And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 260: Role Model | Being Discovered by Mac Miller & How Getting Signed Changed His Music

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Today's guest is an artist most people meet through the bit: the deadpan internet, the cowboy suit, the one-sided war he's been waging with Harry Styles for a year that Harry Styles knows nothing about. So this is the other version of him. A kid in Pittsburgh with a borrowed mic and beats ripped off YouTube, broke and failing out of school, who gets a message that Mac Miller loves a song off his first EP — and uses those three days in LA to convince his parents to let him drop out. It's also one of the more honest conversations we've had about what the industry's upgrades actually cost you. Not the version where getting signed is the happy ending — the version where the nice studio, the engineer recording your vocals, and the A&R in your ear slowly make music that isn't yours. Chuck Timely & The Hourglass is what's on the other side of that: a record about time, made by someone who spent years trying to get his own back. And the only person who ever told him not to make it was his mother.And The Writer Is... Role Model!A special thank you to our sponsors for making these conversations possible.Our lead sponsor, NMPA — the National Music Publishers' Association. Your support means the world to us. And @splice — the best sample library on the market. Period.They are also maybe the only ethical ai-integrated sample library and they pay creators for using their work in the new Variations update and beyond. Chapters0:00 Intro2:00 The year-long war with Harry Styles that Harry Styles knows nothing about2:41 Mac Miller and Odd Future on Vine are why he finally said yes to TikTok3:33 The message about "Stolen Car" that came while he was failing out of school15:01 "Did you scrub the internet?" — "Yes. Because I was embarrassed."16:13 "I was trying to impress a label. I just made shitty music."24:16 A 16-year-old in Portland, Maine, and an EP made entirely over email25:44 The labels start calling: "I was a sitting duck"27:01 The studio trap — how nice rooms take the music out of your hands28:01 The two EPs he's blocked out: "I don't remember making that music"28:54 Why he won't pitch songs to other artists31:06 The 80s synth album they made for two months and scrapped34:33 The two rules: no synths, no drum machines35:06 His mom: "There's country in it? Your fans are gonna hate that."37:39 "Sally," written in the 30 minutes a session ran short42:09 "But who is Chuck?" — inventing Chuck Timely47:12 Ross defines a good song: "This will piss off a lot of people"53:10 What he'd say to Mac Miller54:44 "Look at That Woman" started as a joke — and why the loose ones win56:27 The permission Kansas Anymore gave other songwritersCredits: Hosted by Ross Golan Produced by Joe London & Jad Saad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer is. I'm your host Ross Golan. Today's heartthrob. Ain't just some Eve St. Laurent Cowboy or some guy named Chuck. Nope. This artist is a culmination of alter egos. Confused? Yeah, me too. But I think that's the point.

Who is this guy? I'll tell you who he is. He's one of the best, most promising artists in music. He's musically wise beyond his years. He writes like someone who's lived a few different versions of himself, from a few different decades. He's clever, humorous, self-deprecating him through all of the alter egos, honest. Whether you've wanted to be his Sally or his fan or his co-writer,

this man, with the new rules, is a future best new artist nominee, and the writer is role model. Before we even started rolling out the album, We were talking about what do you want to do for press and all these things and how do you feel about podcasts? I was like, well, we do a lot of fun podcasts where we get to like be silly and fun. But I actually kind of want to do some. I feel like I never talk about music. And it's very important to me.

A lot of people who have personas, social media personas, they struggle getting people to Spotify or to Apple, you know, to stream music. but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like you've done a good job integrating your music with your social media personas. Don't you think? I do. I do. I agree.

I think I tried. I think it's a fine line and you can't go too far overboard with it. And it's a fine line. Where does that line cross? Have you ever crossed that line? I don't think so. Did Harry Styles ever come at you? It'd be like,

What beef do he has? No. Have you ever met him? Not that no of. I have met him. He's lovely. He is lovely. He's also like not online at all.

So I think he's a bovvista, which is great because I can like say all these things and go on a year long rant about how we're at war. And he has no idea and I love that. Are you envious of artists who can be musicians without? being online? Yeah. I guess that's the dream. I always used to think like when my label where people were first starting to like try and get me on TikTok

and I was still in the like no way era. I don't know what year that was. I remember thinking back to like Mac Miller and like Odd Future were on Vine fully doing that thing. of like, it had nothing to do with their music. It was just them showing personality and being, like, funny and stupid on Vine. And then I would be like, okay, if it wasn't too,

if they weren't too cool for that, then maybe I'm not too cool for TikTok, and then I went and did it. Here we are. I mean, Vine is this weird thing, because that was, you know, it was the same thing. What was your relationship with Mack?

