We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Khallori Cosmey a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Khallori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I have been writing songs since I was at least seven. Three quarters of my life. I’ve been a musician for longer than that. The idea is that recording is a near inevitability in the career of a musician. When I reached a point in my life where I felt I could finance recording time with a producer, I found out that the idea stage and the execution stage are from two completely different schools of thought.

For months, I practiced playing to a metronome; pushing my emotionally syncopated songs into a more consistent number of beats per minute. I struggled with not only finding existing songs that sounded kind of like how I wanted my songs to sound but also with exactly how I felt about this being something I had to do. For months I banged my head against the wall of the fact that I am not a percussionist and apparently this makes it almost impossible to create a place for percussion. in my music. My producer would go, “what do you want the drums to be doing here?” and my mind would go completely blank.

Moving from being a performing artist to a recording artist caused me so much doubt at first. I had never even thought about what my songs would sound like recorded. Because I didn’t really know what I was doing, it was hard to explain what I wanted to my producer. Sometimes, I would have an idea for a song but just be too shy to explain it to him. I began to wonder if this was really something I was cut out to do. But I kept at it. One day my producer sent me a mix of a song we’d been struggling with and the guitar track he’d done for it was perfect. I started figuring out little things– how to describe certain sounds, what kind of sound quality to expect before mastering, little things like that. I started getting a little more confident, making more suggestions, and inevitably, this led to me trusting myself.

The whole process reminded me of my experience when I was nine and teaching myself how to play guitar. I didn’t think I’d ever get it up off the ground, my fingers hurt so much. But then calluses formed. My hands still weren’t big enough, but I learned tricks to fill the gaps until I grew.

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?

In its current form, my business is nostalgia. I am a musician or a singer-songwriter depending on how you want to look at it. I know that as I evolve as a person and as an artist, my focuses will change. As it stands now, I’m very much into talking about how growing has been going for me so far. I write songs about relationships between friends, family and lovers; between me and other facets of myself. One hallmark of my lyricism is that I try to write songs in a way that is authentic to how I talk. I don’t think I’m the first person to ever do this but it is. something that I associate with myself and my writing.

What I am most proud of is that I am someone who tries really hard all the time. Even when it’s uncomfortable, even when things are not going the way I wanted them to and even when other people are not necessarily on board with my vision.

I want that value in trying to come across to people who listen to my music. I think I also want the fact that feelings are complex and contradictory and double sided to come across in my music. Not because people don’t already know but because it can be healing to hear somebody agree with you on such a deep and specific level. I also hope love shines through my music, in any and all possible ways.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I think that growing up I had a lot of love for family and friends. I never wanted that to be a bad thing. I always want to be the person that’s there for the people I care about, who helps even if it’s hard, who looks inwards and apologizes meaningfully and understands and forgives. I still sort of believe in all that– the idea that some people are so important it’s okay to put your pride aside to connect with them. Growing into my adulthood, though, I reached a point where I had to pivot from putting my all into being that person.

And I don’t want this to be one of those textposts you see on the internet. The ones that are like, “I’ve always been there for everyone and no one has ever been there for me so from now on I’m protecting my peace blah blah blah,” and then it’s followed by, like, a one-hundred emoji. [not sure if i should put the 100 emoji in air quotes or just italicize that so I’m letting you guys pic. um do not include this bracketed text into the actual article lol]. I feel like that mentality plays into this victim thing where you’re the misunderstood angel and everyone else is evil and uncaring. I still want to be compassionate first– give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see situations from their point of view. Even if it isn’t transactional.

But being like that can be so consuming. Time consuming, emotionally consuming. And when you’re like that, you’re not left with enough fuel for building your art and your personhood. You don’t have enough fuel to keep growing up. I don’t know if I’ve fully completed that pivot yet, but I do know now that your life is about you. You can do things based on what other people want you to do, or what you think will make other people happy, but at the end of the day you’re the only one who has to live your life. You have to create something you’ll be proud to live forever.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

So far, it’s been real life connection, interpersonal social media dealings, and word of mouth. I’ve never really gone viral or played a show that resulted in a massive boost in streams. What I find is that my community supports me, new people I meet and connect with support me, and both of those groups share my work with others. Definitely a butterfly effect type situation. At this moment, though, I am currently more focused on building a body of work that I can be proud of and less specifically focused on growing my listeners.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khallori_/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLugYkOWZVElpiXaf-kZ9EA