Dancing Astronaut presents Supernovas 008: Chandler Leighton – Dancing Astronaut

Supernovas is a recurring Dancing Astronaut function devoted to vocalists within the dance house who, with their very own idiosyncratic vocal signatures and distinctive lyrical views, have performed pivotal roles in bringing digital information to life. Every installment within the month-to-month sequence spotlights one vocalist. The serial continues with Supernovas 008: Chandler Leighton.

Robin Williams reminded Chandler Leighton of her dad.

“It was this Sunday factor that me and my dad did,” she says of the weekly screenings of Mrs. Doubtfire that coloured her earlier years. When her mother and father had been within the midst of their divorce, almost every Sunday, at her request, her dad would watch the 1993 movement image along with her. Mrs. Doubtfire was the final movie that they watched collectively earlier than she moved to Maine along with her mother in 2003 and in the present day, it stays her favourite.

The screenings begot an affiliation between her dad and Williams that’s exhausting to pin down. “I feel Robin at all times had some bizarre connection, like feeling with my dad,” she tells Dancing Astronaut. “I’ve an excellent particular reference to Robin Williams.”

Some say there aren’t any coincidences in life. Whether or not you consider in destiny, “meant to be,” or any phrasal variation of “the preordained,” it’d be exhausting to chalk up ILLENIUM’s option to pattern a few of Williams’ strains from Good Will Searching on “Angel – Lonely Prelude” to mere coincidence. And as Leighton sat in her automotive, listening to Williams’ phrases, verbalized from the attitude of Sean Maguire, filter by the audio system across the anniversary of his demise, all she might assume was, “how did he know?”

However ILLENIUM didn’t have any inkling concerning the affiliation, and as Leighton remembers, he didn’t even notice that he’d despatched the 2 songs uncannily near the date on which Williams had handed years prior. The primary of the pair would ultimately develop into the penultimate tracklisting on his 2019 album, ASCEND. A 41-second sound clip from Williams’ “you’re only a child” speech, mingled with quintessential ILLENIUM euphoria, “Angel – Lonely Prelude” builds into ASCEND‘s finale, “Lonely,” written and sung by Leighton. 

That day within the automotive was the primary time she’d ever heard the dovetailing album inclusions, and Williams’ voice had solely added to the shock of the afternoon. “Nick [Miller] and I hadn’t been speaking, which is the cool factor about him. He doesn’t ship updates, he simply sends it when it’s achieved—a minimum of that’s what he did with me,” she stated. 

From her perch within the driver’s seat, life was coming full-circle for Leighton in multiple method. When she was 20-years-old, her elder rave fanatic of a sister persuaded her to go to EDC Las Vegas: “She was like, ‘you’re sufficiently old, I’m gonna take you.’”

Leighton had no thought what to anticipate, however she didn’t want a tenured monitor file in raving to know that it wouldn’t resemble the Bon Iver, Native Natives, and different indie music that she’d grown up on. And like an excellent sister, she went in with an open thoughts and got here out—in an expertise each acquainted and relatable to many—”enthralled with the way in which the music felt.”

She hadn’t heard or skilled something prefer it, and as she stood in attendance at ILLENIUM’s set, her imaginative and prescient for the long run started to take form. “I bear in mind being there on the racetrack and considering, ‘I wish to sing on these songs,’” she stated, citing the Dia Frampton-vocalized “Wanted You” because the set inclusion that crystallized this calling. “I feel I actually manifested it out loud,” Leighton remembers with fun. “I used to be like, ‘I’m gonna discover a method.’”

As with most desires price dreaming, the course to actualization was neither instant nor linear. She was enrolled at San Francisco State College to pursue a Broadcast and Digital Communication Arts (BECA) diploma, with an emphasis on audio and manufacturing, however she wished to drop out. Her mother and father wouldn’t let her. “They had been like, ‘nope, not an opportunity.’ And I used to be like, ‘no matter, okay, I’ll determine it out I suppose.’”

Leighton was in her closing 12 months of faculty when she’d write “Lonely.” Considerably contemporary off of a breakup, BECA conferral on the horizon, and a bowl of ramen on her lap, she sat in her barely furnished front room and wrote a line that may develop into a part of the bones of “Lonely”—although it’s not on the model that streamers hear in the present day. When she was 19, she’d met American singer-songwriter, James Younger. They’d gotten collectively for a studio session, however Leighton wasn’t a songwriter at the moment and, trying again, says she “failed miserably”: “I used to be so starstruck by James as a result of I used to be such a giant fan that I couldn’t get a phrase out in my session.”