How did you meet him? How did he meet you? It was short. But I, when I was in Pittsburgh, I had put out my first EP. It was called Arizona in the summer. And it was kind of gaining traction, like on Spotify and stuff. And it got some little playlists and everything. And then, I don't know where his manager, Q, had,

DM'd me and was like, hey, Mac really likes this EP, loves this song, Stolen Car off of it. And that, like, was all I needed because things weren't really working. And I was, like, I had no money and I was failing school and kind of had to tell my parents that I was either going to be dropping out or I was going to have to stay in school an extra couple years. And so I needed that. And then one thing led to another.

They flew me out. I thought it was solely for the purpose of, like, meeting and working with Mac. And that did happen, and it was amazing. And I fell in love with Malcolm through that. And then I had found out, like, a couple weeks later, that he had a label. and I think they were like starting to want to make a roster. And I was just told the weight and everything, so that didn't happen. But then he, even though I wasn't like, yes, I'll sign, he kept inviting me back.

And like, I got to hang with him and we had a few, like, cool memories. But, and then he passed. I don't know how many months later that was from when I first met him, but it was, like, pretty quick. So it was a small window. When that's your one window into the business at that time, how did you, you know, that, for all the emotional reasons, it's so heavy.

But how do you bounce back from that as an artist when, you know, here you are in Pittsburgh with flying out to work with somebody who then passes away months within that relationship, how did you cope with that as an artist? I had already, I had dropped out at that point. Literally, I like used that experience. They flew me out for like three or four days and I had used that experience to like tell my parents, hey, there's hope here. I could make money off of this. Here's like a little number that they did send me of like, if you wanted to sign, here's this. So I, like, had something to show them.

And they were like, all right, go for it. Do your thing. And so my manager at the time helped me get an Airbnb out there for a couple months out here. And that was the time when he had passed. So I did make it out of Pittsburgh. I think if I was still stuck in that, like, rut. and Malcolm had passed during that, it would have,

that would have been really crushing in like a different way. I think I maybe would have not had the spark to keep going. But him noticing me had sparked something in the industry in a small way where it was like labels were paying attention. The thing I loved to, about him is he just, like, loved all music and tried everything. Like, and he also is known for having a different persona and doing like the Larry Fisherman thing. And I think he helped me see that there's like, it's not just one path of music that you have to do. And you can try

all these things. And I remember like my early albums or, like, my early albums are, like, like EPs, it was very much that. There were like five songs on an E.P. All different genres of music. And I think he helped me feel confident to do that because he was so good at that.

And one thing you do really well, that's that's so impressive and it's makes me wonder where you learn some of these things. But I don't know other people who, when they play shows purposefully say the wrong band or the wrong city or whatever. Is that just you being quirky or did you see somebody else do that? I don't know. I just never liked when people

introduced themselves on stage. It always gives me the ick. I don't know why. And it's not like, it's such a normal thing. Like, obviously say your name, especially if you're opening for someone, say your fucking name so that people know who you are. But I just don't think, I don't know. I like performing. I didn't really, when I was opening, I didn't feel pressure to, like, steal their fan base.

It was just like a cool opportunity to be on stage, so I would have fun and do stupid things. Now that you headline, you can have, like the whole background could be like, just Ed Shear and say, the whole thing where am I? Exactly. But don't ever explain it, don't ever acknowledge it. No.

It's great. What drew you to music in the first place? It's a good question. I guess my intro to just to music in general was music videos. and I was very into film, went to school for film, studied it for a little bit, but always with the goal of making, I wanted to make music videos. I grew up watching MTV hits and MTV Jams, which is just like a cycle of music videos all day. And I think that was my intro.

And then at a certain point when I was in school, I came from Maine and then went to school, this tiny little school in Pittsburgh, and for the first time was introduced to people making their own CDs and mixtapes and doing it in a dorm like this with just a mic and a laptop. And I just, that wasn't that crazy. I just hadn't seen it before. And it just looked fun and I just wanted to try it. and they were like, you should try it, and they gave me their equipment for a week, and I figured everything out on YouTube and fell in love with it.

It was just like a happy accident that kind of shot me into this canon of, like, I had a lot of hobbies growing up, but things would stick for a week or things would stick for a couple months, and then I'd get over it, and this was the one thing that was like, it's never died down ever, which is...

Tell me about your childhood. Let's go from the beginning. Let's start. You were born. I was born. I love where I'm from. Like, it's a little town, and it's the best place on Earth. It's called Cape Elizabeth, and it's, you have the ocean, and you have farms, and you have the mountains, and you have ponds and lakes, and they're all within, like, a bike ride of each other.

