A CHAT WITH TAYLOR MARIE Contarino

Written By Liam Gillin
BY LIAM GILLIN (HE/HIM)

I recently sat down with Taylor Marie Contarino for not only her first interview with Out Jamz Music but also the our first interview here at Out Jamz Music. Taylor Marie is an up and coming R&B singer-songwriter from South Jersey who’s currently a junior at the University of Southern California. When she’s not hitting the books, you can find her in the studio, working with Universal Music Group and many more! Her newest single “Guard Up” will be released this Friday November 25 for everyone to listen. We touched on many topics such as her songwriting, having the student/life balance, and the current state of the R&B genre.

 
COURTESY OF TAYLOR MARIE CONTARINO

tell us about yourself and how you got into songwriting?

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm from Southern New Jersey, I'm a songwriter. I'm especially into R&B and pop music. I would say I kind of like the intersection between hip hop, r&b and pop music. I started writing when I was probably in the I remember, I started writing books and poetry when I was in kindergarten. And then I would be asked to present my writings to the principal. Then I ended up kind of starting to become like, more of a writer in the third grade. My teacher told my mom that my writing skills were exceptional, and he thought I was gonna end up probably being a poet or an author. It wasn't really until college that I realized that I could blend my two passions, which are music and writing.

I realized during my freshman year of college that I could write songs, not just poetry, not just articles, not just books, but I could write songs. I started going to the studio pretty often. I actually started a music blog my freshman year of college as well. I started getting involved more in actual recording sessions. When I would be at the studio, representing my hip hop blog, people would ask me if I wanted to, like hop on a track or contribute vocals or contribute ad libs or doubles, or if I would like to write the top line or the lyrics or a verse. I never knew that songwriting could be something that actually panned out for me and I've never been so excited about my songwriting future.

It was actually it was this year when I finally got contacted because of my TikTok by a company called Grassfed music. They asked if I wanted to become a songwriter for them and start writing for their artists. That was just so exciting because gathering my songwriting credits is like, my biggest goal just to keep getting credits and credits. I was lucky enough to work in A&R publishing to like songwriting. Over the summer at BMG records. I'm also working at Universal Music Group as well, doing a whole bunch of things over there. But I feel like what's really got me more into songwriting has just been getting into the studio with artists from Grassfed music. One of the artists that I work with the most is Eliana, The Ghost.

Eliana and I have been working together for a few months now. We have a bunch of tracks that are, I've written a lot of the lyrics to that are going to be coming out soon. I'm just so excited about it. When it comes to creating my own music, it's really all about the lyrics for me, making the lyrics just brings me so much joy. I'm going to be releasing my new song “Guard Up” this Friday. I released my song, “Tough Love” in March. I would say my songwriting is definitely more important to me than anything in the world.

With being a full-time college student, working with 1824, and pursuing a music career. How HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO FIND THE BALANCE OF STUDENT/WORK LIFE?

You know, I'd be having fun. I know, it sounds like I don't have any free time and that is true. The thing is, I'm such a productive person. Even when I have free time, I'm writing songs. It's like, when people ask what I do in my free time, I make music in my free time. I don't really have free time breathing, but the extra time that I do have it's me making music. It's me songwriting and making new lyrics. It's me, brainstorming melody ideas, listening to beats, collaborating with producers. If I have piano class at 10 to 11:50, and then public relations class at 6 to 10PM. I'm gonna be in the studio from 12 to 6 working on my music. Sometimes I sit in my history class and I just write like, I just write songs all the time.

I mean, the other day, my teacher was lecturing, and god bless his soul. I love my teacher, but I got a song idea. You know, as a creative when you get the idea in your head, it is really hard to get it out. It’s like I'm sitting there and I'm like, chorus, verse, hook. Here's the melody and then I'll be recording on my phone super lowkey. You know it goes so far as sometimes I have to go to the bathroom and hide out for a couple of minutes to record. If I get an idea in my mind and it won't leave my mind, I have to record it and then I come back to it later of course but I don't know it's pretty funny.

I saw that your single “Tough Love” has two versions. One being normal speed and another being a sped up version. As we know, sped up songs are big right now especially in the R&B world. As an R&B songwriter, how do you feel about this enhancing the R&B genre?

I love this question. R&B is not dead contrary to what anyone says. We have people like Summer Walker and I feel Jasmine solos, the R&B scene right now is poppin. People seem to forget that people don't want to talk about it. The thing is, I feel like what the current state of the music industry is like, we have so many people blowing up on TikTok. It's very interesting to me, because there's so many trends that it's almost like, you should never ever have to like, box yourself into anything, you should never have to restrict yourself to be successful. What we're seeing right now with the rise of TikTok trends, as a result of music, industry success, and commercial success, is people having to kind of do different things to get their music heard. You know, I saw Summer Walker a couple of weeks ago, dropped the surprise, sped up version of her album, “The Last Day of Summer.” When I saw that Summer Walker released the sped up version, I listened to it.

