Emily Warren | Songwriter of Choice for the Chainsmokers, Dua Lipa, Jason Mraz, & Shawn Mendes

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, we interview the hit songwriter for the Chainsmokers, Sean Mendez, Dua Lipa, Jason morass, and other pop music artists that dominate the charts. During today’s show, Emily Warren shares with us how she use the money that she earned babysitting to pay musicians to start a band with her while just in middle school. She explains how his songwriters get paid and don’t get paid. She explains how she gets over writer’s block. She explains why she has a vocal coach and she shares with us about her volt of over 2000 unreleased songs. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to love today’s show.

On today’s show, we have an incredible guest.

She is a super successful songwriter and she’s just getting warmed up. She’s written hits for Shawn Mendez, the Chainsmokers Dua Lipa Jason Mraz, and she made a poor life choice and decided to be on today’s show. Emily Warren, welcome on to the thrive time show. How are you ma’am?

Ah, thank you. I’m doing great. How are you?

Well, I am a, I’m just, I’m so honored to have you on the show. It’s so, it’s so exciting. And your career is, uh, it’s just beginning, buddy. You had so much traction and I wanted to start, if I could, um, asking you about this, a 15 year old version of yourself who’s babysitting and you decide to pay a reggae band, I believe, to become a Emily Warren and the betters. Tell us, tell us about this story about babysitting money and starting the band.

Yeah, I still basically my, I had written a few songs I’d just gotten into songwriting, um, because the piano teacher of mine was a song writer and I, I was watching her do it and actually had an aha moment where I was like, Oh wow, people write songs. And that’s when I started writing and after I had gotten a few songs together, um, my older brothers had a few friends who had been in a ska reggae band, um, and they were in our house one day and they were walking out leaving. And I was like, well, you guys play shows man. Now they’re all like, no we won’t. And I was like, okay, what if I pay you? And they said, okay, we’ll do it. So I obviously had no money. I was like a middle schooler. I think it was probably like 13 or 14 years old, 15 maybe. Um, and started babysitting the neighbors in order to save up enough money so that I could pay them after we did this show. So that was, that was kind of the beginning right there.

Now you, you ah, pack the house. I understand you had a lot of parents that showed up to watch the kids, right. And their friends and your friends from school and how many people were there? Your, your packed house, first big gig with your higher dumb mercenary band?

Well, I mean I’ll be honest, it’s one of the smallest venues in New York city in the village. It’s like a tiny tiny hole in the wall. Um, but there was the capacity’s probably like 60.

Okay, well

people were lined up around the door cause because like you said, everyone had to come with their parents cause we were all super young so everyone, everyone runs a group of three. So I think that was the moment that the band two thought this is just like their friends little sisters thing. We’re like, Oh wow, we’re actually, this is actually like a full show.

Well what will tell us this then? So you, you, you gained some traction. You’re, you’re kind of gigging, you’re playing, you’re doing your thing. Ah, the band broke up. How did the band break up? What happened? Did you guys, did you guys get into a creative dispute? Did you have different directions you were going? Was there, what, what, what happened

a little bit? I mean, I think I was kind of at a point where I was, I just, I mean by the time we broke up, we’d been playing together for five or six years, um, around New York. And I was hitting a point where I was realizing how important the writing part itself was to me. Yeah. Um, and I was writing the songs kind of pretty much by myself and then I bring them to the band and we flushed them out and I think, I don’t know, they, they had a lot of kind of gigging mentality and I had a lot of writing mentality and it was just kind of, we were just clashing and not regarding, and I was going to college and wasn’t really sure how that was going to shake out in terms of being like a band that was playing and touring. So it was, it was not like dramatic really. I’m going to think we’re all slightly disappointed in the fact that something so fun was coming to an end, but it was kind of the most natural thing at that point.

How did you, uh, get discovered via my space? What, what happened? Were you just a the queen of my space where you just, what, what, how did you get discovered via, via the vehicle of my space?