And it's, like... You think, but you live in L.A. now. I live in L.A. Can you live in Maine and be a professional artist? I don't think full-time. I don't think it would work that well. But ideally, I would be bicostal at some point in my life

when I'm making the big big bucks. Yeah. How much is big, big bucks? I don't know. Sounds big, I don't know. Whatever that is. Yeah, I don't know. However many suitcases.

However much that costs to be bicossal, I don't know. What kind of music did you guys grow up with? I mean, like, listening to the influences from your albums, it feels like I can guess on some of them, but I'm curious what they're. It's like, if there was a music scene in Maine, it's like folk and bluegrass, and that's kind of it.

Obviously, now it's changed, and I think when SoundCloud came around, It was this, I got to like kind of see little pockets of Portland, Maine where I'm from. And I think that helped. And I think there probably is a music scene there now. I'm not fully aware. But at just growing up there, it's like bars, ski lodges, and like, it's just old dudes playing folk music and bluegrass. And so that's what you grow up on.

My mom was obsessed with Jackson Brown. New Young and Van Morrison and also like Nora Jones and I just as a kid you just hate the music your parents play or at least I did and then at a certain age you come back to it and you become a little homesick and you you start to kind of listen to everything they listen to probably to just out of nostalgia and then um Now I think that has seeped into my music in the past four, three or four years, I guess. Isn't it weird that you know that? When do you start playing music? When do you start thinking I'm going to actually, you know, when did you write poetry? When it was the first time you ever, was it really Pittsburgh that the first time you ever wrote music? Yeah.

So it never really crossed your mind growing up. I liked writing and like short stories. kind of thing or what? Yeah, and I guess I did do poetry. I took poetry classes in college. I've like blocked a lot of those years out of my memory, so this is why it's now slowly coming in. But yeah, I liked writing, and I was also like the one thing I was good at in high school, and then the one thing that I wasn't failing in college. And I just had never thought to like write songs. and So when you get the CD

When I meet the people with the equipment Yeah And in Pittsburgh That are like, hey, this is how you can record music It was rap music And they were using beats on YouTube So that was my intro I would get beats or things on YouTube

Or like guitar loops on YouTube Rip it bring it into um logic and then just like write things on my little notes what's the first song that you wrote i don't know you don't know and also if i knew i wouldn't say about i do not know did you scrub the internet yes i did all this stuff yeah i did what point did you scrubbed you i did my best um when did i did it was it recent that you did that when would i have done that that. Um, I don't know. Why did you do that? Because I was embarrassed of it. There's stuff now that I would scrub of my stuff that. Like that was in the last. Yeah. I've been actually wanted to talk to my label

about that. For real? Yeah. There's things I want to just like get a ass scrub. Why? I just, I would, I would love, I don't know, I hate it. It's embarrassing. And it was like, like if I was talking to Zainlow right now he'd be like, but that was like a piece of you. That's like, that was a chapter of your life. I don't know how to do anything. And yeah, I know, I'm not even going to try it. That was not that deep. I love my first EP under Roa motto.

It was Arizona in the summer. It's not great, but I love it because I made it in my closet by myself. And it was just like, and it's like there's cool parts of it that I still like admire about myself and like choices that I made. But there's other stuff that I just am not proud of. And I'm like that I was not being myself. I was like trying to impress a label. And I was like, it started getting out of my hands.

Like now all of a sudden I had moved to L.A. And there was people in the studio engineering for me and like recording me. And it was just, it was just weird. It was like things taken out of my hands. And I just made shitty music. So if we could scrubbed out of it, we'll talk about it. I haven't had this. Definitely keeping that in.

Regardless whether you want. I'm just, No, no, you can. I was saying, I'm going to talk about it. So what is it, like, when does Tucker become role model?

Well, I changed my name on SoundCloud at some point in 2017 or 2017, maybe. So right before the EP came out? Yeah. I kept it a secret from them. I kept the music thing

a secret from them for a while, and then they found out at like a high school hockey game because a parent had come up to them and like, your son's making me. music now and they were like sorry he's at film school and they're like now he's putting out music and um they found out a little bit later but they've always been supportive even when they found out

they're like that's cool just like keep your grades up but like that's cool when was the first time you showed people music or was it just so you started uploading music and people discovered it Did you show your roommate? The people that were showing you were like, hey, check this out. Did you get feedback at all? I showed my roommates. I think at a certain point I just stopped because I liked the idea of like putting it on the internet and not having, like, that felt safer to me than showing people in real time. it was cool that you could just put this out on SoundCloud,

and people don't really know who you are, but they can listen to it. And it was cool. When's the first time you discovered that somebody knew who role model was? I don't know. I had put out a song called Cocaine Babe, and that was my first thing on SoundCloud that took off. And it was like people were coming up to me.

