How Much Can I Make? - Discover Your Dream Job.
"How Much Can I Make?" - Explores career opportunities and job advice.
If you're looking to understand the job market and want to make informed career decisions, this is the podcast for you!
Whether you're just starting out, or looking to make a major career change, getting the ins and outs of any job, is key to making informed decisions.
This podcast dives deep into what different careers are really like—what the day-to-day looks like, how much you can earn, and what it takes to succeed. You'll hear firsthand job advice from professionals who've been there, done that, and are eager to share their stories.
If you're curious about your next move, or just exploring career possibilities, you're in the right place!
Nominated for 2025 Women Podcasters award.
How Much Can I Make? - Discover Your Dream Job.
Kate Pierson - Cosmic Solo Flight
Kate Pierson - A Songwriter's Career
From “Love Shack” to solo tracks, Kate Pierson takes us on a wild, inspiring journey through her music career — from global fame with the B-52s to the creative freedom of her solo albums. She spills on working with Sia and other pop powerhouses, finding her authentic voice, and those “aha!” songwriting moments when lyrics seem to fall from the sky.
Tune in for a fun, fearless, and deeply personal look at what it really takes to build a music career that’s true to you.
Topics
2:03 Childhood Dreams
3:01 Writing With the B-52s
7:10 The Japan Adventure
9:19 Squashed By Management
10:05 Working With Sia
12:10 Collaborating With Other Successful Musicians
16:03 The Magic of Songwriting
21:40 All About Timing
25:06 Personal Stories Behind the Songs
27:00 Music Industry Challenges Today
30:11 "Syncing" Music on TV & Films
32:24 Solo Career Success and Challenges
38:16 Writing with AI?
Resources
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@katepiersonofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekatepierson/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thekatepierson?_t=ZP-8xdmAmwCqR5&_r=1
Kate's website: https://www.katepierson.com/
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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation
It's just so surprising how different ways you can write a song. Sometimes you start with a lyric, a title is the way many people write. They get a title and go from there, but the inspiration really I think every songwriter will tell you it comes from nowhere.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to how Much Can I Make. I'm your host, merav Ozeri, and today we're diving into the colorful, cosmic world of music with none other than Kate Pearson, founding member of the B-52s and a true icon of rock and pop. You know her voice from classics like Love, Shack and Rome. But today Kate is here to talk about something new her two solo albums. You just heard Pillow Queen. It's my favorite song from her album, radios and Rainbows. We're going to find out what inspires her, how she brings her wild creativity to every note she sings and what it takes to launch a solo work after decades in a legendary band. So let's dive into the music, the magic and making of it all with Kate Pearson. Kate, thank you so much for willing to do it and give us time All right Marav Always available to you.
Speaker 2:Great. I want to talk to you about your solo albums. You know there's some songs there that I love. Yes, and we just heard Pillow Queen, which has become my favorite song now.
Speaker 1:Oh good, I love it. I know you're a big Pillow Queen fan.
Speaker 2:I love this. I love this song. So first tell me what inspired you to come up with your solo albums.
Speaker 1:It's something I always wanted to do. When I was in high school I had a band called the Sun Donuts. It was a folk protest band. My father was a guitar player. I always knew I was going to be a musician. From the time I could think oh wow, I didn't know. I used to sit when my parents would go anywhere. Very rarely would they go anywhere, but I would. Whenever I was in the car when I was a little kid, I would stick my head out the window like a dog and I thought I was writing the most fantastic songs. I would sing to myself and I would turn the garbage can upside down and play drums. It drove my father crazy. And I would play the tuning harmonica and I took piano lessons and then I switched to guitar and so I always knew I wanted to be a musician.
Speaker 1:Long story short, the path was circuitous to get there. I always played music, but to get to be a professional musician the path was winding, but I arrived. I arrived as part of the B-52s and we wrote most of our songs collectively by jamming, which is very unusual. I don't know of any other band that really writes so much collectively, because usually with a band, someone maybe there's one songwriter or the band will jam and then one person is the singer and writes you know all the lyrics and stuff. I mean it can work so many different ways, but it's rarely such a collective experience. We just started the band by just one night of having a flaming volcano, and then we started jamming and we came up with a song, and then that's the way we did it from then on.