I don’t, I don’t, I don’t remember being particularly popular on my face. I, I just, I mean we were really kind of gigging all around New York and I think, I barely remember even using my space but, but basically, um, this woman named Rhea Pasricha who was an intern at Atlantic records at the time, she emailed, um, to my email address saying, Hey, found Emily Warren and her band on my face would love to come check out a show. And I was kind of pending. I was my own manager from that email accounts. It seemed more professional person situation. And then we got her to the show and she came and then she ended up staying, I didn’t meet her, but she sent an email after saying it’s really good, needs improved, like could use some just like locking in basically, but please stay in touch. And then we kind of fell out of touch.

I mean, I never really spoke to her again. And it wasn’t until the band split up and I was, I got to college, I went to a music school at NYU so it was kind of all these kids around me who were doing and I remember having this feeling of like, Oh, I just got here with the Sheryl or music with everyone. And I was thinking, I don’t even know what to say. I’m going to get up and play my band that’s broken up. I basically starting at zero again. Um, so I went back to my dorm room that night and scoured my emails to see if I knew anyone that worked at a record label. And I literally, I think I literally typed in records into my email to search and Reyes email came up and I emailed her and said, Hey, I know we haven’t spoken in a while.

I’ve just started kind of like breaking off by myself. I’m writing songs, certain red songs with other people. Can I send you a few or can I come in and meet with you? And she said, I’m actually not in New York anymore and I’m just switching jobs today to work literally on that day to work for, um, prescription songs in LA. Um, but send me stuff. Anyways, so I sent her music and she immediately called me back and was like, are you published or your manager, can we get you out here? And not kind of, it was where the ball got rolling, but it was all very serendipitous and kind of crazy that that’s that that’s how we reconnected.

No, I, I don’t expect you to listen to our show a lot, but we have just kind of orientate it to our audience. We have about a half million folks that listen to our show and most of them are, you know, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, aspiring, you know, musicians, people that they are trying to monetize their craft. And a lot of people maybe aren’t familiar with how huge prescription songs was and is, could you kinda share what that would be like? You know, cause for people who are into music, that’s incredible. But can you explain for the listeners out there that maybe don’t understand how a big of a thing, a doctor Luke and prescription songs was and is at the time?

Yeah, of course. I mean, I, I, that’s pretty much the point I was at when she said prescription songs. I had to Google it and look, and then it was like, Oh, Luke has done every single Katy Perry song, Rihanna, Brittany Miley. Like every song that was on there on the radio at that point he had his hands. And so it was like, I couldn’t even, I mean, and they had, they were just kind of starting the company, so I couldn’t even believe he was willing to sign someone. And it was me. It was kind of like, I remember Rhea kept saying, I’m going to play your songs for Luke. And I remember being like, there’s no way she was playing my songs for Luke. Like Luke’s not gonna hear my socks and then, and then he did. And it’s just like literally. And, you know, once I’ve looked him up and kind of knew everything he was doing, you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing his thought. I mean I’d go out and his songs are playing in the bar, go to a dinner and songs are playing in the restaurant, like complete world domination.

I don’t know if, um, if I, if I’m miscategorizing you, but you, I, I’ve spent in an unhealthy amount of time listening to your music and, and you, you, it seems like you’re like an artist song. You said like you’re, you’re, you’re a songwriter first and maybe an artist second or maybe the most thoughtful person on the planet first, songwriters second and then an artist third. How would you classify yourself? Are you more of a songwriter now? Cause you are doing your own music too and it’s incredible. It’s beautiful. But are you, uh, would you classify yourself more as a songwriter now or an artist or where would you put yourself?

That’s first of all, very kind. Thank you so much. I’m like, I think I, I always used to say that I was only singing so that I could sing the songs I was writing and then I kind of fell more in love with being like actually singing. And now I’m, for me, the act of songwriting is so therapeutic for myself and for, I think for the people I’m working with, like for me a good songwriting session is one, we actually learned something about ourselves and about each other and move forward. And so I’m, I’m, I’ve slightly detached from my own artist thing only in the sense that like whenever I feel like there’s something I need to say that no one else can say, I kind of put music out. But most of the time it’s the actual experience of the conversation that leads to the song that that’s really my, what drives me. So right now I’m mostly just focusing on working with other artists who inspire me and who are, who have the same desire to kind of like really dig for meaning in songs.