However that was then. She had phrases to share this time, and she or he despatched the road to Younger, whose emphatic embrace of what she’d written—”you’re flying out to LA subsequent week and also you’re recording it”—introduced her to California’s largest metropolis to do exactly that. Her revelation on the racetrack was something however out of thoughts; she wished to ship the demo to ILLENIUM, so she did, relaying her feeling that he might do “one thing actually particular” with it.

His response was so memorable that in the present day, she will quote it verbatim: “No second guesses.”

“I used to be very confused. I had no thought what was occurring,” she says. “It was similar to yeah that is nice, thanks, it’s occurring the album. There wasn’t any debate.”

She attributes a few of the credit score to luck. The remainder of it, she says, is owed to the demo’s strategic tailoring:

“I feel that whenever you’re reaching out to artists, try to be making the demo with that particular person in thoughts. At the moment, every thing is so saturated; demos are being handed out to tons of individuals. And I’ve seen that whenever you really take the time to make one thing particular for the particular person you wish to work with, it tends to work very well. Each single person who I’ve labored with has been as a result of I curated a track particularly meant for them.”

Naturally, the ethos that true creative match should exist for Leighton to lend her lyrics and voice has created a tradition of selectivity inside her catalog. She is, by her personal admission, specific concerning the dance information that she options on, partially as a result of she doesn’t need her artist web page on digital streaming platforms to be dominated by songs that she’s written with and for digital artists. “I’ve tried to guard myself from being pigeonholded by the medium,” she asserts. And although this strategy leads her to show down extra presents than she accepts, there’s nothing private about her efforts to evade the fetters of style classification. Simply because you’ll be able to doesn’t imply it is best to has develop into a information for Leighton; as such, her presence on a collaboration bespeaks her acutely aware option to contain herself as a artistic. That is how she maintains individuality and authenticity, and, in a method, this fit-centric mode of considering is a part of the explanation why “One Extra Day” is probably the most troublesome track she’s written thus far.

Within the music business, it’s not unusual for songs to be scrapped or indefinitely shelved as a result of fruitless searches for a voice that aligns with the producer’s imaginative and prescient. Such was the story of Zedd‘s 2018 hit single, “The Center.” “There have been months the place we nearly gave up, as a result of we couldn’t a vocalist,” Zedd advised The New York Occasions 4 years in the past. 14 demo vocalists later, “The Center” discovered its match in Maren Morris. 

Some productions don’t get so fortunate although, and in one other life, “One Extra Day” may need been one in every of them. When Blanke and Jason Ross’ absolutely produced instrumental hit Leighton’s inbox, two prior writers had already tried to pen lyrics. Their phrases weren’t a match, however not by any fault of their very own; “One Extra Day” is inherently exhausting to put in writing to, given its construction. “When you actually take heed to the melody with out my voice, the construction of the track may be very distinctive by way of chord progressions and the place it goes,” Leighton says. “The construction was tremendous complicated for me as a result of I’m used to writing pop songs, which have a primary construction: verse, refrain, first bridge, refrain once more, and this has a number of time in between further bar measures. I’m not used to writing like that, which made it tremendous troublesome.”

The extent of the instrumental’s manufacturing added additional complexity to the writing course of for Leighton, who writes all of her music utilizing only a guitar and a piano. She doesn’t attempt to make her demos “sound EDM”; she writes every of them if she is scripting a pop track, leaving the digital structuring to the producer with whom she chooses to works—if the track is destined for the dance style, that’s. This methodology leaves Leighton loads of artistic house for her lyrics and vocals in a method {that a} absolutely produced instrumental doesn’t. And on condition that “One Extra Day” was antithetical to the way in which she typically scripts her songs, writing what would develop into Dancing Astronaut‘s 2021 Monitor of the 12 months would take her three months. In Leighton’s songland, that’s a very long time. 

Couple an absence of inspiration amid the COVID-19 quarantine with a maximalist, disorienting track construction, and also you’ll have a heady cocktail of scrapped concepts and inventive frustration. The demo’s difficult nature was the explanation why it had been the one one left on the checklist of choices that Blanke had despatched Leighton—”decide one!” The one she’d initially chosen had been taken, however Leighton, a staunch believer that author’s block doesn’t exist, wasn’t to be deterred. “I don’t assume author’s block is an actual factor,” she attests. “It simply means you’re not trying inward exhausting sufficient; there’s issues which can be blocking you, like your concern of diving into your trauma, stuff like that. That’s the one purpose why author’s block exists.” 