Speaker 1:We just started jamming and it was chaotic, but we'd tape it and find these great parts and put them together, kind of like a collage almost. And a lot of our early B-52 songs were just patchwork together parts, but that's what made us unique and so very unique and interesting.
Speaker 1:Our song structures were not regular, our lyrics weren't usual because they came out of a stream of consciousness, kind of collective stream of unconsciousness or the unconscious, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it it came out of nowhere, so I've always then it was since the early B-52s I thought I'm going to write a solo record, but I really lost myself in that collective kind of thing where I felt like, oh, I can't really write anything on my own, and I tried various times. I had oh, you got, can't really write anything on my own and I tried various times.
Speaker 2:Oh, you just got insecure about writing on your own.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it was, it was just a strange locked into the band. Part of it, I think, was I was afraid of alienating the rest of the band or if I did something solo. But even just writing on my own, I didn't know how to approach it anymore and I used to write songs in high school and college. Somehow I just got and we did. We were very busy, of course. We started writing and together and we wrote a first album and part of our second album. We went on a big tour right away and we were just kind of going, going, going. So not like there was a lot of downtime, but I still still. It was my dream to do a solo record and years passed and tours and many, many you know B-52s albums and so many tours. You know I just kept my suitcase open, basically.
Speaker 2:And as you were traveling with the B-52s, were the songs cooking in your brain that you thought the B-52s were the songs cooking in your brain that you thought, oh, this will be my solo album or you gave it to the band.
Speaker 1:Well, nobody really gave anything to the band. Nobody ever came in and said, hey, I've got a song, except for a few songs that Ricky wrote, very few songs that were sort of written by just singular or two of the band members.
Speaker 1:Robert Waldrop wrote some lyrics for some of our songs and so it was an exception to the rule, but I wasn't getting ideas. It just wasn't the sort of creative urge to do something myself. It was strong, but it wasn't coming to me. The long story, not made short, is that there was a time when the band had a lull and also Fred had done a solo record. He was the first one to do a solo record.
Speaker 1:And it really caused this rift. It was a time when we weren't kind of doing anything because we took breaks in between sometimes and Fred decided to do the solo record. It was a little bit secretive and it caused a rift and I got caught in between, of course, just trying to like, make it all like I do all good. So part of that, I think because we had such a family dynamic, that was part of the reason I couldn't write on my own. I felt like it was going to in my own mind anyway. It was like a betrayal. So there came a time in the late 90s, like 98 or something, we weren't doing anything, we were just sort of drifting a little bit and in between records, and it was after Ricky died in 1985.
Speaker 1:In the late 90s there was just a lull in the band and this band called the Plastics were kind of a counterpart to the B-52s. They're a Japanese band, very colorful, really interesting, unique songs, and they had a sense of humor and great visual effect. So they opened for us early on and we maintained a friendship with them. And around about 1998, one of the members of the plastics had become this huge producer in japan and asked me to be part of this project to come to japan. I was like, yeah, why not? So they also asked this woman, yuki, from judy and mary it was another huge japanese band and she was also in a lull. We got together, I went to japan, I wrote a song with Yuki we didn't sing the same language, but somehow it just worked so well collaborating with Yuki and Sakuma-san and writing these songs. And then when I came back from Japan, they sent me a bunch of tracks and said why don't you write four songs? And she'll write a few songs and we'll sing them together and you write a couple of songs together. And I just had this four-track tape recorder. Uh, I mean, I had a little recording.
Speaker 1:At that point I did have a little recording system in my house and I was starting to like my creative juices were starting to go and I wrote those songs and I flew to Japan. I was still working on them and we recorded them. It wound up going to number one in Japan. We toured all around all different cities and we called it the Noodle Tour, because I love Japanese noodles so much. You sang some in Japanese. I sang a little part in Japanese. Yeah, that was really fun and Yuki sang some songs you know sang in English too. It was very successful.