Oh, okay. Okay. So let me, let me ask you this. The song, uh, don’t let me down. That song is crazy about, and that song is amazing. It’s so fun cause it’s, it’s a, it’s um, kind of, uh, it takes you to a place, it takes you on a story, but then it has this unbelievable bass drop and you’re like, what just happened to that song? It’s super dynamic. I love that song. What does that song mean? What was that song about and what, what kind of, I know I’m not asking you to share personal conversations, but I mean, what was that, what’s that song about and what kind of conversations led into crafting a song like that for the Chainsmokers?

I will, I’d see, not personal at all. I’ll tell you because it’s such a ridiculous story. But basically Scott Harris, who was one of the me, Scott Harrison drew from the Chainsmokers, wrote that song together. And basically Scott and I had been with a big group of all of our friends a few weeks before that session. We had been at Coachella. Um, and I don’t know if you’ve been there know dr Coachella, but it’s, it’s actually like a very scary place for me at least just because there’s no service. It’s super dusty and it’s like there’s this point at night where you kind of, it’s really hard not to lose everyone you’re with. And I got lost so many times and then you don’t have any self service and you can’t find anyone. And it’s actually frightening just because people are like zombies and I dunno, I, it freaked me out.

So anyway, Scott got lost too and we were talking about this and we’re, we’re actually walking to Drew’s house for the session and we were like, what if we wrote the song that if you were at Coachella freaking out cause you couldn’t find anyone and you heard the song and it would calm you down. And we went into the session with that idea and we wrote, don’t let me down in. The craziest thing about that is literally the next year I Coachella, we were standing side stage at the Chainsmokers set listening to don’t let me down being played at coach.

No way. That’s awesome. Do you ever have writer’s block? Do you ever look at a sheet of paper and go, I are looking at a, a at your console or sit down with a guitar or the piano and go, I got nothing. I got no, Nope. Got nothing. Do you ever run into that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I have phases. I’m just like one week back into a great phase with writing, but a few weeks, I mean if we were having this conversation a couple of weeks ago had been a totally different situation just cause I get, um, I’m, I get really fatigued when I’m writing songs that are just like songs and not, um, challenging me, if that makes any sense. Like, I think a lot of the music that I love is music that kind of like makes me think about something in a new way that I never thought about or just kind of said something in a way that I would’ve never come up with myself. Um, and so I think I don’t want to contribute at all to a different kind of music like songs just for the sake of songs coming out or songs that are just catchy that don’t have much meaning in them, which by the way, it’s like a whole amazing thing that some people are really good at and do really well with. But for me, I think I, if I have too many sessions in a row where I don’t feel like push or challenge even by myself, then I get really kind of, I think about pivoting careers into painting.

I’ve just had, I’ve actually just come back from a week, uh, at a writing camp with this artist, London’s Stella, who’s incredible, um, and it just totally reinvigorated me. She’s like such a deep thinker and we kind of had all these Epiphanes through song writing and now I’m completely in love with it again. But it’s literally a roller coaster.

And her name is London. Stella, is that right? London. Stella London. Like John Lennon. Well, Hey, if you get stuck with writer’s block again, and Emily Warren, I have five kids. I’m 38 years old. Okay. I live on a L if you can picture it. I live on 15 acres behind a wall with trees and we, my wife and I will start it. When we were 18, we started our first company, which became America’s largest wedding entertainment company and I sold them, I was 27. So I’ve kinda kind of been out of the business game for a long time and I do this because it’s a uh, introducing great, great people, like use a lot of, a lot of fun. But if you ever want to write a song, you really stuck it to going, I need some inspiration. I need a song about waking up at three in the morning and stepping on kids’ toys and questioning the meaning of life and why it hurt so bad. So if you want to put some sun like that, that’s just a, that’s just, I’m just throwing it out there. You can have the rights for it. I don’t want any credits. It’s yours.

Thank you. I need that.

Okay. Just, that’s what you get to a really dark place and you’re just stuck with a woodblock and you’re going, I want a really simple song. Or okay, now you’re, you, what was your first song to hit the billboard top 40 or to hit maybe your first cut on an artist that people know? Maybe not a first, you know, I don’t think people realize what a cut on an album is like and what a hit record looks like. Can you maybe explain maybe the first big right you did or the first big hit you had and just kind of walk us through that experience?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it wasn’t even, it didn’t end up being like a huge, don’t let me down with the first like big game changing songs for me. But the first time I was like, Oh, I’m actually doing this in a real way is um, I got two songs on Jessie J’s album and one of them masterpiece was the single on it. It did its thing in the UK and kind of bubbled in the U S but it was more just like that was an artist that I so look up, looked up to and inspired by and then to have songs on her album was just like so surreal.

Where did you write with her and we did. Were you, did you travel overseas? Did you ride in Wyoming? Did you ride in a van down by the river? Where did you guys have that writing session?

I actually, she wasn’t in the session. Those are pitch songs. I wrote a masterpiece with this amazing writer, Britt Burton. I’m the first day she and I met in LA and then I mean, yeah, I guess to explain to for for people who are listening that don’t know like a lot of times, I mean most times most artists except for a few take outside songs. So writers get together every single day pretty much of the week or the week days and write songs. And those, the best of those songs get sent out to people’s managers or their publishers or directly to them. And then if they connect with it, they will cut it, maybe change a few lyrics to make it more personal. But most of most of pop music is done that way. And then there’s obviously like a handful of artists that are either always involved in what they’re doing are completely right against themselves.

Now I have to tell you how I discovered you. The writer behind the music here is, um, one of my clients is, is Colton Dixon, who is signed on Atlantic records and his A&R is a David Silberstein. And so I’m hearing all the time about, Hey, you gotta listen to the, and the writer is. So I listened to every single show, all of them, and I, and I got to yours and I went to college with Ryan Tedder. So Ryan Tedder actually played at my wedding and lived right across the hall from me. And we were good buddies. And so I heard Ryan tedders and I heard yours. And I’m like, I gotta get these people on the show. And my kids and I were addicted to song land. And I just think what Ross has been doing to shine a light on songwriters has been, cause I only know one of these things because of my relationship with Ryan back in the day. It’s fun to see the songs he released to no one really knows who writes these songs. Could you share about, um, what role you feel like Ross Golan has played in helping artists to maybe get the, I don’t know if it’s respect or the credit. I don’t, I just feel like, I mean at least from a Grammy perspective, you’re now getting credit for these things. Could you explain what of an input can I impact Ross has made on your songwriting community?

Yeah. Ross is absolutely changing the game. I mean, beyond what you said, which is the writer is podcast, which is such a good resource for everyone who’s interested in this. But like for aspiring songwriters to be able to hear so many different stories and see that it’s done so many different ways is incredible. And I think something else that Ross and I’ve spoken about and that he’s constantly thinking about is, is this kind of unfair treatment of songwriters? How they’re kind of at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of like how we get paid and how we get treated when deals are being made. Um, and I think airing that on the podcast and in his actions is really good for, for young songwriters who are thinking, I’m going to give up because I can’t make any money doing this. It’s like we’ve lost an almost lost so many amazing writers because they can’t survive, just can’t even,

tenor was working at pottery barn forever. He worked at pottery barn in like Nashville while right. I remember he landed a cut on a Bubba Sparxxx, his album called, she tried, that was the first big, a big hit for him. And we’re going, all the guys in college are going, uh, so why are you working at pottery barn? You know, you couldn’t, it’s like, you know, you couldn’t figure it out. Could you explain how artists get paid? Cause there’s no tour, and maybe I’m wrong, but there’s no song without the, the, the, there’s no, there’s, there’s no song without a songwriter. There’s no tour without a songwriter. There’s no merge with us songwriter. There’s nothing, there’s no album without a songwriter. So the songwriters are kind of like the, the, the rebar and the concrete and the foundation of everyone’s success. But how do you get paid? If I stream a song right now on Spotify, if I’m going up there right now and I’m streaming your, your new and your newest album on Spotify, how do you get paid?

