“I like simple things,” said musician Matt LeGrand. “I like pop.”
LeGrand, who also works as a producer for other musicians, is not afraid to double down on his devotion to pop music. While other artists experiment across genres, LeGrand is more interested in creating music with a hook, and it’s given him an unusual amount of success in only a few short years.
Although LeGrand just released his new self-titled EP earlier this year, he has been working within the industry for many years. In 2017, LeGrand was nominated for MTVU’s “The Freshman Video” contest for his 2015 song, “Roof On Fire.” Since then, he has garnered press mentions from Billboard, and his single, “I’ve Been Watching You” with Venezuelan artist Mestiza has garnered more than 1.3 million streams. Most recently, LeGrand took over local pop radio station KIIS FM (103.5) for a week following the release of his EP. But finding this success took time, especially for an artist who seems to be more nationally and internationally known than within the local music scene.
LeGrand described his earlier years as challenging. “It’s been such a long road and journey, artist development, trial and error, making mistakes and learning from them,” LeGrand said. “Really just developing my sound.” Part of this journey also included figuring out who to work with. Although LeGrand is thankful for his current team who helped him figure out his sound and showcase a level of diversity in his music (some of the EPs songs touch on elements of folk and r&b, for example), his earlier attempts at music making were fraught with industry types with more nefarious intentions.
“It’s hard to get the true motive of a person when you’re collaborating and trusting them with your career,” he said. “It’s just decision making. It all comes down to decision making and working with the correct people. There’s a lot of sharks. Obviously in every single industry, but definitely in the music and entertainment industry.”
Surrounding himself with the wrong people led to the sort of inevitable mistakes that befall many emerging musicians and ultimately delayed the completion and release of his music. “Being naive and being young, I had different goals 4, 5 years ago. They weren’t the same goals that [I have] now. They’re completely different,” he said. “For me when I was in that mindset, I made a lot of mistakes because of that.”
Still, it is those same “failures and mistakes” that LeGrand credits for getting him to the success he now enjoys in his career. Without them, he would have continued facing the same difficulties, wondering when he’d finally breakthrough. “It’s prevailing through them,” he said. “How can you come through them, still come to the love and the core of what you’re doing, keep the faith and trust the team that surrounds you?”
The result of those efforts is an unfussy collection of songs that slip perfectly into the sort of Spotify playlists that play on repeat for the average listener. If that sounds less than ambitious, it is also, surprisingly, just what LeGrand wants. All of that circles back to his love of pop music, which LeGrand thinks is the perfect medium for the way he now approaches music.
“There’s something so incredible about pop, and that’s simplicity. I think simplicity is one of the hardest things to master because we just want to complicate things. It’s just what human things do. Our minds move at a million miles an hour,” he said. When crafting his songs, LeGrand said he needs to create music with a hook. If he has not created a hook within the first few hours of a writing session, he knows he is not focusing on what he needs to do. For LeGrand, the balance is “creating something that needs to get into people’s heads and annoy thin, but still also enjoy it.”
This love-hate dynamic then makes pop the perfect medium. “(With pop music) I don’t have to think too much. It’s kind of spoon fed to me. It’s like nursery rhymes, and I like that,” he said. “I think that’s what music’s supposed to do. Some music is there to make you think, but when you don’t want to think anymore, and you can just escape (and) have fun and be cheesy and goofy.”
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.