Speaker 1:And after that I realized, hell, I can write with anyone. If I can write with someone who doesn't speak we don't speak the same language and, as I said, we don't sing the same language I can collaborate with anyone. It really opened up my mind. It was like it blew my mind that this worked so well Incredible. So after that I started embarking on some writing with some different people. I got some great songs and some songs that just came to me and I had different people I collaborated with. So I had a whole album's worth of songs and this was still like late 90s.
Speaker 1:And then I took it to our manager and said you know, I really want to do a solo record.
Speaker 1:And he said, oh, you can't put it out because Warner Brothers, you're under contract to Warner Brothers and you can't put that out. And I think Cindy at the same time Cindy from the B-52s was also wanting to do something. He told her the same thing you know we're waiting for the president of Warner Brothers is going to change some BS thing. You know, really, he just didn't want me to do it because he wanted the B-52s to tour. He didn't want any distraction from that. That's terrible, I know. So he basically squelched the whole thing. So I felt really disheartened by that and then we started touring, touring, relentless touring. Again was the story of my life. We were always doing a lot of touring and I kind of put that on the back burner. I had to. And then when Monica and I, you know, we were together for quite a while and then at some point we met Sia, our friend Sia, who's a very famous now singer-songwriter and she's really known for her songwriting.
Speaker 1:We became friends and Monica said, sia, can you help Kate fulfill this dream? She's always wanted to put out a solo record. And she said, sure, sure. So we went to LA. We were also starting Lazy Desert, so we camped out there. We got a camper, we got an Airstream and I went on these writing sessions, at first with Sia.
Speaker 1:Thank God for GPS, because I would go to all these different places Studio City and Burbank and I put it I don't know where I'm going, but I'm following this GPS and I would drive. But at first I went with Sia and we would go to different songwriters that she had collaborated with and they would do the instrumentation. Well, the first song was with Sia and Sam Dixon and we wrote Every Day is Halloween, every day is what's become of me. I'm a mascara to drop, my mom has Gara-tea drops. Every day is Halloween and you ask who am I?
Speaker 1:And that's the very first song we wrote together. And he just had a guitar, a bass. I think he was just playing a bass, he was just playing bass lines and I had that title and I did have a lot of the words. And Sia is just an amazing way of puzzling together words in a different way too, and she took a lot of the words I had and we fit them. Something I learned from her, especially writing solo, is to really get a melody first. You know, that's the most important thing.
Speaker 2:Really the melody.
Speaker 1:first, and even if you have lyrics, you might think think, oh, I've got a verse is in the chorus and I've got it all laid out here. It's really hard to write a song like that some people do, I guess but if you get good melodies you can fit your lyrics into that. You might have to change them around a lot, but still it's much more interesting to do that because what people hear, I I think, is first the melody. They don't. How many people know the lyrics without the melody Right, absolutely right they hear the chorus.
Speaker 1:they know the chorus lyrics, but other than that sometimes people don't really absorb that till you know, they're really into a song and listen intently. So we wrote together Dallas, Austin and Sia and I wrote Throw Down the Roses, which is one of your favorite songs, Rob.
Speaker 1:That's right, we wrote that together. I don't need to clap your hands, I don't need a microphone to tell you, I'm better off being on my own. And you hit the last note and that is all she wrote. I don't stick around, I won't wait around for the ending. Another curtain closes and I also worked with Nick Valenzi from the Strokes on a song called Bottoms Up on my first solo record. So there were a lot of different collaborators. Pretty soon Sia's career started blowing up and she couldn't go with me anymore and I just started going on my own.
Speaker 1:I was like oh my God, I'm going to meet this person. I've never met and write with them and it worked every time. It worked like magic. Take Me Back to the Party actually was written back then too with Jimmy Harry, who's a very famous songwriter. He wrote a real big hit song with Madonna Without you, I can't face it on my own. So take me back to the party, baby.