They weren't like your role model. I was like, they already knew me. But they'd be like, hey, your song is doing. well. Like, congrats. The song is like blowing up. Why Arizona in the summer and not Pittsburgh in the summer? Because I really wanted to get out.

And it's, I love Pittsburgh, but, and I was just talking about this with someone who was from Pittsburgh. But it just, it's a grim city. Like, out of everywhere I've been, I think those seasons, like, really beat you down. Those were, like, some of the darkest. times for me, which is probably why I was just hiding in my closet making music, but it's like a grim city.

What parts of Arizona in the summer resonate with you now, and you're saying you're really proud of that album, are the EP? What parts of that resonate most with you now? I liked it because I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know anything about song structure or melodic structure or anything. thing and I liked

like that song Stolen Car has it's the weirdest structure and nothing makes sense and I just like that part of it and the production was like cool to me it was when like the lo-fi

bedroom pop era I was like really I remember really looking up to Joeji when he like first started putting out I can't remember that EP that he put out. But there's this cool dark, lo-fi bedroom

world at the time. And it was when, like, Claro maybe started popping up, Gustaverton, boy Pablo, Kuko, it was in that world at the time. And it was I was proud because

it felt of that time, but it also felt like I was kind of doing my own version of that. Do you think too much now when you write? Now I think I'm... That's a good question. I think now song structure is like ingrained in me now. And that can be hard to get out of.

But I feel like I still don't have a ton of knowledge on like... Melodically, like what notes you should be hitting to, like, raise a chorus or to like, what harmonies... do what and like where like i don't know that stuff i don't have a grasp on which i definitely didn't back then um but i think structure wise that's ingrained in my brain now which is fine because like i label myself as like a pop artist and i kind of like some of my songs fitting in this like pop world i think it's kind of funny and cool yeah it's weird if listening to your music, I wouldn't know that's the journey, is that you didn't know song structure and you didn't know what was going on because these songs feel clear. Who teaches you song structure?

I think I've just learned. Just listening to music, I think it just ingrains something in your brain, I don't know. But also, the producers I've worked with now, like with Kansas anymore, was Noah Conrad, and now the new album, it's Mason Stoops and Taylor Macle. And, like, they have helped me a lot in different ways. NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again. What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do with songwriters anyway? Well, unlike artists who can be unsigned artists,

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Thank you for sponsoring and the writer is. Tell me about the day right stolen car. I remember, so the kid that produced that EP, I found him, he was this like 16 year old kid from my hometown that had just like, I don't remember how I found him. Maybe I found his SoundCloud and like it happened to say that he's from Portland, Maine and I was like, holy shit.

But he was uploading instrumentals and like weird lo-fi things in that world. and I was like, would you want to work with me and make something? And I think that was one of the first things he sent. And it was literally, like, structured how it is in the song that I uploaded. He sent it to me. And then in that same night, I sat at my computer and I wrote and recorded it and kind of went, like, line by line and sent it back to him. And he was like, dude, this is a song.

We should make three more of these or four more of these and make an EP. And I was like, yeah, that'd be great. And we just did that over email every day. We never, like, talked to each other in person. Still to this day? No, we have now. Now he's the sweetest boy. And then I got to, like, meet him, whatever.

A few months later, I guess. But, yeah, Owen Ardell. You start getting calls from major labels. How does that feel? feel. I mean, the Mac thing was first, and that, like, literally sent me, like, running up and down my dorm hallways, like, freaking out. And then it's kind of that, him reaching out started a little bit of, like, a chain reaction, and labels started reaching out as A&Rs, and I just never, like, I was very vulnerable. I was, like, sitting alone in Pittsburgh being like, yeah, oh, thank you so much.

song like yeah I'd love to come out to LA and like I like I like you type you have no fingers you're just like a sitting there's like an animated version of yeah and then um like a cat and I had found and then this kid reached out to me who it was like I was a lot of A&Rs but then all of a sudden this kid who's a manager who is my age reached out I was like hey you're killing it do you want help through this thing that's happening and I was like yes and then he came along and we talked every day, twice a day, and he would kind of help me filter through the emails and everything

and, like, the label part of it. Did it start to change how you write, being like, oh, shit, these people are now interested, or does it make you double down on the way? No, who you are. The only time I switched is when I, it was like after I signed, and when I had access to nice studios,

and it just like it fucks you because if you make music like this with a mic in front of you in a laptop it like just keep doing that because I think getting taken out of your element and you all of a sudden are in these studios where someone else is recording your vocals

I know there's other ways to do it but it's just my experience was someone was recording your vocals and then you had like an A&R my A&R at the time who was like kind of in your ear being like do it this way or blah blah and it's you you end up making music that's like very far from you and um it's a tough thing to do it is the EP comes out and um you know how soon after doing oh how perfect are you working on our little angel are you doing those together are you like we're writing recording them at the same time

I don't even know. These are the years that I blocked out, I think. Why? Why do you block it out? I just, I don't know. I don't think about those two albums or EPs at all. And I know some people love them and they have a place in people's heart, but I don't remember even, like, making that music.