Nonetheless, there have been challenges related to writing “One Extra Day,” so Leighton pulled her pal Jordan Tariff and Heather Sommer, whom she’d but to satisfy in particular person, right into a Zoom-supported “writing room.” She was the third singer-songwriter to try the instrumental with Sommer, who had labored with the prior two writers in an effort to carry “One Extra Day” to completion. Buoyed by the idiom “the third time’s a allure,” the three collaborators started working. And certainly, it was. 

“It’s loopy to assume I wrote that on my laptop at my mother’s home in the course of the pandemic on Zoom with my pals,” Leighton remembers with fun. 

Since “Lonely,” Leighton’s gained a major quantity of traction within the dance house. Some may say that’s ample purpose to stay targeted on the style, however in a March 21 tweet, she declared her intentions to “now not function [her] title on EDM for a variety of causes,” chief amongst them being her artist challenge—to which “Lonely” initially belonged. So far, she’s put out a handful of songs below her personal title, the latest of which is a darkish different pop duet with Lo Spirit, “Let It Go.” Sonically, it stands in stark distinction to one thing like “Disappearing Now,” co-written with Nurko for his Arrival EP, although Leighton’s head-on lyrics and unmistakable vocal presence command in a commensurate method. There’s extra of this to return for Chandler Leighton, the solo artist; owed to a December breakup, she’s acquired an album price of music that may additional form who Chandler Leighton is and what she feels like on her personal, sans synths. However she’ll begin with an EP in August, with extra singles to return in Might and June.

Within the latter half of 2022, she’ll debut at L8NCY (pronounced “latency”). “L8N is definitely my dad’s e-mail. He has an L, an 8, and an N to spell out ‘Leighton,’ and I’ve at all times cherished that, so I kinda stole that from my dad,” she says of the namesake for the emergent challenge, which is so…nicely…latent that she’s solely briefly made point out of it. “I can’t wait to point out you this L8NCY challenge guys. Very pop deep home trance…and I can really play L8NCY units. 2022 it’s comin. Dangle in there with me,” she’s tweeted. Apart from that, although, little has been recognized about L8NCY, and that’s partly as a result of it was initially conceived as a “secret challenge.” 

“Within the final couple months, I wrote so many songs for DJs however advised them I used to be ghosting on every thing. And I used to be like, nicely, what if I put a special title on [the music] after which I might play my very own units?” At first, I used to be gonna do L8NCY with out saying something. I wasn’t going to place my image on it or connect my title to it. I used to be going to put on a wig on stage, like I used to be going to be utterly ghost about it, simply so it doesn’t intrude with my artist challenge,” she says of L8NCY’s early roots in anonymity, including that she “assume[s] it’s sort cool to let individuals know that [she’s] not leaving.” She’s simply doing one thing else, one thing “only for enjoyable.”

What that’s? A crossover between her singing-songwriting and DJing capacities. The latter is at the moment in growth; “I’m gonna should study and battle,” she says when requested if she is aware of her method round a controller. Within the meantime, L8NCY units—to hit levels within the latter half of 2022—will place her alongside her producer and co-writer on “nearly every thing,” Brennan Lony. “Principally, he’ll be DJing and I’ll be performing my songs stay and DJing beside him,” Leighton says. She’ll debut as L8NCY someday in November, with three collaborations below the challenge additionally set to land this 12 months. 

Briefly, Chandler Leighton is within the midst of her sonic bildungsroman. She’s discovered her voice as a solo artist and as a artistic who desires to remain in contact with the digital style with out being consumed or utterly overtaken by it. That’s not at all times a simple course of, however it’s, nonetheless, at all times a mandatory one, notably for Leighton, who leaves a chunk of herself in every track. 

“Typically, I’ll get mixes again and there’s no altering it, and that to me is just a bit disheartening as a result of whenever you’re pouring these lyrics out of your soul, if the manufacturing is incorrect, you gained’t hear the soul,” she says. 

Although Chandler Leighton and L8NCY are two very several types of artist initiatives, by them, Leighton will get to maintain these fragments of herself in a method that she hasn’t at all times been capable of. Soul might be heard as supposed. And true collaboration stays ever on the desk. “Collaboration could be such a ravishing factor typically, when two individuals are bouncing concepts off of one another,” she displays. “I feel I simply acquired slightly overwhelmed as a result of I felt like I used to be eliminating slightly little bit of myself after I, deep in my coronary heart, wasn’t agreeing to what was occurring, and it simply didn’t really feel genuine to me anymore, as a result of my lyrical writing has improved a lot over time that it’s simply gotten more durable and more durable to present a few of these tales away, as a result of they really feel so private to me.”

Today, Chandler Leighton isn’t simply writing songs—by lyrics and motion, she’s writing her personal story.

Tags: chandler leighton, Supernovas

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