Taylor Fagins took first place in the 2020 American Songwriter Song Contest with his song “We Need More.” The heartfelt, vulnerable, and emotional song and the contest win opened many doors for Fagins and completely changed his life’s path.
Shortly after winning the 2020 song contest, Fagins got into graduate school at the newly opened Berklee College of Music in New York. Additionally, as a direct result of his participation in the competition, he landed a life-changing spot on American Idol. His time on Idol helped to fuel his passion for writing and producing music. This led to him releasing his self-produced debut album Midnight Daydreams in 2023. His time in the graduate program helped hone his skills as a playwright which led to him co-writing a musical that is currently in production. Fagins spoke to American Songwriter about all this and more in an in-depth catchup interview.
[RELATED: 1st Place Winner of 35th Anniversary Song Contest: “We Need More” by Taylor Fagins]
Taylor Fagins on American Idol
It’s rare to see someone whose resume includes a stint on American Idol that is almost a footnote. However, Taylor Fagins is one of those artists. For him, the competition was a stepping stone to bigger things. However, it is a stepping stone that he looks back on fondly.
“Then, I think it was a month after I got into grad school, because of the contest American Idol reached out to me. This producer was like, ‘Hey, I have a brother-in-law who was in the contest and he sent me your song and it’s really good. Can you be on American Idol?’ and I was like, ‘This is nuts.’ I just said yes because when a door opens, why not walk through it and see what happens,” Fagins recalled.
“That was a wild ride because I was in grad school at the same time. So, I was flying back and forth between California and New York, coast to coast. That was pretty crazy,” Fagins said. “I was not intending to win that competition in any way shape or form. I was going there to have a good time. I was in grad school, I had homework. I was in the hotels between shoots writing essays and calling my professors and calling my classmates about what homework is due,” he explained.
This kind of tireless work typifies the rest of Fagins’ life. It seems that the multi-talented artist always has a couple of irons in the fire and balances them like a pro, even if there’s plenty of trial and error involved.
Taylor’s Biggest Takeaway from American Idol
Fagins said that his head wasn’t fully in the game during his stint on Idol due to everything else he had going on in life. However, he was fully present when he needed to be. More importantly, being on the show taught him an important lesson.
“I think I have to say one of the biggest things I learned is that you really have to invest in yourself 100% when it comes to the passions in your life,” Fagins revealed. “It feels like a really simple thing to say and I feel like I heard it a lot growing up. But I don’t think I understood the impact you can make in other people’s lives if you fully invest in who you are as a person and what you want to do in life. I think American Idol taught me that,” he added.
He quickly realized that he and his fellow contestants could inspire aspiring artists to take the plunge and chase their dreams. “That’s what happens when you invest in yourself. That’s what happens when you say, ‘Maybe this thing that I do doesn’t make a lot of money or maybe I’m not super good at it. But if I can take the time to hone my craft, eventually I can get to the place where I want to be and make the change in the world that I want to see or at least get my voice out there.’ But that starts with saying ‘I’m going to put 100% of my effort into being the artist I want to be,’” Fagins said.
Taylor Fagins Is a Self-Taught Producer
American Idol set a fire inside Taylor Fagins. Encouraging conversations with Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan pushed him to continue making music. As a result, he went back to New York, taught himself to produce music, and released his debut album Midnight Daydreams in 2023.
This all started by learning a second instrument. “I started teaching myself how to play guitar because I realized I couldn’t produce music if I couldn’t play more than one instrument and I already knew how to play the piano. I bought an acoustic guitar and started playing every day,” he recalled. “How I started producing was, in order to help myself get better at guitar, I bought Logic Pro on my Mac and started recording myself playing. I would sing and play guitar at the same time and record it and listen to it. So, I was constantly watching myself play to try to get better, to play something better or clearer than I did before,” he added.
“So, I was recording a lot in logic. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m already recording it into here. Why don’t I try figuring out how my raw recording can sound like Lizzy McAlpine or Tiny Habits and all these artists that I really love and am inspired by,” Fagins explained. “I would listen to a song, go back to my recording, and fiddle around with different effects in the program until it sounded close enough to the way they did it. As I did that I figured out what I liked and my sound and how I wanted my songs to feel. That started the process of making Midnight Daydreams.”
