We were lucky to catch up with Kara Connolly recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kara, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

In all honesty, I wish I had started my creative careers later. When speaking of my creative careers, I am not referencing working on the crafts of either acting, singing or songwriting. I solely mean the pursuit of turning those crafts into a business.

I’ve been incredibly ambitious from a very young age, and while that has served me well in many ways over the years, I do think that it prevented me from fully experiencing childhood, as well as my adolescent and young adult years. I missed a lot of high school driving up to Los Angeles from San Diego for acting classes and auditions. Trying to catch up on course work or make up for classes was quite stressful at times. At the end of the day, I was driving the ship and it was my decision. I didn’t have stage parents pushing me to perform or audition. The decision to work while in high school and audition was on me. That said, I think my ambition has gotten the best of me at times. I look back and I wish I gave myself more time to experience the arts for the enjoyment of it rather than feeling the clock or pressure to succeed.

I had an awareness at even a very young age that many successful people got started in the entertainment industry as children so at 15 years old, I already felt “behind.” I had acting coaches who would say that if you didn’t have a major breakout acting success by 18 years old, that it just wouldn’t happen. This isn’t a positive or balanced outlook.

In college, I decided not to study abroad because I had an acting agent in Los Angeles that I worked very hard to acquire. I felt if I went abroad for 6 months, I would lose out on opportunities or potentially get dropped. In retrospect, 6 months is nothing and the experience of getting to live abroad amongst friends and like-minded individuals is invaluable.

There were many times in college that I chose to miss out on festivals or fun activities with friends because I was shooting a project or pursuing my career. I think as I’ve grown, I realize that a career is lifelong and that those phases of life such as childhood, high school, or college are very much temporary. You can’t get that time back.

Ultimately, I feel mixed on it because I’m not sure I would be where I am today without the level of effort, focus, and ambition I put in at a young age, but I do feel like the pressure and stress that came with it wasn’t necessarily healthy for a young teen to go through during such transformative years. It’s hard to wish differently now because it all made me who I am today, but if I could give any kids or teens advice, I would suggest fully experiencing whatever phase you’re in and practicing art because you love it. That practice will come into play when you do decide to start working. There will always be a time to jump in and pursue it as a career.

All that said, even if someone had given me that advice at a young age (which I don’t believe they ever did), I’m doubtful that I would have listened. I was too headstrong and ambitious and sometimes we need to learn through experience.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a singer, songwriter, and actress based in Los Angeles. I write songs for both myself and other artists, as well as Film, TV, and Ads. As an artist, my music is storytelling driven with pop hooks, dreamy guitars, high energy vocals, and lush backing tracks. To me, fun and vulnerability are not mutually exclusive, and so I love to write bold lyrics that, I hope, simultaneously elicit wisdom, while examining my innermost thoughts and fears. My upcoming new album, California Queen, is centered around self-discovery and dancing in our own power.

When writing for other artists, I really try to step outside of myself and act as a vessel for that unique artist and their stories/experiences to come through. We talk for a long time and I tend to write incorporating words that I hear that person use while speaking. I always deeply listen to any references provided, even if I’m not familiar with a certain style of music. I think that sets me a part as a writer. I’m never pushing my own narrative or agenda to get a song that I want out there because I already have my own artist project for that purpose, and I think that’s why I’m often writing songs that sound very different from one another genre-wise.

As an actress, I am often drawn to protagonist roles that involve an unlikely hero, nonconforming character, or someone who is resilient, persistent, and empathetic in their pursuits. That said, I’m always open to exploring different stories that inspire me.

I got into the arts because I felt they provided either an escape or therapy to me when going through hard times. Stories make life so much more interesting and magnificent than the mundane. They take the most interesting moment in an experience and magnify it for all to understand. I think that’s very special and I absolutely love it. To me, creating and storytelling make life worth living.

My greatest hope is that I can entertain and empower people all around the world with my creativity.

What is your ultimate goal?

My goal is to simultaneously entertain and empower through all that I do. I often write about my own life lessons and experiences and I hope that distilling those lessons into something fun, hooky, and memorable can help others along their own paths. I hope that my stories remind others of their own resilience, strength, and self-worth. Sometimes we need positive reinforcement that we have the right perspective, are on the right path, and can change our thoughts or situation even when it’s incredibly hard. I hope I can deeply connect with other individuals who relate to my journey or help them to see something from a new perspective.

