EXCLUSIVE: Interview with YDE

You were recently signed to Facet Records, congratulations! That is so exciting! What was your experience like meeting Justin Tranter and being signed to his label?

Thank you! I absolutely adore Justin and I feel like the second we met, we immediately hit it off. I’ve spent the majority of the last year and half writing with them which has been so eye opening and inspiring as both a songwriter and human being, so being signed to their label is a dream.

You have appeared on numerous television shows. Was there a specific moment in life when you realized you wanted to act? 

I was always infatuated by the idea of completely embodying another human being’s life and living life in their shoes. Growing up, I was always incredibly reserved so acting was a way to be completely confident in myself without having to actually be confident in myself in this weird paradoxical sense.

In your experience, how do the worlds of acting and music differ or are they similar in any ways?

I think they are similar in that both are simply embodying a character, emotion, or experience to the fullest extent. When acting, you are trying to completely expose and understand this character from within the darkness and ambiguity that can come from a script, to be them. With music, you are exposing each minuscule detail of an experience or emotion or, in some cases, details to embody another human being, to articulate an idea from that perspective. Although totally different, they share the power of embodiment.

How would you describe your music without using genre labels?

An honest observation from my perspective of the world we live in.

Your song, Stopped Buying Diamonds, came out mid-October. It’s a great song with an important message. Tell me about the writing process. Did it come easy? How long did SBD take to write?

The writing process for Stopped Buying Diamonds was the epitome of a transrational experience. I co-wrote this song with Justin Tranter and Mattman and Robin and the second I started playing the primary guitar riff that you hear throughout the entire song, was the second we started on a wild goose chase. The song basically was just taking us on a journey and we had to keep up with it. It was a fairly quick writing process as far as the lyrics were concerned but the production just kept evolving as the days passed.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nCJ5ujGujw[/embedyt]

You released a stripped version, how do you go about creating completely different versions of a song (from acoustic to demo to recorded and live)? Was this similar to the original demo for the track?

As far as the intimacy aspect, SBD stripped is reminiscent of the initial demo but still much more complex. I wanted it to be immersive and to almost swallow you when you listen to it in a totally different way than the original. I absolutely love the guitar riff that lives behind the entire song so I really wanted that to shine but also wanted to give space for harmonies, other subtle guitar parts, and especially the lyrics.

With the pandemic, has being home hurt you or helped you creatively?

The pandemic has overall been super conducive to creativity. If it weren’t for the pandemic, SBD wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is today. It has also given me a massive opportunity to really get in touch with my totally self reliant creativity. When I first started writing, it was always by myself so I never had another human being to bounce ideas off of. Over the last few years, I’ve been given the opportunity to write with some of the most inspiring writers, but with that, I forgot what it was like to write and produce everything on my own. Over the pandemic, that’s all I’ve been doing so I’ve been dusting those webs out of the corners of my creativity. It’s been really fun and has helped me make some of the most experimental, vulnerable music yet.

What did you do to pass the time while in quarantine aside from music?

Aside from music, I’ve been focusing on finishing up school and spending time with family. I’ve spent the majority of my life working so to just stay at home with the entire family has been so refreshing.

Are you working on any other projects that you can tell us about? What does the future hold for you?

Music, music, and more music 🙂