cool venues and stuff like that. What size venues do you play? A thousand-ish. In Canada? In Canada, but like now, like I'm off to, like I said, Australia and Germany and France soon enough and back to Canada. No more, it's always in between 800 to 1500 to roughly right now. And when you play in Australia, Are you playing multiple cities in Australia or is it?

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. And then when you're in Germany, you're playing four or five cities as well. And when you're in Germany, do you go outside of Germany? Do you go to, you know, France? Do you go to, you know, Switzerland? Yeah. Switch on I want to do. It's not scheduled yet, but we've got France in January and February.

And who's we? Well, I say, I mean, myself, my management. I mean, okay, let's get back to the conversation about, Okay, so, you know, I poured my heart for almost a decade here in LA, right? I ran, I had that great run. And maybe if I was hypercritical of why I left and what maybe didn't work for me in the pop thing. And it doesn't, it's, I'm just, I take my time when it comes to production. Maybe I'm too slow.

I'm a big producer in terms of like, so there's a lot of neurons going up there and and well thought out parts and stuff like that. but earned it though ironically was by virtue of time we had to lock the picture was produced mixed in in in in less than six days and sometimes that helps for a guy like me you know in terms of like paralysis analysis type of thing yeah just like just they're setting the boundaries that force you to exactly just trusting my gut and you don't you don't have times for like second third you know like takes and decision process you just kind of go on your first ethereal and that that helps someone like me but that's ironically how my piano music is.

So, but now it's become the fourth biggest genre in the world. We've got hip-hop, pop, country, and solo piano. And you've got guys like Aynaudi, Ludovico Inaudi, Max Richter, who are streaming insane numbers. Max, we love Max. And I'm taking, this is 2016. And you got to remember, I'm signed to Universal Music Publishing. And I happen to know the world of DECA in the UK and David

Joseph who runs the office there in the UK. And David had approached me in 2016. He says, listen, man. He says, whenever you're ready, he goes, I'm such a fan of your piano music. He goes, we've got guys like Max Richter. And I now hear her like 10, 15 years older than you. And they're like rock stars in this lane. And this is this genre is just starting to break with the playlists that are chill, study playlist that are just. And all of a sudden, it's becoming, quietly becoming cool thing, this genre of music. With, you know, the young kids, the people who are in colleges and universities who are needing this introspective kind of music to study to. And when I took the leap, it was really stark,

Ross. It was like 2018, like I said, I was in that hotel room. I came back that Christmas, purchased and got a, you know, a really custom, beautiful custom built Yamaha felted piano, because that's the thing, the quiet sound on the felt. I had Yamaha built me one. We built up a specific piece of custom felt. I get mine to sound really soft. And I said to my engineer Jay and Kyle and both guys, I said, guys, we're turning it around right now. I said, we're going, I'm taking solo. I just finished Celine's album. I said, I've got a minute here.

I don't have anything on my plate that I had kind of finished everything, my responsibilities in the pop world. So let's give this a shot. And I created this album, this first album, Tales of Solace, where I just locked myself in the room for five, six weeks, recorded whatever, 30, 30 hours of music, edited down to, 53 minutes worth. And I signed the deal with David Joseph in the UK, which Deca, which is part of the UMG family. It's a universal thing. So I signed a global deal, a classical deal. And my label mates happen to be Max Richter. And I know the two other bigger guys in this, this category. And we draw up my album and I purposely decide not to put my face on it. They're like, put your face on. I'm like, No, no, no. I said, I don't want it to be about the looks. I don't want this to be popified.

It's not about that. It's got to be about the music and what, and this music has to be how it's interpreted for people. So it's a picture of an album of a piano in a solo, a quarantine room. And this is February 2020. My album comes out, my first single fracture comes out literally in March. The world, the pandemic, shuts down. Everyone thinks it's the pandemic album. So, but I don't know if you would agree, but I would agree that's also when all the great, the sort of younger generation, the Lizzie McAlpines, the Gracie Abrams, the singer-songwriter sort of to evolve through COVID. And my piano music was the thing because I recorded a phenomenally, a huge amount of music during those 18 months of shutdown, the world shutdown. I did a Christmas album, a holiday album. I did another album,

Lionheart and and my streaming numbers were for piano music were an hour over a billion right so it's collectively on all platforms and and and something was working people wanted this music and then i think you know my daughter was now 18 but she you know going to school in l.A it was interesting to see because a lot of her friends were using my music to study to and not knowing that you know that staff of Mockia was Al's dad. And my daughter, who's just like, oh, no, here we go. And that's when I said, if we're able to connect with the 18, 19-year-olds as well on that level, then we're doing something well.