It’s pretty. So basically

streaming is master side. Okay. Let me see the clearest way to explain this. Basically there’s publishing side and there’s master side. Got it. Writers have a piece, a writers and producers have a piece of the publishing, um, which is money from radio monies from think film and TV. Like anytime the song is played in a public place. Um, and then master side is song sales and streaming and stuff like that. So, I mean I would get for a stream, like a fraction of a fraction of a cent.

So I, I, I pay a company called custom channels.net. Uh, I have, I have, um, uh, there’s a company I started called elephant in the room. It’s a, it’s a chain of men’s grooming lounges. And I know you travel to Oklahoma a lot for tourism, but next time you come here for tourism to see the sod farms, um, I’ll, I’ll give you a tour and we have about 4,000 members there and we play music overhead. And I personally curate the playlist. I choose every song. So I’ve got four or five songs that you have a written that are, that are playing. And I pay about a thousand dollars a month to play. Um, stuff that you have, you know, written and other people have written. Do you get paid more off of that? I mean, you can, I mean like side effects. There we go. The Chainsmokers side effects. We added that to the playlist here, I want to say about 10 months ago, um, or maybe, maybe 12 months ago. Um, how, how do you get paid on that? Is it more if it’s through something like that or is it, do you know?

I mean, so if you’re probably paying a fee to a pro, like uh, ASCAP or BMI or something like that.

Yes. Thousand a month.

And so then they, yeah, so that’s, that’s how they, they didn’t have like tracking and that’s how they kind of split up the money that they make to people depending on which songs are playing the most and stuff like that. But the problem is a song writer can’t really make any significant money unless they have a hit on radio. Yeah. So like it, which is beyond messed up and here’s, here’s like how that started, which was back in the day when like let’s say like Phil Spector’s producing some Whitney Houston’s album. I’m making this up. I don’t even know. I don’t think he did.

Sure. Yeah, go ahead.

He would get, he would get paid a fee justice fee and not get any of the backend, not get any publishing. You just get paid a fee, a flat fee to like bring in musicians. Arrange the songs. I do that kind of stuff. And the songwriters would get all the publishing, but then as the role of the producer became more kind of integral and they were writing slash they were the ones coming up with the cores are known assumptions now. Like whenever, every day I go into a session as a producer there. So then they started to be like, all right, we need some of the publishing so we can make money on this depending on how well the song does. So they started cutting in to the publishing. That used to be just for the writers. Um, the issue with that, which I don’t believe that producers don’t deserve publishing.

I think they do. But the issue with that is the songwriters just gave up a piece of the pie, which is often an equal piece to what they’re getting now. Yeah. And didn’t get any compensation. So we don’t get any fee in return. Like we didn’t, we didn’t make a trade. It was just like, okay, now you’re getting part of we w what we normally get and the biggest problem, there’s two, two problems with that. One is when the deal is being done. Like let’s say Rihanna is taking a song that I’ve written. Yeah. Rhianna’s manager and label and all these people are only communicating with the producer cause that’s the person they’re buying the song from. So things happen like he’ll go in and cut the song with her and they’ll change all these parts and I don’t technically even have to know about it because no one’s thinking to loop me in because I’m not the person doing the deal and yet it’s song that I’ve written.

Um, so that’s the first problem. The second problem, which is the real issue is if this, this producer’s getting like 10 grand for a song, a on Rihanna’s album, let’s just say, um, and let’s say the album does okay, but like it’s track nine and it’s never made into a single and it just gets like how many streams on Spotify if that’s when it doesn’t take off at all, the producer will have gotten 10 grand. And the writer who barely had a say in whether or not that became track non on the album gets pretty much nothing and gives away a song they’ve written.

