We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Liam Slater. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Liam below.

Alright, Liam 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?

The most meaningful project I have worked on so far, is the new music that I am releasing now. For a long time, I thought I needed to write music that people wanted to hear. But the reality is, in order to truly be an artist, you need to write what you want and need to say. It doesn’t matter if people want to hear it or not, if it’s what’s true to you, you need to say it. It took me a while to realize this, because the music industry conditions you to try to “write for the radio”, and those songs are very formulaic and rarely meaningful. Especially living in Nashville, where you can have your songs critiqued by numerous industry pros, it’s easy to get wrapped up in writing the best radio song, and sacrifice what’s true to you. But honestly, a huge number of songs, successful songs, never make it to the radio, so why should we be so focused on writing for the radio? The other big motivator for me to change my music was the fact that I didn’t feel authentic, which I believe is the key to being an artist. It took me about a year to break some of the conditioning that I fell for here in Nashville, and I still struggle with it at times. My brain says “no that’s not a good enough hook, the word play isn’t creative enough”, even though it’s a hook that is true and authentic to me. My song Boogeyman is my first step in me becoming an authentic artist. I talk about my views, and the way I see life today, because that’s what people look for when they listen to an artist. That song broke the floodgates for me. After Boogeyman I wrote Black Sheep and Hands Up pretty much immediately, because they were ideas that were welling inside of me, waiting to come out, and I had been suppressing them.

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?

My name is Liam Slater, I write country music. I call it “Yallternative” because it’s honestly not completely country, it’s a little bit of everything. I, as a person, am not fully “country”. I am a little country, rock, indie, folk, and americana, and my music reflects that. I believe in honest writing, which is why I love country music, I also love heavy guitars and melodies. My music combines a little bit of everything to form my sound. It’s taken a while to find myself in my music, and it started after I wrote my single Boogeyman. I didn’t like the songs I was writing because they didn’t feel like me and they didn’t feel honest. I was tired of writing the same things over and over again. A guy with a broken hard, a truck and blue jeans, a dog and whiskey. It all felt fake. Especially for a genre that prides itself on being “three chords and the truth”, I was listening to all the songs coming out and they didn’t feel like the truth. No one was talking about things actually happening in the world, and that frustrated me. I wrote Boogeyman in order to talk about the truth. I think country music needs more of that, and I’m here to write the songs that need to be sung.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I mean the honest answer is pay us a fair wage. Having music, good music, is really a privilege and it’s expensive to create, record, promote, tour, play etc. It’s tough to make a living. Especially if you, the artist, need a second job. Your time and energy are is shorter supply and it’s much harder to fully dedicate yourself to your craft. If you find an artist and you like their music or their song, send them something. Without money there’s a chance that artist will stop creating music, because they need to survive, and you will lose that artist you enjoy hearing. The great thing about social media today, and the advancement of technology as a whole, is that artists don’t need a record label to produce and release a song. This benefits the artist because they get to keep 100% of the profits from their music but it also benefits the fans. Fans now have much more buying power. They can help fund an artist they want to hear, rather than waiting for a label to push something to the fans which they may not like.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn was that no one actually wants to hear a song “made for radio”. Everyone, industry pros, fans, even other artists, say they want a song they can put on the radio. But, if you listen what’s actually being played on radio stations, not as many people like it. If you’re playing a cover gig, maybe 2-3 songs of 40 will be songs on current radio. An overwhelming majority of songs never make it to radio, and they are still extremely popular. When I first moved to Nashville, I tried really hard to create these “radio perfect” songs. For the most part they were cliche, and inauthentic but I did a good job of create what people said they wanted to hear. When I would pitch these songs everyone said “yes that could be on the radio, but it’s not what we’re looking for right now”. Eventually I got tired of playing this game, because I wanted to write something real. I wanted country music to be more about the truth rather than trucks and blue jeans. It wasn’t easy, and it took some time, but I am better at writing the truth now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tiktok.com/@liamslatermusic
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liamslatermusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiamSlaterMusic/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCYnAN128sdSdQmCLovVvzQA

Image Credits

Chris Lee