Meet Killian Wells. He’s a New Yorker with a penchant for writing very good pop songs. Just take a listen to “Calm Before The Storm” on his MySpace player. Being a child of the 80’s, he’s even paid tribute to one of the decades most beloved hits “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” by Cutting Crew with his catchy electro track “Flatline“. On “Freak” we hear him conjuring up a bit of electro-hop which is a danceable trip into popville.
You should definitely have Killian on your radar EQs. I recently caught up with Killian over email to chat about various things like…
The subject mater of his music:
Killian Wells: The subject matter of my music really differs… some songs like “Flatline” or “Looking For A Way” I’m inspired to write from personal experiences or things that have happened to friends of mine. I also write a lot of purely fun dance tracks like “Rub Me Down“. Right now I’m focusing on deeper material than what I’ve done in the past because I love pop songs with real emotion behind them. My favorite song of all time is “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel and I’m constantly trying to craft a song that’ll give me chills like that does.
The current state of pop music:
I encounter a lot of people who think that producing pop music is selling out but I’ve always been a pop kid through and through so I’m just doing what I love; to me selling out is going in a direction you hate just to fit in – it’s naive for anyone to denounce an entire genre as “sellout city”. I personally think pop music is the single most challenging genre to achieve success in. I have a theory that some people are genetically predisposed to write pop hooks because even though there are a lot of musicians in this world, amazing mainstream writers are few and far between. If you could teach someone to write catchy hooks then there would be a lot more competition and geniuses like Timbaland wouldn’t be getting $100,000+ a track.
His biggest influences:
I’m hugely influenced by 80’s music, I even have a dog named Lennox (after Annie). There’s something magical about songs from that decade because even the cheesiest ones have an undeniably cool, lush vibe. Two current artists I’m a big fan of are Dangerous Muse and Private because of their new-wave sound, both groups have incredible production disciplines because their tracks aren’t overproduced yet they’re hauntingly intricate and image provoking if that makes sense.
On where he would like his career to go:
Ultimately I hope to have a long career as both an artist and a writer/producer, I also have my own label that I’m developing. I’d love to somehow become the male equivilent of Madonna but in the event my career as an artist doesn’t last until I’m using a walker to get around I’d be perfectly happy behind the control board working with other artists. I’ve already started working on material for other artists as a writer, recently I collaborated on a few tracks with Alex G, he produced for N Sync and also did Blake Lewis’ song “She’s Makin’ Me Lose It“.