So how did you, how did you w when did you get to a place where you realized that you wouldn’t be homeless or have you gotten to that place yet because you’ve had some major rights, but the way you guys get paid is jacked up? I mean when did you get to a place where you could finally have a little bit of financial peace and you’re like, okay, cause I know you don’t do this for the money. I know it’s cathartic. I know it’s poetry. I know it’s something you’d give to the planet. It’s a gift to people. I know that a, just by hearing enough interviews with you, but when did you get to a place where you thought, I am not going to be homeless this week? Yay.

Yeah, I mean it was, I mean I didn’t make any money until a year and a half. Don’t let me download, hit. That’s another thing. It takes forever for the money to come. But I was, I was lucky in the sense that I started doing it kind of w when I was in college. So I didn’t have that much time between graduating. And when I started making, I mean I had signed a publishing deal that kind of held me over. Um, but my friend, I mean I tell this story all the time, but my friend Caroline, who I wrote new roles with, um, we had written new rules and three months later we’d written new rules and, and an ANR had come in and said there was no course that we literally just like forgot about the song. And three months later, Caroline walked into and session in London and told the producers who are friends of hers, um, I’m quitting songwriting, I’ve been doing this for eight years.

I’m not making any money. I don’t want to ask my parents borrow any more money. I have to know when to be realistic and call it. And she had canceled her next two months of session a and taken a job as a waitress and they were like, you can’t do that. You’re too good. Like the world needs you don’t give up. And like everything will be different if you just wait, like give it one more year. Yeah. Um, and they wrote a song and that they called it, this is another crazy full circle moment, but they wrote a song that they called in a year from now and literally the day two, the day that new rules went, number one on radio, she had her phone, like popped up a memory, how it does and it, it popped up the lyrics sheet from in a year from now. They had written it one year to the day.

No way.

Yeah, totally absurd. I told her the other day, I was like, you need to start writing more songs about the things that you want to have happen cause that seems to work for you.

That’s amazing

point is Caroline, who’s seriously like probably one of the best songwriters on the planet. Certainly one of the best songwriters I’ve ever worked with. One’s about to stop writing docs once she had already written new rules, which is just like, it shouldn’t be that way. Like she, there should have been in eight years of her getting cuts on people if the album enough money to survive. And so Ross is actually doing a lot for that. I mean just in terms of

are you guys going to get paid when artists perform? Is that going to ever happen? Do you see that happening? Where when an artist goes out and fills out an arena, you know, and they’re so in merge and they’re so, do you ever see a deal, a time and place where you as a writer could get like a three 60 piece of the merge and everything that’s sold at that concert?

I mean, that would be amazing. I’ve had like that I’ve had lyrics that I’ve written turned into like logos. Yeah. That again is like track 13 on the bonus version of an album that I think no money from. So come on. That’s amazing. Yeah. But the one thing that we are talking about and I’m really happy we’re having this conversation cause I was talking about this like three days ago and I need to be inspired to get it done today. But yeah, we, we’re talking about starting a song owners union where if we all agree that we won’t, we will not accept people taking our songs unless there’s a fee just like there is for producers, then there will be no like people will have to pay fees because otherwise there’s no songs for them.

Did tell me this, am I incorrect by saying the songwriting community is much smaller than people think, but it has a bigger impact than you think. I mean isn’t there basically about 500 people in that niche, maybe 300 people that are, that you guys are consistently writing what is considered top 40 but there’s not like thousands of you, right? Isn’t there about three to 400 of you,

right? Yeah, yeah. It’s even, I mean it’s a pretty small squat for sure.

I was listening.

He knows everyone or knows about everyone.

I was listening to one of the, and the writer is, and it was the second one that, that uh, Ross had recorded the quarter to the second episode and he was doing the interview and he mentioned a mod, a Royal and then Busbee and a couple of guys that, uh, Colton Dixon was riding with. And I’m like, I don’t work with a lot of pop artists at all. I’ll call it one. And uh, I keep hearing the same names and I’m like, this is crazy. It’s so small. It is like a high score. I mean, it’s like a small high school

that’s like, I mean, that’s when I first, when actually when Maria first hit me up about Luke, I ended up going down a rabbit hole on Rica pedia and just saying like you’d click one person’s name and then see that are on all these songs and see who they’d written with and click that name. And then it was like all the other stuff like say small squad for sure.