It's so crazy. Did you ever, by being in L.A., Did you ever feel like you had to write for other people? Did you write with other artists? Did you ever try to pitch songs? I don't think so. I think it was always something I said I wanted to do, but never happened for me.

And now I'm at a point where I think I don't want to do that. I don't think I want to write. And, like, we had a lot of songs that didn't make this album, and I don't think I would pitch any of them. I don't know if I like that. I think that's a hard thing to do, because you actually have a unique perspective, So unless there's an artist who wants to sound just like you

And then you want to give them your other songs, that's going to be tough. Yeah, it feels gross. You kind of have to write in this world of, um, you write the song and then maybe an artist shows up someday that sounds like that. Pitch, no. I think the only way it would make sense to me is if I went in and like works with them to like find, I don't know, help them find words. How did you change the, you know, I know,

COVID happens right during all this stuff. It seems like that's sort of the beginning of a lot of your, like, social media. I guess I was pretty front-facing during COVID. As soon as I, like, I was chopped in Maine for a little bit and then got back to L.A. And I remember people being, like, you got to, like, show face. Like, you should do live streams. Everyone's doing these live streams. Like, you should do these things and, like, keep engagement going and blah, blah.

And I did stuff like that, I guess. and then life went back to normal. But I guess that was like the start of it. With Kansas anymore, I took like a two-year break before that came out to write that and to do that. And I think so when we returned with that, it was like, okay, I really need to like bring people back because I've been gone for a little bit. And I need to show my face and remind people. Coming through a couple EPs that are. necessarily defining who you are as an artist.

RX is, you know, it's all in this world of like, it's a different thing. How does an artist, like, role model pivot so substantially? Yeah, it's interesting. Like, RX, I lumped that in with those other two that we named. And then a toured RX. It went great. The tour was awesome.

and as far as like making music and touring, I had taken that break and then I had gone through a breakup. And a lot of these things that were just dragging this process out. And it took me a long time to just like figure out what to do next. And it was just a lot of like searching and throwing pain at the wall. I remember at one point I was like, let's do like a full. 80s album. I want to do synth pop and like we tried that for two months

and I remember scrapping everything and being like this does not like nothing was coming out organically and everything was forced and feeling wrong and so we scrapped all that and then who's we? I had started that process

with someone else someone else in New York, a different producer. And that person was, like, helping me through all of this, like, soul searching, figuring out what I wanted to do. And then at some point, I was like, I needed to step back from it. I was going home a lot, spending time in Maine. And then also, I was like, maybe I want to try working with another producer. And I had got set up with Noah Conrad, clicked really well with him.

Um, and we kind of like tested him by giving him a song, an old song that I had made and be like, could you bring this into this world of these like folk Americana palette, like, no sense. Was it one of these synth pop songs that he then reimagined? No, it was this song called Superglue on Kansas anymore. And we had brought this old version of it and we're like, could you Americana this up a little bit? like no sense, no drum machines, nothing, just like organic palette version of this. And he did, and he crushed it. And so I ended up starting to work with him and was explaining, like, my music taste was changing. I was like very homesick, so I was listening to a lot of folk and Americana and a lot of stuff that we talked about earlier that my mom was listening to, a lot of the Van Morrison and Neil Young, Petty. all of that

and he kind of helped me figure out that sound. How does that change the way you write when you find a collaborator? Does it open up doors? Oh wow, I could go into this kind and that kind and

how does it change everything? I think me going home and just like getting to step away from making music for a few months helped me get clarity. It helped me like fall in love with where I'm from, which was like a big part of that album. And it helps me like, I don't know, like my music taste was starting to go back to what my parents liked, like what I was

talking about earlier. And so I got to like go in with Noah with more clarity finally and be like, this is the general sound. I had like some playlists and things. And I was like, I just don't want to use program drums and no sense. Those are like my two rules. I would start ideas or write full songs on guitar at home over boring cowboy chords and then bring it to him and be like, can we turn this into something a little bit more exciting? When you say it, it seems so obvious, but it's really brave.