I mean, listen, I'm not trying to change the world, though, than just kind of write music that makes me feel good. And I happen to have the pop thing in the back of my head when I'm writing a three-and-a-half-minute piece of music. That's important still to land on these playlists, to land on these top spots of the playlist. You can indulge yourself and write a 12 minute piece of solo piano music and it could be the coolest thing in the world, but it's not going to be heard if it's not playlists properly. It's just so crazy because, you know, when we talk a lot to new artists, so much of it's about social media numbers, so much of it is about a lot of things other than the quality of the music

and the strategy around finding holes in the music business that aren't being exploited. And you end up with, you know, multiple songs in the tens of millions, you know, over 100 million streams on Fracture as a 100% writer, 100% producer. Yeah. You know, I don't know what your deal is with Deca, but like, you know, the deal I have with Interscope and Deca on my sort of. avant-gardeish kind of thing is something that's advantageous for an artist per se. And it's like you start looking at these numbers and the money ball aspect of doing this kind

of thing. The money ball being, you know, the Michael Lewis, the author who wrote the book that became the movie about all the analytics around baseball and how you can with a tenth of the payroll of the Yankees, if you're smart, you can compete with them. because you're looking where they're not. Correct. And in this case, it's, you know, you can, if you had 100 million streams on that you had a quarter of on the publishing and you produced and you had your four points or whatever you get,

you'd be stoked with that in real life. And then in your, but when it's your music and it's this kind of thing, there's almost no going back once you hit those kinds of numbers. Because there's no reason the amount of money you make from that, let alone the touring and all the other things that go along. Before we started recording this, you know, there's a little bit of be careful what you wish for because all of a sudden now you're like, how do you turn that down? Are you talking with your podcast? Yeah. Well, I'm just saying, you know, just there's no way to turn it down.

There is. There's no way. But your podcast is that in many ways, too. I don't know if you ever thought it would become this, you know, this important thing that you and Joe are making for the songwriting community. Same thing for me. And the stats element, I guess, is a very important one to draw the attention to because, like you said, fracture on just Spotify. That's not Apple. That's just Spotify is 100 million.

That's like having a half a billion stream of a quarter of a song. And I have a few of those now. And, and, but again, I never, ever, ever did this for that. It's just, but luckily, let's, we've got to rewind a second. So I take a break. I'm still making significant money from, from the royalty, for the income streams, from the, the hits that I've written. And you got to, remember, I'm still written the hockey theme and the baseball theme

and the news team in Canada. That's, that's generating ridiculous money just, just by getting out of bed in the day. So I'm able to do this very simple overhead album called Tales of Salas. I don't have to take big advances from the label because I've got cash. It doesn't take that much money to do it. And I've got more importantly, I've got the high-tech studio in Santa Monica.

Most people are doing this in their house with two microphones. I've got sometimes 16 microphones just to make sure we've got the atmosphere and the surroundings. It's like sound going on all of this. And my album, I want to believe, comes out sounding different.

than your average piano album because of that. Because I'm a classical musician, but I'm also producing my piano album. I'm not being produced by somebody else. I know how to cut and edit. A lot of my pieces are sometimes just one take, but there's a lot of them that are 40, 50, 60 takes cut together. Fracture was, if I remember,

it was like 70 takes, and I probably three performances put together. But there's a piece called C-Change on my first album, too, which was at the number one spot on peaceful piano for like six months. And I think C-Change is like 40 million roughly on Spotify alone. And that was a song that I just went in one night for that album. And I didn't write. I just improvised for two minutes and 52 seconds.

And it was what it was. And it became this thing. And all of a sudden, Bruce Springsteen is using it for this campaign, you know, when Biden was coming into. And it's being used on all these sort of like, these underneath these speeches. But again, you never know where your music's going to end up. If you just do good work, it ends up someplace and ends up moving someone somewhere.

And it just does. But like you said, I have no desire to go back now. But I want to evolve it. What does that mean? Of course. Evolve it means like, well, this is sort of the label mate, the Max Richter thing, is like, you know, there's one thing where it's instrumental. And there's some more experimental stuff that he does.

you know, that's not as, you know, that's not as normal as like just, of course. You know, so it's like, and with your skill set as a producer, there's obviously infinite possibilities and now that you have a fan base, you know, you kind of can take them on a journey, you know? Correct. Do you spend, how much of your time do you devote to social media? It's a love-hate relationship. And it's always been a big one for me because at one point I had a team and helped.

And then it just came off as inauthent. I'm back in, you know, strangely, I just had a meeting with META yesterday about this. And we can't ignore it, even if we want to. So I have to figure away, and I have an idea, but we have to figure a way for me to feel like I've got something to say. That's just worth saying, that's all. Nothing I hate more than seeing somebody who's trying to be cool on social media, right? And I don't want to be that guy. If I feel like that's something of relevance,

it's going to help somebody, then I'll say it or educate somebody on the process of songwriting. It's like you're doing what you're doing with the show. You're enlightening. You're bringing a microscope to this world. And some people are going, wow, it's not as glamorous, but it's exactly what I was hoping for. I'm just moved.

And I just want to show that. And I'm trying to find ways to, you know, Universal had a good idea. They put me on this 1824 tour. recently where I went and I played and I talked to these Ivy League schools this past year. It's at Harvard. I was at Northwestern as well and talking to the music students and just about because my music's being used to study to. So the kids know my music.

And so talking about the music industry, talking about the process of how I write this stuff, why I write it at a certain tempo, the pedagogy and the separation of the cortex and why I think this music is really good to study too and why it makes you relaxed and have the ability to absorb information. Like, I'm doing these albums because I just, I love to entertain. I, you know, if I'm hosting a dinner, I'm having, or I'm just chilling and reading a book because I'm a voracious reader. I want these albums to help me get into that zone.

Yeah, of course. So I'm just trying to create them. And like you said, it created a bit of a monster in the process, in a good way. All right. Well, let's go to the next thing. Five for five. I'm going to list five things, and I'm just curious where the first thoughts are that you have. Let's start with Counterpoint.

It's so vital. I mean, we don't even talk about the influence of classical music, and Counterpoint is injected into great pop songs. Max does it well. I know that it is one of the most significant ingredients in my pop records is my piano voicing's, and making sure that those suspensions. are used. A lot of people sometimes will try to use the same shade of blue that I do in that cord and they don't figure out sometimes there's a little saucy element that just suspends on a chord. Yeah. So it's the, um, that same conversation I had yesterday. I was trying to explain to

this person that, you know, and I use this analogy a lot, but, um, you know, magicians know how illusionists work, you know, right. And, and, and they, they can still admire it when they're like, Huh, how is that done, but they can kind of figure it out, but they can't quite totally figure it out. And the layman in general is just like, holy shit, this is all amazing. You know, like they don't understand that there's an audio magic to what we do.

And the magic and what composers, the real magic comes to me in counterpoint and resolution and suspension like that. Because that's when your expectations are, can be messed with most by voicings and by melody over chords and the way you mess with melodies and the way you, um, you know, the way you recapture refrains and, and find different, you know, places on different chords for that refrain to be. It's like, it's all counterpoint to me. It's all counter. I mean, I love that you've brought that up.

wrecking ball, there's one of the songs that's been covered the most, and there's the third chord in the bridge that nobody's gotten right yet, the B flat in that sort of like in that lower voicing. And I always hear it. I always like interested in seeing where, what surprise are they going to give me? But there's a specific note that I flattened in the third chord. And I'm big on it. I get it.

You can take one, six, four, five progression, you know, just a very basic, just you're all, around pop progression. But you can put in that one chord, you could put a ninth in it, you could put on the sixth chord, you could put your, we know this, but the thing is, I think it's vital,

especially with producers who have a specific scent, like a cologne that you just know it's them and they have a way of voicing. So counterpoint for me, Paramount. Toronto. It's home, it's mixed feelings because, you know, I miss it. And I felt forced to leave out of there

because just commerce wasn't big enough. I couldn't support it there. But in a beautiful city. Piano. My life, my muse, my confidant. Your children. Tire inspiration. Resinal deitre now.