I was like wait a second, Summer Walker is doing something. I mean, she's my queen. Summer Walker is truly an idol to me, her authenticity of her songwriting, the rawness, the relatability. The connection that she has with her listeners and with her readers, in a songwriting sense, is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, I swear. Her song “Karma”, the sped up version, has been trending on TikTok for a while. She decided to play that commercial success and give herself the streaming success. I really respect that because she saw the opportunity and she went for it. She saw that “Karma” was trending, someone made a sped up version, so she took it and released it. Now people can listen to it on Spotify.

For example, I'm really grateful that I've created a sped up version for my song “Tough Love.” As for other R&B artists on the scene right now, I think that making speed up versions is nothing wrong with that, because the more music you put on the streaming platform, the more identity you have as an artist and that's what I'm looking at. As I'm even considering doing sped up versions of all the songs that I'm going to start releasing soon. I'm really excited about it. I'm considering dropping an acoustic version, a sped up version, different remixes. I mean, I'm from Jersey, so a Jersey club remix is definitely coming up sometime in the future.I truly think not just for R&B, but for every genre of music, dropping different versions is not a mistake. I don't believe that. The more that you offer listeners, and the more that you put out into the world, the more you're going to get back, you know?

Your upcoming single is “Guard Up” which you collaborated with Nate Pollack is coming out this Friday, what was the process of writing and producing this song like? What can people expect from this single?

I really appreciate you asking me about this just because like, it's just fun for me. All I want to do is create art and put it into the world. If I can do that, I can create more like content for people to listen to. If someone doesn't like the original version of “Tough Love”, they might love a sped up version. All I want to do is reach as many people as I can. If I can, like if my words can reach people through a different medium through a different platform. I'm happy with that. I'll just be completely honest. I had broken up with my significant other a couple of weeks before I wrote “Guard Up.” I was kind of in a weird space where I was like, “Did I break up with them because I didn't feel like they could love me properly or do I not love me properly and I couldn't accept love from them?” The song came to me when I was at a meeting when I was at work that day at the studio.

I was sitting there and I just started to get so inspired by what I was hearing from people who work in the industry that I started thinking of the melody and I started thinking of the lyrics and I was thinking about how I keep my guard up too much, and how I'm potentially afraid to let people in. What ended up happening with that is, I was just sitting there, and then all of a sudden, I was like, I think I have a song on my hands. As soon as I realized that there was a song in my mind and what I had, I started writing in my notes. I started singing and humming melodies like super low key because I was in the meeting, I started recording voice memos on my phone. As soon as my meeting led out, I literally ran to the closest Starbucks I could find. I sat there, and I just got to writing again. I finished that whole song, I still have the original version in my notebook. Then I finished it on my phone, I believe I put all the lyrics on the Google Docs. Then I started sending my melody to Nate Pollack, and then also to my mentor, Richard, and everyone really liked it.

After I sent the voice memo to Nate, he actually created a beat from the lyrics I gave him, which is something that as a songwriter, I'm just so grateful for. Just a couple of days later, we started engineering it, we started putting it together. I got all these creative ideas. In my mind, I was like, “I want to put my grandma's voice at the end of it.” Because she always gives me advice for relationships. I put her voice at the end of the track, which I'm really excited for people to hear. I also like that I'm just a big fan of inspirational words and of speech, I also actually added my own monologue at the end of the song. This song is more than just like a single to me, it's like a mini project. It contains so many elements from the breakup and from like the engineering to the ad libs to the lyrics to the music itself to my grandma's voice at the end to me having my little monologue at the end. What I want it to be is more of an inspiring mantra for people. I also know it's kind of a sad song so people can take it for what they will. For me, it's one of my favorite lyrically. It's one of my favorite things that I've done up to this point.

As we now you are from South Jersey and currently are in California so my last question is, do you prefer the East Coast or the West Coast?

I'm not gonna lie, I love South Jersey, I love Philadelphia, I love New York. I am so grateful for the time I spent on the East Coast. I'm not gonna lie to you, I couldn't have accomplished everything I've accomplished if I never moved to LA. Moving to LA opened all the doors for me collaboratively. As I have been able to meet so many people, I'm able to be in the studio as often as I want to be. You know, that's something that I'm just beyond grateful for because USC and Los Angeles have given me such an opportunity to be an artist and to be a performer. I mean,  I've gotten to perform at a bar and I'm not even 21 years old, you know? I couldn't have done it if I was still in South Jersey. I love South Jersey though. You know, I love East Coast music and the East Coast will forever have my heart and I'm forever grateful but I just know that the Los Angeles area has given me more room to grow.

check out taylor’s music and contact information here!

Liam Gillin
Previous

THE ACADEMIC’s upcoming album “Sitting Pretty”