Well I have, I have three final questions for you and then I’ll let you get back to being miss, miss Wyoming here. Um, one is, um, your, you decided to become an artist or really you’ve been an artist the whole time, you know, um, but you’ve decided to release your own work. Uh, we are not writing for other people. And for some of your, some of your music, how do you decide what song to release for another artist and what song to keep? Cause like the song ritual that uh, you put out there recently? Um, or um, I dunno, I just like I give this one a side effects is just a beautiful song. I don’t see you in the video. I want to see, I don’t see you, I want to see you. And then you’d have something like ritual that’s, that’s your song. How do you decide which ones you keep and which ones you give away cause they got to like your babies.

Oh yeah. I mean, I’m pretty, pretty, most of the time when I’m going into a session, I’m detached in the sense that it’s something I care about, but just because I don’t want things to be complicated when I really want to write for myself, I kind of go with this physically for that. Yeah. There was a couple of songs on my album, two songs, a song called just click and one called not ready to dance that had been written for pitch like six years prior that I would just always didn’t just always kept being like, I don’t want this person to cut. I don’t want this person to cut it. That made me realize, okay, I obviously want to sing this song. Um, but in the case of the ritual song and side effects, um, and actually cap side song I did a while ago with a band called friendship, I had just kind of gone into to the writing session and done a demo vocal.

Um, and then they, ritual Chainsmokers and friendship all had decided to keep me on it, which I’m not always down for. It has to kind of be the right song and kind of go with my vision of myself. But um, yeah, that’s always really fun cause then I don’t have to be the one that’s like, let me sing this. So those are all great, really, really fun and obviously like it gives me a cool chance to come out and like sing one song with people at their shows or whatever it is. So that’s always just a good time.

Now I saw an interview you did with the Valerie Morehouse who we’ve, uh, recently booked to be on the show. She’ll be on the show here soon and um, your, your voice is awesome. I don’t know if you’re aware, you’re kinda sneaky. Awesome. Like your voice is I E I’m not ripping, I’m not ripping Rihanna. No, I’m not. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying like, your voice is kind of like Mike Posner, sneaky, awesome. Like I don’t think people realize how great Mike [inaudible] voices, how great your voice is. It’s really sneaky. Good. Um, do you work with a vocal coach, somebody like Valerie or do you, do, do you do it on your own? And talk to me about maybe what someone like Valerie does and do you have a vocal coach or,

yes, Valerie is my vocal coach. She is so ridiculously amazing. I, my dad never let me take voice lessons when I was younger. Um, because w I, which I actually, I’m glad he didn’t because he wanted me to figure out my own voice before I had someone teaching me. Um, and then I had, I had done a few voice lessons with like random T, I mean Valley and I talk about this all the time, but I had done lessons with these teachers who are voice teachers to the stars and all these things and was always leaving, being like, I don’t, that didn’t feel helpful or like, I don’t even know why I’m like, I can sing fine. I don’t know why I’m taking lessons, but Valerie, um, is Jews boys feature from the Chainsmokers. And so she came, I went on, I went on tour with them a couple of years ago and she, I remember just hearing her talk to him and talking to other people like, like the actual anatomy of the larynx and your throat and what’s happening when you’re singing and why you shouldn’t do certain things cause it makes it harder to sing and then you can’t hit certain notes.

I remember watching her and thinking, okay, that I’m interested in, cause the way, the only way I personally can learn anything is when it’s, when I fully understand the whole picture and it’s explained. Got it. Um, and voice lessons with Valerie are so many and she goes, there’s, it’s not just like running through scales like a lot of teachers do and then not explaining what you’re doing right or wrong. Right. It’s very scientific and very comprehensive. And I’ve literally cried in voice lessons with her cause I’m hitting notes I’ve never had before. She’s just the most incredible teacher. I felt very lucky to work with her.

Well I’m going to, I’m going to sneak in just a couple of questions then I’ll let you hang up on me. Okay? Yeah, I heard that you’ve written over 900 songs. 900 songs,

nearing 2000 now.

