Jake Scott’s ‘If You Wanted It Too’ is the final song in his once-a-month strategy
Videos by American Songwriter
To build an audience of his own, singer/songwriter Jake Scott decided to release one song a month for as long as he could. After doing this for three years, Scott feels that it’s time to take a break from that challenge. For this final month, he is releasing his single, “If You Wanted It Too.”
“It’s been really fun and really exhausting and I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I’m so glad I chose to do that and that it’s worked out the way it has.”
Scott collaborated with Josh Kerr to create “If You Wanted It Too,” which is definitely a song written from the heart.
“It is a sad song, it’s a heartbreak song and it’s kind of an angry song.” It tells the story of someone who has gotten their heart broken after giving everything for seven years and never getting that in return.
Before he had these three years of recording and producing songs like “If You Wanted It Too,” Scott found himself writing a lot more for other people. Eventually, he realized he wanted his career to go in a different direction.
“Although I loved that part of the job, it ultimately wasn’t my dream.”
In doing this, he got to learn more about the music industry. The biggest mistake he noticed was when artists would wait too long in between releases. This gave him the idea to start independently releasing one song a month, beginning with “Tuesdays” in 2018. Essentially, in doing this, he was always writing.
“My favorite way to write is the ‘crockpot method’ rather than the ‘microwave method.’ I’ve always got five-to-six ideas that are kind of cooking at different speeds.”
So every month when it came time to choose another song to put out, he would go through his ideas and see which one he was close to finishing. While it got stressful at times to make the deadline, this experience taught Scott that he doesn’t always need to be a perfectionist in his work.
“I think the more you can embrace the body of work as opposed to the one individual thing, the better … I think that’s a lesson I’ve had to learn over the last three years,” says Scott. “I don’t need to put too much pressure on any one thing or any one song.”
Now that Scott is moving on to new things as an artist, he has a bit of extra weight off of his shoulders, but that doesn’t mean the hard work is going to stop.
“I love where I am and where I’ve been through this, but I’m excited to dig in deep to see what else is in there.”
Scott plans to release his next project in the upcoming spring season, but until then, listen to “If You Wanted It Too” here:
