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

Hi Natalie, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

https://sptfy.com/GRAMMYS2023NNG

My songs on the round 1 GRAMMY® ballot for Songwriter of the Year this year were all fun creative explorations and include some deep dives.

My song It All Comes Back to You was written after I was trying to self soothe as I got back into ice skating after the pandemic. I’d sustained a back injury and had been off ice for the Covid era, and I was frustrated with myself that it felt slow going. At my peak I was able to do waltz jumps and hops and pivot spins and spirals and I could tell my legs and body just needed to reacclimate. I gave myself the freedom and time to do so, but it didn’t prevent me from being frustrated that I couldn’t just pick up where I’d left off. So the lyrics about putting one foot in front of the other and muscle memory are really all about this – giving myself that room in London to just breathe and do what I could, take it slowly. Eventually it does all come back to you. I also appreciated the romantic play on words at the end. Dana Bisignano added his own flare to the lyrics and arrangement and Laura Savitz truly did it justice.

Never As Far is another song that’s so close to my heart. A dear friend and I had both gotten swamped with work and life around the same time and for many weeks we just weren’t able to be there for each other the way we usually were. After a meaningful heart to heart, I penned this for him to remind him however quiet I may get during busy seasons, I’m Never As Far away as I seem and always just a message away. I break some songwriting formats with this one with a lengthier tag than usual but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Honestly, it may be my favorite song I’ve ever written, despite being penned well after midnight. Amy Tilson-Lumetta brought her own touch to it that just elevated it and gave it a real beauty that I only imagined in my first demos.

Knowing the Ending, Waiting Game and Mercy Jane Mile were all collaborations with longtime friends. Malukah and I did concerts together over a decade ago and I’d been so eager to work with her again, and it was truly a joy to get to work with Vito Gregoli on this one also. Lance Allen and I couldn’t quite remember where we’d met years ago, perhaps Facebook as we move in similar circles of musicians, but we’d been overdue to collaborate and this one came to us so quickly, I look forward to working with him again. Mercy Jane Mile was already so strong as Emma Gale had written it, and I was happy to come alongside her and bring my touch to it to punch up the fun and and vibe of it. It’s so catchy and it’s such a great fit to Emma’s voice and brand. So pleased with how that one turned out as well.

Natalie, 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 began songwriting when I was in single digits, making up songs in the backseat during long family drives. My mother was a professional musician herself, so sometimes (when she wasn’t driving) we would sit at the piano and she would notate my early songs formally on sheet music. It’s wild to look at some of those today.

By my teenage years I’d purchased a simple keyboard that had its own recording capabilities built in to loop song segments. I would record demos at home and make duplicates for friends. Gear for recording at home was fairly rudimentary then – manufacturers imagined most of us just wanted basic karaoke recording and singing capabilities. Most people didn’t have the means to release their own music at the time, so why would they want anything more in their view?

Fast forward a decade or so and the advent of downloads and streaming had opened a door for CDBaby, Tunecore and other digital distributors to make distribution to major music outlets like Apple/iTunes and eventually Spotify much more accessible to indie artists everywhere. Early models charged us annually to keep our albums live but now most distributors know that’s a faulty design and only charge us at initial release while taking backend percentages after.

This may all seem straightforward and old hat now, but these innovations absolutely changed music consumption and accessibility. It meant that many more musicians of all calibers had the freedom to record in their living rooms or bedrooms and release those songs to the masses. Early on it seemed labels and radio stations didn’t have much respect for those practices but over time as people recording at home on various home studio setups honed their skills these informal recordings became more intimate and clean, more radio ready and competitive with big box music makers. It really disrupted the industry, particularly as the pairing of social media also gave indie artists an easy way to pitch their music to new fans as things went viral, creating discovery of microgenres and fusions the industry at large would never have made space for on the grander scale. The old system lived and died by the record store genre panels and delineations, but now whole new genres arise from playlist moods and vibes and big label artists compete on the same platforms with people recording on their iPhones or Scarlett Solos on the go.

When you remove all those barriers – the hurdles and thresholds that left A&R and radio people deciding what music was “good enough” for their fans and listeners, you’re left with something much truer and less manufactured. It creates a broader landscape and palette and reduces the amount of time for a song to be written and released without having to go through months of refining and testing. I don’t mean to make the latter sound less valuable, there is absolutely still room for the lengthier process and full studio albums with bands and orchestras also, but now there’s room for everyone at the table and that makes it a much more exciting time musically – for both creators and listeners.

I often hear people say what they record needs to be tweaked more or that songs they’re writing feel too rough around the edges to release. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely room to workshop and polish your creations and there are so many great resources – online and in person – these days to do so. But I think many songwriters and performers also step on their own toes too often and wait for the perfect day without rain, the perfect graphics and the perfect mix and master (which may never come due to perfectionism, time constraints, resources or waning interest and the disruptions of life). At some point graduation day comes whether you answered every question perfectly or not; you learn in the process, and you stay attached during that pipelines so you hear from the fans on social media, you look at your statistics and royalty reports and see what’s tracking most. Yes, it does mean it takes more energy to be involved at every level, but that’s also so informative. You quickly find the songs you thought may be too simple really resonate with people, that there isn’t always a rhyme and reason to exactly which tracks take flight and which ones get less traction, while at the same time discovering trends you can lean into that may bring out the best in your skillset. There are so many kismet moments and collaborations to be found there in the doing.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I’m definitely a multiprong person in all my strategies, so there’s a few ways I developed and grew my social media following.