Speaker 1:So a lot of these people were songwriters that collaborated with a lot of different people. Sia's manager arranged a lot of it and Sia had already worked with most of these people, and then he suggested a few people that she hadn't ever worked with worked with most of these people, and then he suggested a few people that she hadn't ever worked with, and one of the people I worked with was Chris Braid, who turned out to be one of my main sort of sources of collaboration and we really hit it off and he had a very beautiful chord changes that really resonated with me. So I felt like I could write really great melodies and I wound up writing four songs on Radios and Rainbows with Chris Braid, because I gathered four guitars and microphones the first solo album and I gathered together the songs, a couple of songs that I wrote when I was talking about that solo album that my manager was squashing. So I had written a song called Always Till Now and I wanted to put that on the album. So I re-recorded that.
Speaker 1:I met him at the laundromat. He flashed me a smile. We sorted out our dirty laundry and talked for a while. We put the money in and watched our clothing spin. I kissed him by the folding counter. Then we both agreed we would always be Always, always till now. And I wound up doing all the songs with Tim Anderson, who I wrote Pilla Queen with, and he has a studio. He was in a band called I'm a Robot and we worked in his studio in LA and that was really fun. I had a little sort of job where I drove on Sunset all the way to his studio every day and we would write and record and it was just so magical and so much fun. So it was all produced by Tim Anderson, so it was more homogenous. I guess you know the sound of and I really don't believe in that so much anymore because the B-52s had several different producers on Cosmic Thing two producers, that is, but not Rogers and Don was.
Speaker 1:So it really doesn't make that much difference unless you have someone that their production is very heavy-handed or they have a signature style of production, like Brian Eno or something, when you write songs your voice is an amazing instrument by itself.
Speaker 2:Thank you, but do you use any other instruments?
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean the magic of songwriting, I mean, aside from the collaborations I did with other people. Most of the time again, they would have the instrumentation and I would just listen.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times I didn't want to listen to it over and over. I would really want to record what my first impressions were on the very first time I would hear it and I would record that. And a lot of times that's when a lot of magic happened, because you don't expect what's coming in the melody and you would hit on. I would hit on some things that were just more unusual, type melody, something I'd be surprised by what was happening. So, and I would just jam to that. My ear would go to lock in with the melody and the chord changes in a different way than if I just heard it over and over and over again. I might just get a melody just stuck in my head and I couldn't get out of that. This way my voice could go in different directions. It's just so surprising how different ways you can write a song.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you start with a lyric. A title is the way many people write. They get a title and go from there. But the inspiration, really, I think every songwriter will tell you it comes from nowhere. You don't know that it's coming. You know it comes from your life experience and from, yes, all the things in your life, but it's not necessarily something you expect.
Speaker 1:It would be surprising, like when I wrote If you Give your Heart to Science which was with a track that Chris Braid had written and the melody was so beautiful and I just I did think of that title all of a sudden. And then it became about my good friend Jeremy Ayers, his death, which is something I never planned, I never thought in a million years. Yeah, I'm going to write about how he died, but he died in his garden and he did donate his body to science, and so I wound up it just unfolded when I was jamming with this track that was so beautiful. It just the lyrics just came out, and that's how it kind of works with me, anyway, I think this first impression of the music I hear. But now things have changed. Now, all of a sudden, I'm getting sort of back to where I was, way back.
Speaker 1:As a kid as a kid, wow. And songs have just come to me while I'm walking Loki in the morning, or just Loki is the dog.
Speaker 2:Yes, Loki is our German Shepherd.
Speaker 1:Monica and I have this big, beautiful German Shepherd and we walk him every morning in the woods and a lot of times, just I'm walking, walking and all of a sudden a melody will come to me and I have a little recording app on my phone and I record little snippets. Or sometimes I'm in my studio just playing the piano or guitar and that's the way an inspiration will come to me. A lot of times a lyric will come to me at the same time. It's fascinating how that happens. And my wife, Monica, suggested I write a Christmas album. Right, and I thought you know I's.
