We were lucky to catch up with Leeza Maroe recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Leeza thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?
This is more of a general thing as opposed to a specific circumstance.
I started singing when I was a kid, and I never had any doubts about loving music or singing, especially not at such a young age. No one around me was involved in music professionally, so my grasp of how it all works behind the scenes was basically non existent, and my awareness of what it takes to be in the industry was completely absent.
Here are some of the toughest lessons I had to learn:
– no matter how good you are, someone will always be better
– even some of your closest friends and family will tell you they don’t like your music.
– marketing is essential if you’re trying to do anything. Artists often cringe at the thought of promoting themselves, and so do I – but that’s just where we are right now
– like 100 of your first songs will sound like shit, and then every other song you write just won’t be a hit.
I didn’t start writing music until I was finishing college, so I was way behind my peers and had a lot of catching up to do. I gave up every other day when I’d sit at a piano for hours and all that would come out is something bad or extremely generic. But after years of chipping away I’m finally writing songs I actually like. Don’t give up, do a little bit at a time, don’t listen when people tell you your song’s bad unless you yourself believe that too.
Leeza, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I currently am working in two facets of music: there’s me as a singer/songwriter/performer, and then there’s me as someone who loves to share information about music production.
I grew up in Moscow, Russia, and at 18 I moved to Boston for college. I studied music business, but never stopped singing while pursuing my degree. When I was in my third year, I decided it might be time to start writing songs, and the songs were bad and getting worse for a while. Then I moved to LA, and what do you know, we got hit with the pandemic. My roommates were all pretty invested in music production, either for themselves or for other artists, so I decided I want to *maybe* learn some tricks for myself too. So I got logic, and started tinkering on there, making little demos, trying to write that way, but it just wasn’t clicking for me.
It didn’t really click until my partner and I started producing my songs together. I wrote and sang, he produced, and as I sat in the room with him I unintentionally learned a lot of information about production, audio and Ableton. Since then I’ve been trying to make videos and post online about tips and tricks for ableton users.
There aren’t a lot of a women that are in music production. It definitely still feels like a bit of a boys club, and that’s how I felt when I was first learning it too and that overwhelmed me. Now that I have some knowledge in my back pocket, I want to make the space a bit more inclusive, a bit more geared towards women that want to learn about music production.
That being said, I am also a pop singer and songwriter, and am about to start releasing a good amount of music in the new year. We’ve been making songs for quite some time now, and now these songs have piled up so we have a good amount of content that’ll be releasing very soon. We’re also currently in the process of rehearsing for live shows, so stay tuned for those dates as well.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Here’s a lesson I learned as a kid that I really clung onto – I have to do everything alone, that is the only key to success.
Now as an adult, I realise that it’s quite literally the opposite. I can’t do it alone at all, and the only way to succeed is by connecting with other human beings.
When I was younger, there simply weren’t other kids around me that were doing what I was doing, because I grew up in Russia and went to a British school, my circle just wasn’t doing the singing thing. So for a while I didn’t have a choice but to do it alone or with my mum, and that’s the mentality I took to college. My mum wasn’t there anymore, it was a new country, new culture, new people, and I sheltered myself even more. I felt like I didn’t know who to trust, like my goals and dreams were something I had to keep hidden and protected from the outside world, so I never reached out to others or asked for help. However, as most creatives will tell you, collaboration is a big part of growth and advancement as an artist. You never know what someone could show you or teach you, even when it’s something very simple.
There is absolutely no shame in asking for help, asking for advice, asking for someone to show you how they got to a certain level. Use those resources, use your community, because there’s only so far you can go by yourself. Other people will help you open doors so you can move forward.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
I’m a huge huge podcast girly, and I’m really big into health+wellness podcasts.
Here are some podcasts I listen to, and listened to when I was first trying to move forward in my career or wellness or just work on self improvement.
Pursuit of wellness – this podcast is hosted by Mari Llewelyn, she’s one of the cofounders of the supplement company ‘Bloom’. Her company and her story is one of the biggest reasons I am who I am today, as silly as that may sound. I found her on instagram by accident a few years ago. I wasn’t in a good place at that point – I wasn’t motivated, gained a lot of weight over Covid, didn’t know where to begin or how, and had zero self confidence. Then I ran into her page and her business, and it blew me away. I started doing her workout, following her health and wellness tips, and slowly but surely I felt myself change. Suddenly I wasn’t someone who felt lazy and unmotivated – I was someone who had goals and interests of my own. I also think when you’re an artist it can be good to have interests outside of your field, because then your mind can get a break from ‘work’ and focus on something fun.
Another good podcast is ‘The Skinny Confidential’. They talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners about their success and approach to life. It is also heavily focused on health and wellness, with a strong emphasis on business.
A book that really helped me as well is ‘Atomic Habits’. I feel like everyone’s either read it or had heard of it, but it did really make a difference on how I approach my day to day life. Of course it’s not perfect, but I try to stay aware or my habits and how they build, how little changes lead to big results and even a small part of your day can be dedicated to something important.
Once in a while I’ll listen to an interview with an artist I really love, just to get inspired by their story, see if there’s good lessons to learn there, maybe apply some stuff to my own journey.
A very honourable mention – ‘Me!’, the Elton John autobiography. I already loved the man, but that book made me love him even more. I’m obsessed with his story, I love how he overcame so many different stages in his life and career, and what I really respect about him is that he knows exactly what his weaknesses are. He knew right off the bat that his lyrics are quite shit, and he didn’t sugarcoat that. When an opportunity came for him to work with a lyricist, Bernie Taupin, he didn’t say no, he didn’t let his ego get in the way. He recognised that he can go further with a partner than he could by himself, and I think that was a genius move. Like I said, other people can take you further than you ever could by yourself.
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Jack Ludwick