It was a huge departure, but it never in my head felt like it. the only person that made me doubt that was my mom because I had told her the direction at one point and was like, yeah, it's kind of starting to sound like some of the stuff you used to listen to and like there's little hints of country and she was like, there's country in it and she would like kind of make me doubt it

and she was like, your fans are going to hate that? Like, are you sure this is the right move? And like she was making me doubt it. But it never felt like it was the wrong move for some reason. I felt confident in it. I don't know why. But you know, you are,

you have this public relationship that ends you write a lot about it. Does that, do you think that being so honest in your lyrics helps or hurts your personal life? I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if I have an answer for it.

I think if I was making like, fuck you songs and, like, like don't ever talk to me type of songs, then yeah, that's one thing that would probably ruin my personal life, but it wasn't that. It was an album kind of beating myself up about everything and my decisions. So I don't think it was kind of how I am now. Pretty self-deprecating. You know, the success of the album is obviously, it changes everything. But, you know, having a lead single like, I guess, I don't know if it was the lead single, but certainly the most prominent single,

at least when I discovered you, it was through Sally. Yeah. How does that change you as a person? It doesn't as a person, but it helps my career. I was on the road when we put that out, because I had just toured, I had just finished touring Kansas anymore,

and then Sally was on the deluxe. It was the single for the deluxe, and so we put out deluxe in a week later, went back on tour. So I was just in touring mode while that song was exploding and that was a cool way to experience it

because people would just, I'd hear it from the crowd every night. But I wasn't, like my life was not changing before my eyes. I wasn't, you know. Because you were already in process. Yeah, we were just, I was in touring mode so I didn't, I don't know.

Tell me how you wrote, Sally. Um, we were doing, so Sally was on the deluxe version of Kansas anymore. And I had brought in, uh, Onica Bennett and Harrison Whitford to Noah's house to come and do, who both are like amazing musicians, but also amazing writers. Harrison did a lot on this, my new album. and I had them come in to do backing vocals on another song on the deluxe and then I was thinking that was going to take all day and it didn't. It took 30 minutes and so we were all just kind of sitting there like maybe we should

make another song like just write a song as for because usually that's not how the songs start. Usually I'll bring in something but we're like we're here. Let's just like fuck around. And Sally's born, uh, like that. And this was like, it was just a silly song about newly being single and experiencing the dating scene, I guess, for the first time in a while and like finding a spark again. And then it became something else.

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That's episodes of Charlie XEX and Sabrina Carpenter and Lynn Manuel Miranda and Shania Twain and Babyface so much. So many great interviews that you can get amazing insight and knowledge from. So come and check it out in the description below. There's a link for you to join us on Patreon. Did you start feeling like that was a new bar that you had to reach? Did you watch any of the success of it in a... streaming numbers sort of way. No, and also like,

it streamed really well, but this wasn't like a, I don't know. It doesn't, it's not smash it. It wasn't like all over the radio or anything. It never seemed like something that we had to go catch up to.

Mm-hmm. Which, like, thank God, because that would be stressful. But I never saw it as something to, like a bar. It was more like, oh, this is really exciting. I feel like I found this,

really cool lane of like bringing some of these americana influences onto like pop radio i was like this is amazing and it got me really hungry to make the next album so tell me about some protector that you know it's a it's a viral hit you know how does that how does that song come about that one i wrote at home and uh how did that come along. I don't know. I wrote it on my couch. Do you have anything on TV when you're writing? No, I don't have a TV. I haven't had a TV in a long time, like five years. What do you, do you watch any such? Do you watch movies? I watch things on my phone if I'm going to watch something. What do you do? While I'm writing, I would never, I would never watch something

while I'm writing. Are you, um, do you give yourself a chance to be bored? What do you do with your, When those moments You were like, I'm not going to watch anything. I just lay. I lay on my couch. Do you? No. Sometimes I do.

But I don't know. Do you read? I watch like things on my phone. I wish I read. And but like don't, I still go on Netflix and stuff. I just am one of those annoying people who does it on their phone. This new, this new place that we're in, Chuck Time. Like,

Tell me about Chuck. Well, I came up with Chuck after writing the album. And we were, I would say, like, three quarters of the way through making the album. And I had come up with the name, Chuck timely in The Hourglass, and brought it to the boys, Mason and Taylor and them and Harrison. And I was like, what do you think? they're like, yeah, but like, who is Chuck? And I was like, and after that, every single day in the studio,

all we would do is talk about Chuck and we'd like make these stories and like create this person to like represent the themes on the album. A lot of them, if there's one thread through all the songs, it would be like time and the most like general sense. wanting to go back in time, wanting time to slow down, whatever, time flying by, everything seemed a lot of waiting for my life to change, a lot of whatever. And so I wanted this Chuck guy to represent the themes on the album, but also the way we went about producing it was taking little things through all these

the eras that we loved and through the years and we're like, this is perfect. Yeah, the organic aspect to your productions on this album seemed to be even, I mean, it can't get more organic than an organic album, but it feels like there's just even, there's, there's, this richness to the album. And you can learn how to record a little bit better. What does that mean? I said it earlier a little bit, but like I am really bad at, I'm really good at knowing exactly what I want something to sound like, but I don't always have the knowledge of like musical history and the musical knowledge to be like, to be referencing all these artists that could perfectly describe what I am describing. Mason and Taylor are really amazing with that.