Speaker 1:I have one Christmas song I wrote for the Levon Helm every year, this beautiful concert that we give that's a benefit for the women's shelter and it's a holiday themed. And I wrote this Christmas song called Christmas in a rocket ship. And when Monica said write a Christmas album, I thought you know, that's kind of. How can you write a new song about Christmas? There are all so many songs about Christmas, how can I write something different? Well then, once you put that seed in my mind, I started coming up with all these crazy songs about Christmas. One's about elves and one's about a magic Christmas tree and one's about what you do on a snowy day and they're not children's songs, but they have a sort of naive quality to some of the songs some of them, but I have seven songs so far.
Speaker 2:Wow, and how many do you need for an album?
Speaker 1:10. So I have seven, going on eight, and I find it a little bit limiting to say I have the intention of writing a song about something specific, because I feel like, oh man, that then I might not be able to write that, but I want to write a song about holiday food. You know everyone's different holiday. For Hanukkah, what do you have for Hanukkah.
Speaker 2:That's a great idea.
Speaker 1:And why the whole reason for having holidays is for food.
Speaker 2:How do you know when a song is finished and it's done? Because with writing, any kind of writing, you can go back and polish it again and again. How do you know when it's done? Because with writing, any kind of writing, you can go back and polish again and again. How do you know when it's done?
Speaker 1:Well, when you have to record it, then it's done. I just finished recording this song, the Elves, a very fun Christmas song for all ages. But I still was tinkering with the lyrics in the very, very last minute and when I was in Marco Benevento's studio and Lee Falco was playing drums and I said I can't get this one line. It's just so awkward. I want to rhyme with Blitzen, because it was a line about the reindeer.
Speaker 1:You know Donner dancer and Rudolph Donner dancer Blitzen. And anyway Lee Falco chimed in hey, what about this? So that was that finish to the song, because that lyric he just suggested.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Now that I think, well, it's done now, right.
Speaker 2:Because I recorded it.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can always go back, but you just don't want to overthink it.
Speaker 2:Why was it nine years between guitar and microphones and the radio and rainbows?
Speaker 1:The reason there was such a gap and I wondered that myself, because people have asked me that so many times, and I'm like, oh, I was busy. But I looked at my calendar before you got here and I was like started with 2015. And I was just, you know, I pressed on day, day, day, every week and it was like going to LA, going to Vegas, going to Houston, going to. I went through every year until I got to. I think it was pandemic lockdown, was 2020, March 2020.
Speaker 1:March 1st, right, yes, 2020. I got to that date and up to then I had been touring so much and I started pulling songs together in July of 2020. And then, September 26th of 2022, we did a farewell tour and then we had our Vegas residency. So in between that time during the pandemic, I was pulling the songs together. I didn't want to put it out during the pandemic. It just felt like not right, and so I wound up finally getting it all together. I had to re-record some things.
Speaker 1:I worked at one day, a couple of days, in the studio with Tracy, who's the bass player for the B-52s since Cosmic Thing, and Sterling Campbell, who's also been a drummer with the B-52s since Cosmic Thing, and Ken Murie, who's been with the band quite a while. So we re-recorded a couple of songs that were demos. And then we had some time and I said let's just jam when I've never written anything with them. So I said let's just play around and they started jamming and I came up with this song, Dream On. And that's another unexpected thing. They were just starting, you know, playing bass and drums and keyboard.
Speaker 2:Oh and a song came out of it Came up with the song Dream On I didn't have the title either.
Speaker 1:You know I didn't have anything. I didn't have the title either. You know I didn't have anything. I didn't go through my list and think, oh, I'll try this. You know this title. It just came up Dream On and a song, an anti-war song.
Speaker 2:Hearts and minds and oil mines. Of course I know you have fans, thousands and thousands all over the world. When you write a song and you want to come up with a song, do you think about the fans and their expectations?
Speaker 1:No, you can try. I think a lot of people try to imitate some other. Something a recent hit and I'll make it sound like that and that could work. But when the B-52s did, we had our after ricky died and we thought we were. The band was at its end and we started writing cosmic thing. We actually made a vow that this was not going to be for radio or a hit, it was just for us.
