Sing Your Name Out Loud by Jason Derulo

Author:Jason Derulo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

There’s no such thing as free time, because every minute is valuable.

It’s been ten years and a whole lot of success since my injury, and I haven’t forgotten the lessons that I learned from seeing that obstacle as an opportunity. I used them to my advantage years later when I faced another situation that easily could have been seen as a setback, too.

In 2017, I released the song “Swalla,” which became a platinum hit all over the world. I had hit my stride as an artist and was putting in the hours to keep the momentum going. At that point, I had been with Warner Music for almost a decade, and music industry years are like dog years. A lot of change happens in a short amount of time.

By then, the people at Warner who had “discovered” and signed me, and who had believed in me so much that they had staked their own careers on my success, had long since moved on. In fact, I had been through three completely different regimes, meaning the entire staff had left and been replaced—three different times.

Every time new staff came in, their focus was on making a name for themselves by signing new artists. That’s how it works in the music industry. You don’t establish yourself by helping a flagship artist maintain their success. For them, making a hit album with Jason Derulo wasn’t all that exciting. I’d already been making hit albums for years. The real rewards are in discovering someone new. This meant that with each regime change, I was getting less and less energy and attention from the team.

After “Swalla” came out, it was apparently time for yet another regime change—the fourth one that I had been through at the label. This time, though, the new staff came in with their own ideas for my music. I was working on new stuff, as always, and they kept encouraging me to write songs that were more R & B than pop. These folks had come from more of an urban music background, so I understood their perspective, but I also wasn’t really trying to do an R & B sound.

I was frustrated, to put it lightly. As a Black male artist, I’d been pushed into the R & B arena for years. But by this point, I thought I had enough credibility as a pop artist to stick to that genre. The fact was, this team just didn’t get me. They also assigned me to work with a really young new guy in A&R (artists and repertoire). He was fine—no disrespect. But I felt that this assignment spoke to how they felt about me as an artist.

The whole situation was crazy to me because at that point I’d been the most successful artist on the label for a long time. You’d think that success would have been highly valued. I was like, I’ve been keeping the lights on for a decade. I need attention to detail. I need attention, period.

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