It's just changed everything for me as a human. You know, the moment my daughter was born in 2005, that was the first time I did a piano album. They allow me to be, with any, as a parent, you have to be accountable for something. So if you are, if you've got a lot of bullshit in your life,

your kids will put you in an honest place. Pop music. Love it. Really do. I love it when it's well built. I love it when it's well architectured and engineered. And I hate it as well.

and and I hate but I hate the game of it I that but but I said you know above all again I grew up listening to American radio why what do you hate the game of the music industry or do you hate the music of pop I hate hate the pop music I hate the hypocrisy of it what does that mean well I just wonder you know and it's like do you love and hate the classical sure say for the same reasons as well yeah like you can say because there is a a staunchiness with classical music as well, and what comes with that world, and, um, that I loathe. So I, I, but if you were able to identify the elements of things that you like, um, it's, it's, then you, then you're, then you know exactly what you're after.

One of the things that we talked about discussing, um, you know, before we close out is, um, the practice that DSPs and certain DSPs, actually fund fake artists to fill specifically instrumental music. But we're all being told, you know, I was talking to Mike Karen, also I guess of this podcast. I feel like we're referencing a lot of these people who is just saying that, you know, the hard thing about this generation for songwriters is that everyone is being encouraged to be an artist too. So the devotion just to composition is becoming smaller. and smaller because everyone is also being encouraged to be an artist.

So you end up with all these sort of, you know, side projects and side projects and side projects of course. Of course. And hyphenated and hyphenated hyphenated hyphenated. And when you look at specifically the instrumental world, it's filled with not real projects and not real artists more so than ones that have voices. let's talk a little bit about that practice before we close out because it specifically affects an artist like yourself.

Luckily, luckily, I've been put in the, I guess the elite group, if you will, with the Ainauities, with the Max Richters, the Olaffar Arnold's. And then, of course, and I want to be very clear because it's, there's, there are some DSPs more than others. Well, actually, there is a DSP that that maybe does his practice. It's common. It's known now. The cat is out of the bag. But I want to discuss the fact that if your song is not a certain length on specific playlist, you won't get, it affects the compositional element of it, right? James Blake came out recently and I concur with him completely and talking about how TikTok now. We've got, we just listen to 20 seconds of a song and that's affecting the arch of a song, the arrangement of a song. We only know the 20 seconds and then the people are sitting there. dumbified at a concert because they can't sing the rest of the song because we've only driven that 20 seconds of virality. And the same thing with instrumental music. For example, if your pieces

say incredible melody, an incredibly built piece of music compositionally, but if it's over four and a half, five minutes long, it won't get necessarily the top echelons of the coveted playlist. So then the strategy and then all of a sudden you've got to figure out the fastest way to to give all your information. Sometimes brevity is the way to be. I completely agree. I don't like anything that lingers on unnecessarily longer than it should be. However, sometimes, like any great conversation,

the best part comes six, seven minutes into the conversation. And we're missing those moments now in music. And I think it's, you know, do the get to the chorus, don't bore us, right? I get it. I want to get to the chorus fast and the pop song as well. I mean, it's still Schubert. one of the things that I say a lot to people is like

the idea of starting with the chorus is every Beethoven song it's every Gershra. It's like it's just as you start with the hook you know you start with you don't start with the other shit that we and when we were growing up it was really a invoked thing

to have you know you know like Phil Collins in the air tonight or whatever it's like you know you had enough way you're six minutes before you get to a chorus or something like that. Like you don't,

you don't have that. You also don't have November rains and you won't have Bohemian Rhapsody. It's not that people can't release those songs. You have versions of that. You can. But the idea of starting with the hook and having a two and a half minute song is really, I mean, what a wonderful world is,

you know, probably two minutes and 15 seconds tops. That's why I said. You know, sometimes it's the best thing. Like, we're just in a song world right now. I think the weird thing is that you can, you need to have, even as a classical instrumentalist,

you still need to have some of your songs fit this pop length to make those, you know, those playlists. And then, you know, the longer pieces are just ones that exist on your album for yourself and for your fans. I always say that. So my best work is sometimes the less, less known work. Right. Yeah, of course.