Okay. Okay, so I’m old school. I’m getting old information here. I just wanted to ask you the songs that you don’t release. Can I have them? I’m just kidding. But seriously, what do you do with these songs? How come we can’t hear them? Why? Why are we being stirred into deprived? I mean, we’ve put out almost 2000 of my podcasts and we’ve, we shot, we, we had to shelve a few of them for various PR reasons or whatever. But you know, at the end of the day, and that’s 2000 songs, why can’t we hear them? What are you doing?

Yeah, well, first of all, they’re definitely not all good. That would be

bogus, bogus guys.

No, I mean, especially at the beginning. And Scott, Scott Harris, who I was talking about before, I wrote don’t let me down with who’s like, we fully came up together and he’s the best, but we used to, we used to write these songs that were so ridiculous and so bad and then be so frustrated that no one was cutting them. And I listened now and I’m like, well, are we talking about, but there’s a lot of them are practice that kind of gets you to the good ones. I met a lot of them. It’s a huge disappointment that they don’t come out genuinely. And I like whenever I’m at a writing camp or I’m in a session, I always ask the writers I’m working with to play me music cause I feel the same way as you. I’m always like, these songs shouldn’t just be sitting on the hard drive. I need to here. But I, we’re all scared of releasing stuff or putting stuff out because there’s a chance that it might get cut by someone at some point. But yeah, I dunno. It’s definitely devastating. That’s definitely why I put those two songs on my album too. Cause I felt it was, if no one wants to cut these, especially I think they’re so special that I’d rather than just be out in the world than like the hope that one day Rihanna’s going to cut it.

Well, the way you’re, you’re shooting your, your view, your videos are beautiful. They’re really well done. And um, I think that I would like to encourage the listeners to check out. I, I bugged the listeners just to say, Hey, listen here, just plan your weekend. All you gotta do is just take block out three hours and just listened to all of Emily Warren stuff. But maybe we can ask him to listen to one particular song. Is there a particular song that you’ve recently released that you might say, Hey, this is something, cause we all know new rules. If you’ve had a car, you know, in the last five years or the last three years, you’ve heard that song do a leap. But you’ve heard that. We all know about the Chainsmokers. We all know about Sean Mendez, we know about these big hits. Um, but is there something that you’ve personally written for yourself that you’ve written and recorded and put out there that you would like for us to check out

with my own voice on it, you mean? Oh yeah. Um, great question. I think, um, trying to decide between two, but I think not. Okay. I gotta do not ready to dance. The one I mentioned before is like one of my, I learned a lot in writing that song just in terms of like how important to me the storytelling is. I think we know I just had so much fun putting that song together and making every single line support the idea and lead to the chorus basically. So that, that’s, um, I’m proud of myself for that one. And then the point is the other side on my album that I just feel like I wrote that, uh, actually with my boyfriend who produced it and we just kind of, it was one of those epiphany moments where we were just learning from what we were writing in the song was just kind of coming through us. So that’s another favorite of mine. So it would be the two.

Well miss Wisconsin, I uh, or miss, uh, Wyoming. Oh, it could be miss Wisconsin, miss New York. Now ms you do you kind of sound like you are from Iowa? I grew up in Minnesota and you have kind of that Minnesota, Wisconsin vibe. Did you spend some time up there or something?

No,

you just got the vibe. You could fit right in. There was fin and Bjorn and [inaudible] and all my buddies growing up. Raul shouldn’t Darfur

or the

yeah. Well thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I cannot thank you enough.

Alright, thank you. Really appreciate it.

Thrive nation. If you have yet to check out Emily Warren’s music, check out the two songs she recommended. Not ready to dance by Emily Warren and the point by Emily Warren on YouTube or Spotify, wherever you can hear great music, iTunes, check her out. A, this lady is a, is a powerhouse when it comes to writing pop music hits and just great songs. And, uh, well we’d like to in each and every show with the boom. And so now, without any further ado, here we go. Three, two, one, boom.