Is there something you think non-creatives may struggle to understand about the creative path?

I think that non-creatives tend to think being an artist is all rainbows and butterflies. I’ve seen this with the SAG-AFTRA strike. Some of the comments I see on social media like, “Oh boo hoo, all the rich actors are crying again,” or “Actors deserve to be broke because it was their choice to do something so unrealistic and fun. I had to work a terrible 9 to 5 that I hate to make money,” or “Making millions of dollars at your concert just wasn’t enough, huh?” make me realize that there is such a misconception out there about what life as an artist is actually like.

Reading those types of comments, I was so confused. Which one is it? Are we totally broke due to our poor life choices to pursue a career in the arts and thus must endure inevitable failure? Or are we so rich doing something “easy” that we’re just ungrateful and crying into our piles of money? The vast contradictions I was reading about artists on social media was shocking to me. The truth is neither or somewhere much more nuanced and in between.

Many artists do still work multiple day jobs or 9 to 5 careers to fund their artistic careers, while pursuing art after-hours long into the night. We aren’t paid for auditions, but are expected to drop everything day-of to learn pages and pages of dialogue and shoot the audition tape within a few hours of receiving notice. Sometimes we prepare certain requested scenes or songs for hours or days and when we arrive at the audition, they’ve chosen to completely switch up what they’re asking us to do. Songs we are asked to write and record for Film/TV/Ads are often done on spec and only the one chosen will get paid. The hope is that, eventually, that sacrifice and time and hard work spent will be worth it and that we will be able to support ourselves with these passions. That is impossible with the current landscape. It is important to note that as a SAG-AFTRA member you have to make $26K a year to qualify for health insurance & that 87% of union members don’t qualify annually. Most creatives affected are not the top .04% so the idea of rich actors crying into their money is a fallacy. Regardless of how one feels about the choice to go into the arts, shouldn’t working hours towards a big corporation profiting off of your work demand at the very least minimum wage?

I hope that we can find a way to properly value creatives for our contribution and work. It wasn’t until I got deep into the music industry (truly the Wild West, folks) that I fully understood the powerful impact SAG-AFTRA has on protecting me and my fellow actors.

As a singer-songwriter, I’ve experienced first-hand the exploitation that comes along with a career in the arts and a big dream; threats that a million others would jump and take my spot if I don’t accept bad deals, payment in “exposure” bucks, months (or years) without contractually agreed upon payment after the completion of a job, requests to pay to play opening spots on tour, low low payouts on streaming services, managers, producers, and labels double dipping into songwriter’s royalties despite not being in the writing room, labels “believing” in a project and asking for 50% (usually way more) of master royalties after something already pops off, despite not taking the initial financial/emotional/energetic risk to create and promote it, the list truly goes on and on.

The shift to streaming services in both the music and film/television industries has undoubtedly changed the business models our industries have run on and agreements absolutely need to reflect 2023 and how significant that shift has been. It is insane how archaic some of the expectations are (and just how low the payouts are) and, of course, big corporations want to keep everything as is because they greatly benefit. The impending major shifts headed our way with the use of AI must be considered now as well, if we don’t want to be stuck in a newly outdated model only a few short months or years from now.

It costs money to create art and yet the expectation is that art will be provided free of charge. If you think about it, we consume content on YouTube and TikTok without a pay wall and services like Spotify only cost $11 a month and pay out about $0.003 cents a stream, which is then split between distributors that get music up on the platform and all other parties involved. Even songs that do succeed (which is challenging to accomplish in a landscape that is inundated with content) still leave artists in the red due to all of the above.

If you support artists of any kind, please know that the combination of the manner in which we all consume content and the way the industry operates and exploits creatives, dangling our dreams like carrots, makes it hard to continue doing this, even when consistently working and “succeeding.” If you listen to an artist regularly or love what we do and feel it positively impacts your life, it means the world to us when you buy our merchandise, share our music and/or let us know how you feel. A world without art isn’t a world worth living in. Artists reflect the human experience!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.karaconnolly.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karaconnolly
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mskaraconnolly
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/mskaraconnolly
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/karaconnolly

Image Credits
Betsy Newman and Emily Hafele