But I mean, you know, I know the tricks, even in a piece of instrumental music, you want to get to the feeling ASAP right within the first two seconds. Like the tempo, I talked about that earlier. Being off-grid, if you get the tempo right, is a beautiful thing. It's just very humanistic. I equated to like a conversation. You know, we don't talk like robots always on the beat like that if we had our conversation. But we ebb, we flow, we pull back, we slow down, we speed up.

And that's what makes us human. That's what makes it real. And I think that's the beauty of the instrumental music, at least with the artists that I've mentioned. And there's many more as well. But the fake artists, the fake artists is an entire podcast on its own. Yeah, I know. It's like I want to keep, I want to go further into it. But the reality is, and the real brief synopsis is that if you started looking up who these artists are on Instagram,

instrumental playlist, specifically in jazz and classical, you'll find that, you know, whatever would be seven out of ten artists in some of these playlists have, don't exist. All you do is go see if they have a photo of themselves. Yeah, there's no website. There's no website. There's no photo. There's no Instagram. There's nothing.

Somebody's paying for these people to exist. You know, like who the record labels are. It's definitely a part of the music industry that is clearly being exploited and not being talked about. And I don't know. I don't even know who's the ethics around it. I mean. Ethics. I mean, that's a whole thing.

Ethics in DSPs is sort of, you know, kind of a. an oxymor anyway, but it's specifically in this case, it's, it's pretty tough to, to watch DSPs allow that. And yet they'll, they'll take down artificial, intelligent music because there's no copyright owner for that. But in this case, there is a copyright owner. I think we're just wondering who those copyright owners are and who these real artists really are. And, And how they're being funded. How they're being funded. And they're not, the quality isn't as good.

It's all these things, but it's like, in a playlist that, you, they don't care. It's like, then the payout goes potentially to themselves or it goes somewhere. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist kind of person. So, like, I may be totally, I would love to be shown that how wrong this is. and but the general assumption is that this is prevalent. No, there's a lot of pianists, for example, on Instagram who have, for the piano world, for the solo piano world, have half a million to a million, sometimes two million followers, let's say.

I know that's not sort of Taylor Swift members, but we're talking about a whole different genre here. So if you've got like north of a million followers on Instagram, but, and yet they don't have the monthly listenership. that say someone like myself has, 2 million followers or our monthly listeners. And there's, they're hyper aware of what you're discussing right now. I'm always delicate in how I tread these waters

because I have a lot to say about it. There is one particular DSP that does things nobly. It does things extremely well. And they don't discriminate whether a song is longer or not. And they just, I really believe that they discriminate whether the piece of music deserves be heard or not.

That's what it should come down to. And then the question of ethics is who can decide that, right? But yeah, there's a lot to be said there. I know that you're passionate about it. I'm passionate about it. And I'm determined to sort of like to advocate for this cause over time because it's not doing anything good for the genre. Well, I appreciate you for being on this podcast.

I know it's a long time coming. We've been talking about it for years. It's fun to have you on. You and I will, you know, it's nice to find other people who have taken the road less travel in this business because I know you have. I think we're all trying to figure out what we're actually doing and what the you know, if the point of this podcast is to talk about the life of songwriters, I think the definition of a songwriter continues to evolve and those who are willing to explore the business and be vulnerable and try new things and, you know, and then to succeed at it is, is inspiring and, you know, I'm proud of

all the success that you've had as an artist. Sure, of course, I'm proud of what, you know, I'm impressed with what you've done as a producer and as a writer. But what you've done as an artist is truly exciting. And, you know, I wish, you know, that all of your albums have this kind of momentum. There's a thing, it's just a few years ago when one of my albums came out and I, you hit me up. I kind of knew this invisible thing between us

because sometimes taking the road less traveled is the more exciting one. I know you get that. But I always want to say thank you. I mean, I've leaned on this podcast now for the two of you for a few years. I would work out to it all the time because it's just interesting.

You have quality, quality people and it's important to shed light and expose things as well where things need to be exposed. So thank you. Thank you for having me. You got it, man. There you go.

This episode is produced by Joe London, mega house management, and myself. See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan signing on.