Fagins’ First Musical Is Currently in Production
Taylor Fagins studied musical theater writing at Berklee. Now, what started as a thesis project is in production and will be off-Broadway in New York in 2026.
“The musical is called Sunken Cathedral. It’s about this older man who just lost his wife and he’s the king of this magical kingdom. He’s very sad and goes to find a way to bring his wife back. He does a weird magic ritual and brings his wife back,” Fagins explained. “Then, his daughter comes in, the princess of the kingdom, and says, ‘Dad, none of this is real. Your wife is gone, you’re not a king. None of this is real.’ And everyone in the kingdom is confused,” he added.
“Halfway, through the musical, it switches places and it focuses on the daughter and you realize that he’s going through dementia. This whole fantasy of him being a king in a castle and bringing his wife back is his way of coping with the fact that his wife died and he can’t bring her back,” he said, revealing the plot’s major twist. “The rest of the musical is his daughter trying to touch base with him and learning to be a caretaker as he slowly starts to forget his life and lose his grasp on reality.”
Taylor Fagins on His Latest Single “A Wild Thing”
Taylor Fagins is not one to rest on his laurels. He’s currently hard at work on his second album. Earlier this year, he released “A Wild Thing” as the lead single from the new collection.
“It was inspired by Where the Wild Things Are, the children’s book. I read that book when I was a child, a lot. It’s such a magnificent story,” Fagins said of the inspiration behind the single. “What makes that song for me is the connection between the kids’ story and this idea that people and things that we love and put so much time and effort into, they don’t always stay,” he added.
“That’s such a big thing I think about when I think about Where the Wild Things Are. For me, one of the biggest lessons in the book is at the end where Max is like, ‘This has been fun but I’m going back home. I have things to do.’ And the wild things are like, ‘No, please don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so.’ That line stayed in my head forever,” he said. “It’s about this unconditional love that creates so much rage and so much wild emotion. It’s like ‘I don’t know how else to convey this but to say I love you so much that I would do anything to keep you here.’ For me, that is what ‘A Wild Thing’ was about. As adults, we grow up and people leave. And it’s hard to deal with people leaving our lives,” Fagins explained.
“Besides Where the Wild Things Are, it was inspired by, I just lost a lot of friendships, relationships, and recently my great grandparents. So, in the last three years, I’ve lost a lot of people. The woman I was going to marry, we ended our relationship and that was very sad. Then, my great-grandmother passed away and that was said. And my childhood best friend stopped talking to me and to this day I don’t know why. That was difficult to process. My great grandfather passed away earlier this year,” Fagins said. However, the loss isn’t the full story. He added that the most important thing is that we learn that while losing those loved ones hurts, it is still okay to love wildly.
Reflecting on “We Need More”
“That song truly changed my life. I don’t think there’s any better way to put it,” Taylor Fagins said of the contest-wining song “We Need More” and its impact on his life. “It kickstarted so much,” he added.
“I wrote ‘We Need More’ in a moment of sadness but also in a moment of trying to find the best way to convey a feeling. I still think about that sometimes now that my little brother and sister are in college. I was thinking about them while I was writing the song,” he recalled. “I was thinking ‘What would someone say to a little boy or little girl right now? What would they feel in the time right now, seeing all these people who look like them dying on social media?’”
“I think back to that time when I was sitting there processing those feelings and realizing the only way to do it was to write a song about it and totally release everything. It’s crazy how it touched so many people,” he said. “To this day, I still feel super grateful that it touched anybody’s heart because that’s the only reason I write. The only reason I create is so that somebody feels heard and seen and understood. I think that’s a general human want.”
Summing it up, Fagins said, “I think Lionel Richie said it best on American Idol. I think it sucks that it’s a song that had to happen, that a song like that had to exist. But I’m grateful that I was at a place in my life where I could write it.”
Featured Image by Youtube/Taylor Fagins
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