We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Millan (MLLN) Bhatt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Millan (MLLN) thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Life is filled with meaningful moments that are strongly tied to meaningful lessons. My goal is to capture these moments with music to keep a record of the lessons I have learned throughout my life.

In 2022, I was blessed with the opportunity to go on tour with the esteemed, Lawrence the Band, and support their Hotel TV tour. To go from writing and producing music in my basement to performing it in front of thousands of people each night with a full band is truly a dream come true! Since the tour, we have opened for artists Adi Oasis, Couch, Melt, and more while continuing to perform new music in a live setting. We have performed for over 10,000 people and have no intentions of stopping!

More recently, I got married to the love of my life, Kathryn Marie. I proposed in August 2021 and began writing an album about our relationship called “In A Day”. June 30th, 2023, one month before we got married, I released the album and was able to perform it live for my first headlining show in DC! It was so rewarding to celebrate our love for music and our love for each other before embarking on our lifelong journey!

The album, “In A Day”, is about Kathryn rescuing me from loneliness. It travels through the first time we met, our first date, working through hard times, and dreaming of the future. “In A Day” is meant for people to see their own friendships and relationships in a positive light and encourages gratitude toward meaningful relationships.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Being an Indian-American, Jazz and R&B weren’t commonly played in my house. Both of my parents play Hindustani Indian Classical music and I grew up frequently falling asleep to my mom’s singing voice. Indian Classical music is deeply routed in improvisation and complex scales, so naturally I gravitated toward those aspects of music. When I started singing and playing instruments, I found myself infatuated with the improvisation in Soul R&B and Jazz. The harmonies took me in emotional directions I didn’t know existed and gave an excitable high school kid a large sense of wonder. I felt that music was similar to outer space in that our limited knowledge exposes the potential for endless possibilities. It’s a privilege to be able to explore those possibilities.

I’ve worked the hardest on my voice. When I work on a new song, I’m always challenging my vocal abilities and seeing how far I can stretch my voice. I offer many services, such as lessons for vocal technique, performance, music theory and song production. I also offer expertise as a session musician for various instruments and vocal arranging.

I’m most proud of my ability to learn from every genre of music and translate the strengths of them to my own style. I find that songwriters who appreciate more genres of music tend to be stronger at articulating their thoughts through music and are more likely to push genre boundaries. I hope to be a boundary-pusher in the music industry.

I want my fans to know that I will always continue to push the limits of my creativity and will never stop being honest in everything I do.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social Media is both your biggest asset and biggest liability for creatives. Social media can change your life overnight, whether that’s a good or bad thing. I found that the most organic way to build an honest following is to collaborate with artists. Luckily, in today’s world, we can take something someone else did on social media and add to it. I would take beats that my favorite producers posted and write lyrics to them. Often times, the producer would share my vocals to their page and I would gain some fans. Since my music is influenced by these producers, their fan bases would end up following me and, on occasion, would want to work with me. This increased my number of collaborations.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

There is nothing more rewarding than a really good conversation. I’ll drop everything to enjoy a good talk. When people share their thoughts about my music, it warms my heart that someone listened with enough intention to talk to me about my process. From the general concept of an album to the specific frequency being dipped in the bass to make space for the kick, I will dive deep into the process of making music any chance I get. I find the most reward in teaching and learning about different people’s creative processes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mllnmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mlln_official/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mlln_official?sub_confirmation=1
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6cm9fsI3WSMNSJkJp74L1e?si=3jhu4JS9SgKI8POhkoSVTA

Image Credits
Lily Grace Atalie Day Ashlee Kreiger Alonzo Fullenwilder