Speaker 1:It was just healing and that was the most kind of healing experience. But it was also a success because it came right from our hearts and that it has to come from your heart, I think, and it has to come from this place of pure creativity, without kind of thinking of commercial value now, because you know, I really, I really all I want is for people to hear my music. Yes, I want that, but my goals are different, you know, in terms of not really I don't want to go on a big world tour and I don't want to. I just wanted the music to be heard. And it's so different now the landscape of how you can get your music out there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, everything's different. I want to ask you about that, but before we go to that, I want to are there any songs in any of the solo albums that you have that is particularly personal to you?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, which one Higher Place is very personal, because I was in a relationship before Monica that was emotionally abusive Again, not planned to write a song about that, but I wound up writing a song about that. That's about being abused, but but finding this higher place and also finding empowerment and other women, and that's not a thing that I planned on either, so that just came out too, and that was just a kind of amazed me.
Speaker 1:But I wrote that to a track that Chris Braid had and the chord change was so beautiful and it just came to me Take it To A Higher Place. And it's very personal because it starts out with this lyric I was abused, feeling so wronged, I didn't know I could be strong, and that's the most personal lyrics I've probably ever written. I was down, I was down down. Take it to a higher place. I wanna take you there. Take me to a higher place. I want to take you there. Take me to a higher place. Now I'm walking on air. I'm skipping on stars. Always Till Now is about a relationship I had too long ago with the artist Tim Rollins, and then the Beauty of it I really wrote for Monica because I felt like that's the song where together we're sort of walking on treetops, and so I feel like a lot of the songs were that I wrote for this album were the most personal.
Speaker 2:Money wise. What does it take to make an album today?
Speaker 1:Not a whole lot People, a lot of people now, which is that's surprising. Not a whole lot People, a lot of people now, which is that's surprising. Complain as we may about technology and the oh, the record companies and the record stores, and all this stuff is gone. And I don't miss searching for, having to search for a pay phone, that's for sure, but the technology now allows anyone to make a record in their bedroom. Basically, I mean, think about Billie.
Speaker 2:Eilish, Billie Eilish yeah.
Speaker 1:You can have a simple, really simple setup. Now, with the technology, you could just do it all on a computer basically, but I really like having real instruments.
Speaker 2:And what about releasing an album? How do you release? It seems like there's so much out there. How do you stick out?
Speaker 1:That's difficult. I spoke to several people who are in the industry and pretty high up in record label land, and one of them told me we don't sign anyone unless they have a presence on TikTok and have a lot of followers for their music. It's like an audition now. I mean record labels used to have what they call A&R people who would go and be. They'd have an ear for music. They'd have an ear for music, people like Seymour Stein, who would be, or Chris Blackwell, who would know how to sign someone. They'd hear somebody that was unknown completely. And now, basically, you have to do it yourself. You have to get your own audience. You have to put your music, write music, get it out there and if you can get an audience and following on TikTok, then you can get the interest of a label, which and a lot of people don't even bother with a record label because you can put it out yourself too. Right, did you put out yourself your solos? No, I'm on. It's called Songvest Records.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And so it's a little label, but it's been very helpful to have that. I just felt like it was nice to have. I mean, they did the vinyl, they did the CDs, they have distribution.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a different story, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's nice to have a small indie label, but you can put a lot of stuff out yourself.
Speaker 1:Some people think, oh, it's so sad that you have to get on TikTok, but it really is just like a giant audition and right right you know you used to go and play and you'd play in clubs and then you'd start getting an audience and if people liked your music and you started getting crowds, then the record labels would be like hmm, I think when the B-52 started record labels thought what the hell they sound so weird, but they've got a huge following. Kids are loving it, so we'll sign them. But it is really hard to get through the noise.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's incredibly hard and it's mostly young people on TikTok and you can do some stupid things on there and get a million followers to just kind of try clothes on. Maybe I'll try that. No, but how can you monetize a release today? I mean, there's only streaming. I pay monthly to Apple Music and I don't pay you for your song.