First, you have to recognize that every platform is so different by design. Instagram is primarily photos and videos, a very visual medium. Some of this is travel and happy life moments, but other times it’s humorous memes and discussing timely topics very pertinent today. It always helps to know your brand but also when to break brand and just be human and accessible. Threads, Twitter , WhatsApp and even Facebook are much more about microblogging and quick updates – headlines and quick wit. Here you want to whet the appetite of followers but mostly give them links to fuller material elsewhere – a video, an article, a song stream. For Snapchat and TikTok it’s a more casual blend of videos that may link to other bits and bites elsewhere. Video platforms (including IG) are going to draw a younger smartphone crowd; headlines and microblogging tend to draw a more cerebral and older crowd, especially on sites like LinkedIn, which has gotten away from strictly business updates and become much more personal and transparent since Covid. The other thing to keep in mind is traffic on any of these sites has lengthy dips and valleys. Returning to school or being away on summer vacation can mean a lot of loss of attention, while holidays where people are stuck with free time and may need a break from socializing with family may mean people are online much more. This can also be a great time to send email blasts that link to all these platforms. Sometimes my highest open rates are Sunday evenings as people wind down for the week ahead, Friday nights when people may find their plans got cancelled or they’re too tired to go out after a long week, and weekday afternoons when they’ve finished most of the days chores but have a little daylight left before dinner. If you’re sending to multiple timezones (and most of us are these days), posting at 3pm in Los Angeles equals 6pm on the east coast and 11pm in London – making 2-3pm Pacific an ideal time to hit all the major timezones at once for bigger updates.

The other big component is that social media isn’t meant to be a monologue – it’s meant to create and churn dialogue. If you want engagement on your posts and material you have to reply and engage with the material of others, also. Plus it’s so rewarding when you do. I have so many close friends now that I met via Instagram or Twitter, or by replying or commenting on their writing and subscribing to their updates. It’s kind of glorious that the pandemic removed a lot of the old stigma of meeting people online (that and perhaps online dating gaining much more credence). As such people have much more real conversations online now. You know it’s blossoming when it starts overflowing to other platforms. Sometimes if I’m feeling a little socially energetic I’ll also like and follow commenters on the accounts of people whose content resonates with me; if these people are saying wise and witty things on other people’s content, chances are I’d like to know them better and would love to see their content in my feed or have them engaging with what I post, too.

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

For me it’s connecting with other people and also connecting more deeply with myself. Sometimes I’ll revisit my lyrics many months or years later and find wisdom embedded that I didn’t even fully recognize at the time. Other times I’ll collaborate with someone and be stretched by trying to meld my work habits with theirs or taking a different or varied approach. That folds back into my own solo work later, being flexible and trying new things – not being a stickler for following a songwriting formula and knowing when to break the rules or relax my abundant perfectionism.

Here I’ll say two things though: you have so much energy and capability that’s untapped that just needs opportunity, structure and deadlines to come out. Don’t wait for the perfect day when it’s quiet and the birds are singing and your laptop is fully charged to sit down and do the things you want to do. Pull the car over, rejoice that a get together got cancelled and you have a little unplanned downtime, or stay up late and be willing to do something a little sloppy in the first draft because you’re staying up until 3am to work on it. By the same token, know when you need to tap others in. If you’re stuck on phrasing or a plot point or segment of writing, reach out to your friends – in or out of the industry, both are so valuable – to get their input or have them collaborate. So often they can validate or shine a light on what’s not working or where to take something next, and that adds such value and humanity to the finished project. Don’t let perfectionism stunt your growth or hamper your willingness to let something leave your hands. Give yourself deadlines (self generated or created by awards, workshops and competitions) and stick to them, even if you don’t feel the content is as ready as you’d prefer it will be. Over time you’ll get better finding beauty in ashes, sifting through the more opaque bits to find the gems that really resonate with yourself and your fans. Invite them to be part of the process in every way you can. They want to support you and come alongside you with reposting your work or passing it on to others. Art of all kinds isn’t strictly meant to be stored behind a glass, but it’s meant to be interacted with and cherished. Give it the freedom to fly free and know there’s always next time – but to have that next time, that next project, you have to wrap and release this present one.

Contact Info:

• Website: NatalieNicoleGilbert.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/NNGMusic
• Facebook: Facebook.com/NatalieNicoleGilbert
• Linkedin: LInkedIn.com/in/NatalieNicole
• Twitter: Twitter.com/NatalieNicole
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/NatalieNicoleGilbert
• Other: https://sptfy.com/GRAMMYS2023NNG For Your Consideration, NNG songs on the round 1 GRAMMY® ballot for Songwriter of the Year and Best Pop Dance Recording. https://linktr.ee/NatalieNicoleGilbert Listen to these and other songs on your favorite platforms or find me in Billboard and Variety magazines and other media outlets

Image Credits
Kasee Shambora https://www.kaseesphotography.com/