And I mean, I'm sure they've, like, studied it. And, like, they have the knowledge of all those things. And so, like, I learned a lot through them how they go about recording things to make it feel more of the time that we're referencing sometimes. I think we learned together and then I brought what I learned to Mason and Taylor and then they taught me like a lot.

What's your favorite song on the new album? I think I'm going to have to do, I guess I have to have two answers. My favorite song is joy. The song I'm most proud of is good thing. Why are you most proud of it? Because kind of exactly what we were just talking about,

about like nailing the recording to kind of fully lean into the era that we were referencing. The good thing, that was like something that took us months of re-recording and figuring it out. And that one I'm just like really proud of. It's like a big Willie Nelson vibes, but ballad and kind of power ballad-y of the time. I'm just proud of how we recorded that. Define a good song. I don't know. Can you anymore?

I don't know. That's a fair answer. I'm stressing me out. I don't know. I just had to ask another question just to get out of it. That's how you interview an interviewer. Right. I slipped it.

Can I actually ask you that? I'm curious what your answer would be. every line lyrically pulls you to the next, every melody feels new in the song, and there's no pandering. There's no sort of, I think you audience member is going to like this if we go, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

You repeat after me. You can make, you know, when you perform, it's really helpful to tour to be a good songwriter because you have some idea of like, oh, this will, you need to give some space for this person to sing along and understand what you're singing and all these things. I think a good song, the basic answer is that, and this will piss off a lot of people, so fine.

But I think a good song is that when you're done listening to it, you know what the song is called. Interesting. Now, there's the pandering part of it where I can say a title over and over again, and he's like, yeah, I got it. That's the pandering part. So the asterisk is, like, you can do it. But, like, I tend to feel like if you need a post-chorus

that you have to repeat the title 10 times and you didn't write a chorus well. Or maybe it's just, you want to play it again. No, but that's a well-written song if you do that. Like, yeah, that's a good, that's a great definition. Because you listen to it once and you want to play it again is a great definition of, of, that's a, that's a, That's a byproduct of quality composition.

Right. But, I mean, I've written a lot of songs that I think are good songs that are not out and no one will ever cut them. Right. But I know, like, I'm sitting on something that's compositionally sound. Right.

And when people are like, hey, play me songs that are available, I play the same songs for like 15 years because I'm like, this sounds sick. I love that. Somebody will cut this someday. Like, you know, especially if it's organic, then it's like it can live in any era

and then you're not chasing, you know, whatever that, synth sound that was cool in 2026 is not going to be the synth sound that's cool in in 2041. But I feel like the new album, like, I love that. It has, like, that Willie Nelson references, and it feels like it's in that space. It goes all over the place. Do you see it as a concept album? No.

I've been pretty clear about that. Like, to me, a concept album is, like, you're, like, right, you're, it's, like, fictional. Like, you're writing stories that aren't. yours or like about experiences that aren't yours maybe like create a character and write about experiences for these like fictional characters to me that's a concept album like red-headed stranger or something like that sure and um that's not what happened i like i wrote an album and then came up with a title and then that became a character what music inspires you besides the ones that you grew up with i mean i mean

I mean, a lot. As soon as we wrap the album, I discovered this band, the Water Boys, like, discovered them. As soon as we wrapped the album, I was like, I want to make a deluxe, like, right now. It was like, it's amazing. And sometimes, uh, we tried. And then we had to, I had to, we had like a week set for deluxe. And then I ended up spending that and, like, fixing stuff on the album. You mentioned, you know, Sally didn't really get the kind of radio play that I think that, which is hard to understand as somebody, I feel like I know that song so well that it feels like it was a radio smash. I don't think I have a voice or make music for radio personally. Sometimes I will listen to the new music and like try and imagine it on the radio and I can't. but if it happens and that's an amazing thing with sally it was like that was not something i expected to happen and it did and so it's just like a bonus but i would never like i've never made music um or had a feeling that something would hit radio or like hit in a huge way i mean you're on tours with some pretty big pop stars right now that would you know it feels

like you're leaning towards this world where people are going to know you more or more and it's popular music. It really shouldn't be something that's defined by a specific genre or it will have already been done. I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't even really understand what pop music is.