Speaker 1:Well, this is the sad part, right, you really can't. I mean, you really. The only way you can monetize it is if you have a monster hit and you have millions and millions of streams, because a million streams won't get you much. People mostly make their money touring, and that's why you see people touring all the time, and merch is a big thing too, selling merch now, I mean, a lot of artists rely on touring and merch. That's the only way to make money. Wow, unless you, you know, are Beyonce or you know you have a huge monster hit. Also, advertising sync, they call it, you know. So you have some kind of song in a movie or a TV show. It's still a great source of getting your music out there and getting you know income.
Speaker 2:TV and commercials, and film is the big money right.
Speaker 1:It's good money. It depends on who you are, how much they're going to pay for your song or how big a hit if it's a huge hit, but it's not that much. They picked Rome for this Marriott Bonvoy ad and they re-recorded. So that's another thing. If they re-record it, you get less. But also, unless they use the original, and if they use the original, Warner Brothers owns the Masters.
Speaker 1:so they get half of it. Half, yes, oh ouch, a lot of like. Taylor Swift just re-recorded all her songs. Yes, and that's the reason because now she owns the masters.
Speaker 2:Pillow Queen should be sold to some sort of not my pillow guy, but anything else If my pillow guy offered me a million dollars, I'd say no, fuck off pillow guy.
Speaker 1:But yes, I mean it's hard. I think it's hard because you can't really control it. It's really hard you can't pitch. Because they're creatives too. Amy Sherman Palladino did Gilmore Girls and during the pandemic, monica and I had never seen it and we decided to watch just like a million seasons. And they wore B-52's t-shirts, sometimes in some scenes Go-Go's t-shirts. They played a ton of our music. They played some of it in the Marvelous Mrs Maisel Like she really likes those 80s bands and so that was just because of her. You know her taste and what she liked.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you need to get lucky. So, yeah, you just really need to get lucky. And if you have a hit song, then it's likely to be used. Like Rome has been used a lot and especially and they re-recorded this version of Rome it's unrecognizable, it's very soft. So that's kind of really nice, because it doesn't necessarily associate that song with Marriott. Every time you go to Marriott you think, oh, rome, the best thing with Rome that I saw was on NASA TV.
Speaker 2:They had footage of. Mars and the rover was going and they were playing Rome.
Speaker 1:I love that I literally got goosebumps when I saw it, I saw that and I just that was the best use. That was amazing, mars sync Right.
Speaker 2:So what surprised you the most about your solo journey?
Speaker 1:How much fun it was, how liberating and not really stressful, although there's some, you know, just trying to get it all together and finish it and everything's a little stressful, but basically it was just fun.
Speaker 1:Like I felt liberated, I felt like wow to create, to be able to create songs outside of the B-52s. It just felt so good and it was so much fun to work with other people and collaborate and especially the songs I've been writing just on my own from my own head. The whole thing. That's been kind of a new development. So I'm just really reveling in.
Speaker 2:You played the solo music and the audience was singing along and I was wondering how do they know the lyrics already? I'm glad and you played the new album. Does it excite you when you see that? Yes?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, if they know a song, especially, yeah, my solo recordings and people do. The songs have gotten out there and they're played on radio and people dismiss. That's another thing. Record companies do not have radio departments anymore and I was like to my label hey, let's you know, I want to get on this station and that station, like, oh, we don't even, we don't care about radio anymore at all because it's all about TikTok and getting you know social media. I still think radio is super important. I hear a lot of music and a lot of new music from radio and listening to my independent WAMC, womr, the Outer Cape Radio, fmu and just all these WDST, radio Woodstock and Radio Kingston, they play really great music, they have really great music programming and it's eclectic. It's just a good source for me of hearing new music. So I can't even fathom my mind, cannot wrap around that radio is not a good thing to do. What would you say?
Speaker 2:is the biggest challenge of releasing your own and being on your own without the backing of the band.
Speaker 1:The biggest challenge is, I think, getting live shows, because someone just told me I have a friend who's just in a. There are two of them, two musicians, and they said they were trying to get club dates and the club wouldn't book them unless they could guarantee they could sell X amount of tickets. How can they guarantee it, I don't know. But basically for my solo shows I had to really drum up my own. I mean, I had a publicist. She's great, you know, she would suggest things, I would suggest things or try to do interviews.
