Justin tranter songs
I probably write on average about 10 songs a week. I have a baby grand piano in my house and I have a little writing room with a couple mics set up if we need them, and some decent speakers. So what is the breakdown of your creative life at the moment? I assume you must have a studio in your home? I am 38, which in the entertainment business is, well… like, for me to launch a solo pop career, I don’t have the energy for that. And I am very proudly not that young anymore. Also getting on the road, and doing promo, all that shit is a young person’s game. And I’m like, “I should just do a talk show.” I’m probably never gonna do that, but I guess my point is that I did the band thing for so long, I don’t really miss it. The first thing that crosses my mind is that I really enjoy the talking between the songs. The only time I perform publicly anymore is for charity.
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I’m working to create a space where everyone I’m collaborating with feels free enough to make bold choices, and stupid choices that maybe turn into brilliant choices. My performance is about doing everything I can to create confidence in the room, and create safety in the room. And I create a performance that is much more subtle. Life is a performance, right? I get to perform in the studio every day. To be honest, I don’t necessarily miss performing. I do think for people who are aware of our live shows, and of my past, it is a little… well, shocking is not the right word, but it’s surprising. Our band wasn’t really known for our albums, or our songs. I need to just really go for it.”ĭid you feel some kind of loss? Going from fronting a glam-pop band to working behind the scenes must have felt like a radical shift. But for me, when the songwriting stuff started to take off, I went full-force into it. We continued to live together for another year or so after we stopped being a band. So I told everyone, “Sorry, but I’m focused on songwriting now,” which was really hard because we had been a band for almost 10 years at that point. I was just like, “I don’t know if I can handle the drama and the stress of trying to make this band work anymore.” I hadn’t written any hit songs yet, but lots of awesome people had recorded some of my songs by that point. The band got along fine, but our business situation and the people involved on that side of things just got weirder and more fucked up. The band was still happening, and we were still doing a tour here and there, but I was trying to get into as many pop songwriting sessions as I could. I was lucky enough to cross paths with this brilliant woman named Katie Vinten at Warner/Chappell, who started sending me out to songwriting sessions with people, mostly just to see what might happen, since things with the band were going so badly. The guy who signed us to our deal had left the company and it seemed like we were gonna be dropped. We were working with an amazing producer and moving things in a much more pop direction, but we were signed to Epic and it felt like everyone at the label just kind of flat-out hated our band… which isn’t what you want, obviously. Was there a particular moment when you knew that you were on this other creative path? When exactly did that happen? I remember seeing your band, Semi Precious Weapons, opening for Lady Gaga, then the next thing you know you’ve become this songwriter for other people. I did as much as I could to try to win at it.
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It wasn’t like, “Okay, I’m gonna go be a songwriter now.” The opportunity was presented to me and I just ran towards it with full force. It was an accident that I ended up having to work super hard for. Becoming a full-time behind-the-scenes songwriter was an accident. I thought I would definitely be one of those. Basically, any amazing woman who wrote a song, I have her whole catalog memorized. When I was at Berklee, I was obsessed with Ani Difranco, Tori Amos, Paula Cole, Patty Griffin, Patty Larkin, Courtney Love, Gwen Stefani, and Stevie Nicks. I actually have a degree in the career I pursued, which is crazy, but I definitely always thought I would be writing songs for myself, not for other people. Later I went to Berklee College of Music for songwriting. I think as someone who has been so proudly feminine my whole life, and fought to be as feminine as I wanted to be, taking a class and pretending to be somebody else always felt odd to me. About halfway through, I transferred to the music department and stopped taking acting classes. I went to an arts high school and I started out in musical theater. Did you always know that music was your path?