I just like to call my music pop music. But I just, yeah, I don't even know. It's just, it's popular music. And I think the challenge, I think the challenge is fun of like taking these musicians that we've

talked about and making something. thing that's digestible for pop is fun. Let's do some rapid fire. Oh, shit. Okay. Who's on your Mount Rushmore of pop artists? Current pop artists. I didn't write down one or the other.

It just says Mount Rushmore of Artists. I don't want to think. This is your interview. Not my... Charlie X-C-X. Oh, cool. It's a small... I just love...

Maybe it's her head. It's all of her eras. It's all of her eras. What? Hell yeah. I love her. I love her. She's a lovely person.

She's the best. She's the best. She's the best. Super smart. Also the coolest person ever. Are you happy with Tucker Pillsbury? My name? Yeah.

I love my name. I like your name. But like, sure, that's a good answer. Do you like your name? I love my name. As I'm slowly getting more and more discovered, people make fun of my name all the time. But I love my name. Are you going to be an actor?

I acted. I am a. a movie. What's the movie? It's going to come out next year. Are you going to do more of that? I don't know.

I don't know. I can't tell if I like it or not. We'll see. I loved my experience doing it. I don't know if I want to do it more. Got it. What would you tell Tucker who just moved to Pittsburgh

to study music videos? I don't think I'd tell him anything because it worked. If I had time traveled back, I'd probably just stand there. I wouldn't do nothing. I'd stand behind a pole or something. What would you say to Mac if you had a chance to talk to him right now? I think I would just thank him. I think I'd thank him.

He gave me kind of my first ever burst of confidence in my music. And without that, I think I would have went back to film school and tried to make that work. Tell me the story about writings on the wall. It's literally like two chords on acoustic, and so I just wrote the verses over those two chords. And then my friend Brandon had showed me a piece of this chorus that he made. And he makes, like, at the time, I don't know now,

but at the time he made like hyperpop music and he showed me this chorus that he made and I was like melodically there's something really cool here and also there were like a couple cool lyrics he had like my dad's on the phone and something about the war or something and I loved it and I was like can I try and like form this into a chorus for this song that I have and blah blah. And that was the weirdest probably like Frankensteiny moment on that album that wasn't like fluid. It was like a weird Frankenstein moment. Tell me about look at that woman. Uh, I don't know. Most of those aren't the most exciting stories. I wrote that on my couch. Um, but I will say there was like 10 different versions of that song before.

Really? It became the one that came out. Now, the first ever chorus was a joke, and it was me and Onika in a room with this kid Jonah, and we were fucking around, being like, ooh, look at that, like trying to make, like, a funny pop song.

And I was like, I feel like this is actually a good chorus in some dimension, and made, like, like 100 versions of that song and then I finally I feel like that's when good songs are written when you're in that fluid state of...

Salio's the same one. Yeah. I'd like to be a writer on that song. It's a little late, but you can add me to it if you want. Okay, great. I mean, you can. All right. We actually just interviewed Jesse Alexander who wrote The Climb.

Oh, really? Yeah. Which you... I cover it a long time. we go with yeah we don't ever talk about that because I don't want to embarrass him but um yeah that was back when I knew

Mike and yeah he produced that let's move on I don't want to embarrass him I don't think he wants the world to know about that he's too cool for that now like I fell in love with that album like everybody else did uh

uh uh Kansas anymore. And that album is one of those things where you're like, as a songwriter, like, oh, right, you're allowed to do this. And it's your journey that got you there. But it helps bring an entire community to give license to, oh, right, we are going to need analog. We're going to need real instruments. We're going to need real songwriting and storytelling and and real melodies. And it's natural to you, but it seems really brave to me.

And it was such a relief to hear that. And it's a reminder of like, oh, yeah, I want to do an album like that. The same way that you felt about Water Boys or whatever they were called. Yeah, totally. Like that thing of like, oh, yeah, I kind of want to write something like that. You know, I like all those guys that are in this area. But the lyrics are current. It feels now.

Yeah. And it's just pulling from a lot of healthy places to pull from, but it sounds original because of how you're doing it. And then the way you present it on social media, man, you're doing what you're supposed to do. If you're going to pursue this as a career, you need to be all the way in, and you're doing it so well.

I'm thinking about pursuing it as a career. I'm considering it still. Not enough to be bicoso yet. No, no, no, yeah. But hang in there, man I appreciate that. That was very nice. Thank you.

You're killing it. I can't wait to until we do this on the flip side of this album. Yeah. I don't know. I can't wait. There you go.