Speaker 1:I'd have to hustle to kind of make sure people knew about the show. It's not so much they wouldn't come, they don't know about it because there's so much going on. There's Bands in Town. That's an app that you can put in your favorite artist and you'll get an alert if they're playing nearby and stuff. But there's so many venues, even here in Woodstock, I can't keep track of all the different things that are happening. So to get your music out there, to get people to know that you're playing and then get the audience in, and also the cost of paying musicians Unless you're a band and it's all for one and one for all, and if you go do a gig and you don't make any money, then you know you all share in the no money.
Speaker 1:But I have to pay the band, you know, and I want to pay them. I have to pay the hotel room and the travel and the rehearsal and as a solo artist, yeah well, you would get all the money whatever comes in, but it's hard to even break even, I think, for a solo artist now to especially an indie artist starting I don't know how.
Speaker 1:How do they make it? Just, I guess, in a way like the b52s did in the beginning, on a shoestring, you know, or you really have to pump your social media, you really have to invest your time in that and get out there, maybe and play live. But that's like I said, that's expensive. I know people who are folk artists and they play folk festivals and they play little smaller venues and they make a living. There are all sorts of ways to make a living, even if it doesn't get you rich, but just to actually make a living as a musician, even if you're a wedding band. Or I just played at a friend's wedding and there was a wedding band. I sang when they were coming down the aisle but I sang with this smaller band that played while people were being seated. And then there was a reception wedding band and this was in Mexico. But you know, people can make a living playing weddings, playing bar mitzvahs and whatever. So I mean, it's rough, though.
Speaker 2:It's hard. You've been at the top of all of it with B-52, but what success looks to you now?
Speaker 1:I think success for my solo record is just the satisfaction of getting it done, writing the songs, getting them out there. Success would be to have more people hear my music. Success would be to get a song on a popular TV show or ads. It's a little dicey because you know what product is clean and clear anymore.
Speaker 2:You don't know, you don't want to sell soap, necessarily, but at least soap is clean.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think success is having people here and, like you said, people singing along. Being able to play live and have people come and sing along that was a joyful experience when I could play live. I felt exhilarated after that show at City Winery.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was an amazing show. Yeah, it just felt great and have friends come Standing room only and people were crazy. They didn't want it to stop, I know.
Speaker 1:And it's just fun getting that reaction from the audience. And of course I did play a couple of B-52 songs and I played Candy. But I know that people really appreciated my music and the solo music. So that's really. I think that's success.
Speaker 2:You know, when I see people singing and coming to a show, we were talking a lot about your writing process and all of that. What about AI? Do you see songs being written by AI? Do you think you could use AI to write songs?
Speaker 1:I fooled around with just for fun, because friends of mine were writing songs for a coffee house that friends of theirs opened and they had to write a whole bunch of playlist of songs. So they use this AI and they said it really worked out for like jingly songs about coffee. But I've tried it for lyrics and it will get better, but for now it's clunky, you know. But you can get ideas. You know what rhymes with such and such or what I mean you can say to an AI write a song about such and such and it will come up with verses, many verses and stuff, but it's like it doesn't sound natural.
Speaker 1:I'm already so sick of ai. It's just like the, the photo thing that just came out, where there are apps that are accessible to anyone, where you could take a photo of. I'm sitting here and now I'm diving into. You know I'm changing into a firebird, right, and I'm already sick of that. Everything could be manipulated. You think AI can fake your voice? Yes, it might sound robotic right now a little bit. I can always tell when something's an AI voice. I can always tell Marav when it's AI, but soon I'm worried because it's so unregulated crazy world we live in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, thank you so much. I wanted to do it for a long time because, for myself, I wanted to know the story behind a lot of things, and I'm glad I got the chance.
Speaker 1:Thank you thank you very much. Your podcast has really been amazing, thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at howmuchcanimakeinfo. We would love to hear from you. And, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.
