We recently connected with Taylor Alexander and have shared our conversation below.

Taylor , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

This question has come up for me quite a lot recently. It’s an incredibly uncertain time for those of use trying to make it in the music industry. We’re trying to balance our passion for creative work with having to become experts on changing and seemingly arbitrary algorithms and social trends to remain in the game. As much as I think about pivoting to another career I’m not sure that I could ever fully stop writing and making music, it’s just the way I’ve always communicated with myself and I can’t see myself doing anything else. Out of all the advice I’ve gotten there’s two pieces that I’ve never forgotten and they’re both relevant here, first one was “if you have a plan B you’re gonna use it” and the second was “the people who succeed in this business are just people who probably should’ve quit a long time ago”. So for now, I’m just gonna keep writing and trying to get these songs in front of as many people as I can.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a singer/songwriter from the Atlanta area now living in Nashville, TN. I started out playing in bands in my early teens all around the metro Atlanta area before moving to Nashville in 2014 to pursue a career as a songwriter. I was a member of Adam Levine’s team on Season 12 of the Voice, released my first solo album Good Old Fashioned Pain in 2019, and am now gearing up for the release of my follow up album Hymns for a Hollow Earth (8/19).

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

Just care. If you stumble on an artist that speaks to you in some way, let them know, support their work and share it with others who may also find it meaningful. Attention is now the most valuable commodity in todays economy and more things than ever are competing for it, if you can spare some of yours for something that moves you and share it with others it makes a big difference for any of us releasing creative work.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the central themes of the making of this new album was being forced out of my comfort zone in response to the pandemic in 2020. Traditionally I would make an album of songs that I had been playing in front of crowds for a couple of years at least before they were ever recorded, so in a lot of ways they would feel more comfortable or at least more “arranged”. When shows stopped suddenly and I began writing for this album I found myself unsure of my process, and so as a way to flesh the songs out more I started recording demos at home with a lot more instrumentation than I used to. I would typically in the past just make a quick acoustic demo of a song and then teach it to a band, but this time I had to be my own band. Through learning how to operate within my own limitations as a musician I stumbled on some arrangement choices that I wouldn’t have ever made otherwise and ended up really liking the direction and decided to stick with it when it came time to go to the studio and record the final versions. Sometimes the best thing you can do is change up your process a little bit and learning to not lean on my knee jerk or go to song structures and sounds helped me make something I’m really proud of.

Contact Info:

• Website: iamtayloralexander.com
• Instagram: @tayloralexandermusic
• Facebook: Facebook.com/tayloralexandermusic
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCB_VdEvZJzQMI0t2S6cts7A

Image Credits
Press photos by Alicia St. Gelais