Featured Photo Credit: Kory Luke
On this episode, we chatted with Devin Kennedy.
The multi-talented artist’s latest single “Frequent Flyer” has just landed. The dreamy slow jam is an inflight cocktail of pop, R&B, and alternative.
This release is just one in a series of singles including “Fine Wine” and “As Is,” that have put Kennedy on everyone’s radar including Spotify who named him 4th highest streaming unsigned artist in the US.
We chatted with Devin about the single, his upcoming album California Rain, and more.
Excerpt from the podcast:
What inspired this R&B slow jam?
Well, that’s it right there. I love R&B slow jams. I grew up on that type of music. I love John Mayer. I love Tom Misch. I love artists that are just all about the slow jam, R&B, and guitar vibes, and I wanted to kind of make it my own. I think my mind always goes to writing slower, more chill music. I’ve probably got a million slow jams in the vault, but always was waiting for the right one that felt like it had a wider appeal. I wanted people to be able to relate to it, but I also just wanted it to be super fun, which this song is. It just felt like the right moment to put out a slow jam. I love it. It’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever made.
What about it makes it your favorite?
When I’m writing a song, a lot of the time we start with the lyrics. So we have the concept together, and in this case, we wrote a lot of the song in one day last fall. Producing the song for me is a lot about dressing up the song the right way. It’s a wide-open blank canvas. You could literally do anything with the song, which I love about making music. For me, it comes down to the chords a lot of the time. I think we redid the chords like 10 different times on this song, just choosing different chords and different emotions and feelings come out of those chords depending on how they interact and where you put them and whatever. A lot of thought went into that and making it feel really cool, but still fun and still almost disguising this slow jam vibe with something that could be just a pop song. And trying to find the middle ground between all those influences and everything just made for a really fun song.
Listen to the rest of the podcast below!