“I come from a small town in Alabama called Gadsden and there isn’t much of a music scene there,” Keegan Bost told American Songwriter.
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On Monday night, Bost became the newest winner of NBC’s ‘Songland,’ the show which features songwriters pitching their songs to a panel of celebrity ‘producers’ — Shane McAnally, Ryan Tedder and Ester Dean — and a guest artist. This week, the guest was the megahit pop writer Julia Michaels, who ultimately chose to record Bost’s song, ‘Give It To Me.’
Bost began songwriting when he was 12 years old, but being from such a small town left him with few resources for sharpening his craft. Eventually teaching himself how to write and produce, it wasn’t until season one of ‘Songland’ that he got a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of big-time songwriting.
“Watching season one of ‘Songland’ was really exciting for me,” he said. “Especially living in a small town like Gadsden where performing is already ‘out there’ enough, people have no idea about this whole other world of songwriting. When ‘Songland’ aired and I saw the whole process of songwriting I was like ‘finally! I can finally see what goes on behind the scenes.’ So, I hopped online and Googled ‘Songland submission.’ I don’t think I put a ton of thought into which songs I was submitting, it was more so ‘let me throw out this huge net and see if anything catches.’ I probably submitted around 15 songs. Nothing happened for about two months, but I eventually got an email inviting me to come out to Los Angeles to tape an episode.”
Yet, while being from Gadsden limited Bost’s industry experiences, it certainly didn’t limit his writing capabilities. An imaginative and narrative-driven writer, he used his circumstance to develop a unique method for his songwriting.
“For the performance side of things there really isn’t much to do in Gadsden other than some bars that have a southern rock band type thing going on,” Bost said. “But, being from there played a huge role in my development when I started writing because I had to learn how to do everything myself. I didn’t have anyone to collaborate with in the writing process and when it came to the production of my songs I didn’t have anybody to turn to. I started picking up things, I learned how to produce my own stuff — I think that really helped me get to a point where I could take myself out of the writer’s chair when writing and put myself in the seat of the audience and listen to a song as if I’m hearing it for the first time. I think that came out of necessity, I had to be able to do that for myself because I had no one to bounce my stuff off of.”
Taking himself ‘out of the writer’s chair’ is one of Bost’s greatest talents. Being young — he’s only 20 — and being from a small town, he views songwriting as more of an exercise in storytelling than in personal disclosure.
“I don’t have a ton of life experiences,” he said. “I’m young, 20 years old — I am married, I got married super young — but as far as the things people write songs about go, I just don’t have many different experiences. A lot of times what I write is not about myself. When I write songs I think of them as stories, and for me, it’s always fiction stories. I concoct characters in my head and think of what they might say to each other, kinda setting up the scene. I think that’s how I have to do it in order to find inspiration because there’s not necessarily a ton of stuff for me to pull from in my day-to-day life. It’s listening to other people’s stories, movies, TV shows and stuff like that where I find little nuggets of things to write about. Even if I can’t relate to what I’m writing, some people can and I try to write for them.”
This was the method Bost used when he wrote the song that eventually became “Give It To Me.” Initially, the tune was more of a boy-meets-girl song called “Glad You Came,” but Bost and Tedder felt they needed to alter it in order to make it fit Julia Michaels’s distinct style.
“Julia Michaels is so particular,” Bost said. “When you listen to one of her songs, whether she’s singing it or not, you can pinpoint it. You can hear that ‘Julia Michaels’ flare in it. After I initially performed ‘Glad You Came’ for her, Julia said ‘I really don’t think I can see myself singing these lyrics, so it’ll probably need a complete lyric rewrite’ which is fine with me. What’s so cool about the journey of songwriting is that you can come in with one idea and leave with a totally different idea. Honestly, I don’t even remember where ‘Glad You Came’ came from, it was probably a writing exercise, kinda like ‘okay let’s try to write a song today.’ I had probably been sitting on that song for about a year and a half before I submitted it to ‘Songland.’ But, it was definitely a challenge trying to rewrite it into something that we could see Julia singing and connecting to.”
“Ryan [Tedder] and I actually had two ideas and wrote another song together, which is what I thought we were going to use for the second pitch,” Bost continued. “But then on the day before the taping Ryan called me and said ‘Julia just called me and she had this idea — we need to rewrite everything.’ So, we went through and made a bunch of changes. It was a lot of pressure to rewrite a song the day before pitching it to one of the most sought after songwriters in the industry right now. But I’m really happy with what our product was, I think it came out as a Julia Michaels song.”
Bost’s story of going from being relatively isolated in a small town to jumping directly onto the national stage is inspiring, but it’s far from over.
“It’s all just starting to feel real,” Bost said. “We shot the episode about two months ago and I’ve just been sitting on this. I got back to my house in Alabama and was like ‘alright… I guess I’ll go back to my day job.’ Now that everything is said in done it feels much more real. My wife and I have actually made the decision to move out to Los Angeles after Ryan told me that I should go out there. We got a place and on the Tuesday after my episode airs we’re driving out to start up there. It’s very exciting. Songwriting is my endgame. If I could support myself and my wife from doing that, well… that’s my dream. I’m hopeful that once the show airs it’ll open up some doors. The first time I ever sent any of my originals to anybody was ‘Songland’ — before that, I would just play them at restaurants. My batting average is 1.00 now, which is pretty awesome. I’m really excited to see what the future holds.”
Watch Keegan Bost’s performances — and notice how he adapted his song — on NBC’s ‘Songland’ below:
