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#granted the condition is great but I remember that shit being sold for 10 at Red Seagull
snackugaki · 1 year
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tmnt au doodlz
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alcalavicci · 3 years
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1988 interview with Dean. This is a really good one and helps bring more of his life into perspective. Note: the newspaper originally censored his swearing, but I’ve put it back.
Guthman, Edward. "Dean Stockwell: Third Time's a Charm." The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California), August 14, 1988.
“Six years ago, Dean Stockwell's acting career had turned to dust. Reduced to playing parts in unreleasable, made-in-Mexico movies that now make him cringe, Stockwell decided to chuck it all and get out of Hollywood.
“Along with his second wife, Joy, Stockwell moved to Santa Fe, settled down under the wide New Mexico sky and applied for a real estate license. He even placed an ad in Daily Variety to announce his exile: 'Dean Stockwell will help you with all your real estate needs in the new center of creative energy.'
“Stockwell never sold a house; he didn't need to. Instead, almost as soon as he'd relocated, things started happening to the former 1940s child star. It began with a small part in David Lynch's 'Dune,' and escalated with an important supporting role in Wim Wenders' highly regarded 'Paris, Texas.'
“Moving back to California to cash in on his fortune, Stockwell acted in 'Beverly Hills Cop II,' 'Gardens of Stone,' and 'To Live and Die in L.A.' He also played a cameo role, as Howard Hughes, in the newly released 'Tucker: The Man and His Dream.' And in 'Blue Velvet,' David Lynch's American nightmare, he delivered a chilling cameo as Ben, a waxlike, sexually ambiguous drug dealer.
“And now, at 52, Stockwell says he's found 'the favorite role I've had, by far.'
“The picture is 'Married to the Mob,' a dark, romantic comedy by Jonathan Demme ('Melvin and Howard,' 'Stop Making Sense') and Stockwell plays Mafia don Tony 'the Tiger' Russo. Wearing an Al Capone fedora and full-length vicuna coat, Tony is a rich, sardonic, larger-than-life character -- the kind Stockwell has never had a chance to play until now.
“Opening Friday at the Galaxy and UA the Movies, 'Married to the Mob' has been touted as Demme's first shot at a genuine box-office winner. Set in Long Island, New Jersey and Florida, it stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Angela DeMarco, a young Mafia wife who tries to start a new life when her husband, Frankie 'the Cucumber' DeMarco, is pumped full of lead during a hot-tub tryst at the Fantasia Motel.
“When Stockwell's character isn't ordering hits, drug deals and the dumping of toxic waste, he's lusting assiduously after the gorgeous widow. Meanwhile, bumbling FBI agent Mike Downey (played by Matthew Modine) is jumping through hoops trying to shadow Angela and 'catch Tony with his pants down.' Instead, he falls in love with Angela.
“During a recent luncheon interview, not far from his central California home, Stockwell spoke about the film, about his new happiness as the father of two children and about the bizarre trajectory of his long career. Dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and slacks, wearing a Panama hat and drawing first on a cigaret, later on a cigar, Stockwell emanates prosperity and calm.
“'I don't know why I was unemployed so long,' he says, reflecting on a fallow period that started in the '60s and lasted the better part of two decades. 'The only thing I can figure out in my own mind is that, for some reason or another, I was being made to wait until a certain time in my life when my talent would reach its full maturity and fruition.'
“Ironically, he says, he felt just as equipped 10 years ago to do the work he's doing now -- 'only I couldn't get fucking arrested.'
“Today, Stockwell sees harmony in the fact that his new success coincides with the arrival of two children. His son, Austin, will be 5 in November, and his daughter, Sophia, turns 3 this month. Inordinately proud and protective, he refuses to allow his children to be photographed, and also requests that the town in which he and his family reside not be named. (There were no children from his first marriage, to Millie Perkins, which lasted from 1960 to 1962.)
“'I want to make a lot of money and I want to put it away for my children,' he says. To that end, Stockwell has been snapping up job offers. 'A lot of people ask me, "How have you been able to choose these wonderful things you're doing? Have you been very selective?" And I have to tell them, "I haven't been choosing what I'm doing." Things have been coming and I've been accepting virtually anything that's come.'
“Stockwell's ambition is so great that, for the first time in his life, he actively pursues aspects of his career that he once shunned- interviews, for example.
“'My entire motivation in life is my family,' he says. 'I don't need to get an award. I don't need recognition. I've had that already. What I need is to provide. The best way I can provide is to be successful, and the best way I can be successful is to take advantage of all the things at my disposal to achieve that, one of which certainly is press.'
“Take a look at the young Stockwell, specifically the version that emerges from old magazine and newspaper interviews, and you meet another person altogether.
“Robbed of a normal childhood, Stockwell had made 22 films by the time he was 15 -- including 'The Boy with Green Hair,' 'Kim,' 'Anchors Aweigh,' and the Oscar-winning 'Gentleman's Agreement.' Working nonstop, he had a privileged life that millions of children probably envied, but he loathed it nonetheless.
“The son of show-business parents -- his father, Harry Stockwell, was the voice of the Prince in 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' and his mother, Betty Veronica, was a former stage dancer -- Stockwell made his professional debut at 7. It all happened by a fluke: when Stockwell accompanied his older brother, Guy, on a Broadway audition, the casting director took a liking to both boys, and cast each one. The play, aptly enough, was called 'Innocent Voyage,' and it led to an MGM contract for curly-haired Dean.
“From the beginning, the pressure on young Stockwell was intense. His parents had divorced when he was 6, and when his father defaulted on child-support payments, Dean reluctantly became the family provider. Over a six-year period, he averaged three to four films per year.
“At home, he says, 'There was a lot of friction... I was getting all the attention, but I hated it. [Guy] couldn't appreciate that, because he wasn't getting the attention. He had all these friends, his peer group, that he took for granted. I had none and I resented him for being able to live that way. I was fucking lonely.'
“When he was 13, chained to a seven-year contract, Stockwell was described by one magazine as 'a young rebel who despises acting and resents every moment it takes from his fleeting boyhood.' Many years later, Stockwell told columnist Hedda Hopper, 'Child actors exist in a sort of limbo between childhood and maturity and belong to neither. Adults take them too seriously and other children are either awed or hostile. A child actor can find friends in neither group.'
“Finally, Stockwell fled Hollywood when he was 16. He cut off his curly locks, started using his real name, Robert Stockwell, and for the next five years roamed the country, working menial jobs and disavowing his true identity. 'People that might have known me from seeing my films knew me as a young child,' he remembers. 'Now I was 17 and I wasn't that recognizable.'
“Around the time of his 21st birthday, Stockwell was pushing papers as mail boy to a Manhattan plumbing firm. 'Of all the jobs that I'd had in those intervening years,' he remembers. 'I think I hated that worse than anything. I came to the realization I had no training at anything. My primary education was very skimpy, very poor, and happened under the worst type of conditions. I was literally at the mercy of the world.'
“Most of Stockwell's childhood earnings were squandered by crooked accountants, he says, and he knew that the tiny sum being held in a trust wouldn't last forever. 'So I thought, "What am I gonna do? Well, let's go back and attack this [acting career] again, and see if I can do it a little more on my terms."'
“What followed for Stockwell was a brief but impressive 'second career.' He starred in the 1959 film 'Compulsion,' based on the Leopold-Loeb case of the '20s, and won a joint acting award with Orson Welles and Bradford Dillman at the Cannes Film Festival. He played the lead in the 1960 film of D. H. Lawrence's 'Sons and Lovers,' and in 1962 scored the plum role of Edmund Tyrone in Sidney Lumet's film version of 'Long Day's Journey Into Night,' holding his own alongside Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson and Jason Robards.
“Stockwell was winning the best parts, but found his attention drifting elsewhere. What was happening, he says, were the first signs of the '60s youth revolution. 'It captured my imagination as much as anybody's. And it represented to me -- I can see this in retrospect -- something in childhood that I had missed: the freedom and loving being alive, without responsibilities and work and having to report to the studio every day, and deal with fans and interviews and shit that I hated when I was a kid.'
“So Stockwell called his agent, said, 'I'm not workin',' and dropped out once again. When he tried to come back three years later, though, 'I found it very difficult, 'cause I'd been out-of-sight, out-of-mind.' What followed was a long period of marginal employment: He found some TV work, took parts in low-budget trash ('The Dunwich Horror') and occasional oddities (Dennis Hopper's 'The Last Movie') and co-directed a film with musician Neil Young ('Human Highway') but often just didn't work at all. At one point, he went 18 months without a job.
“Today, along with his buddy Hopper, Stockwell is enjoying a major career renaissance. And with his starring role in 'Married to the Mob,' he says, he's never felt more confident.
“'I knew before I started the film that this character was going to work in spades,' he says, adding that Demme, as director, deserves credit for taking a risk with such offbeat casting. Instead of picking Peter Falk, Vincent Gardenia or another ethnically identified actor to play the Mafia don, he went with Stockwell (who is actually half-Italian on his mother's side).
“Demme's inspiration occurred on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, when he opened a copy of the Hollywood Reporter. Stockwell had just changed agents, and in order to announce the fact, had taken out a full-page ad. Demme saw the picture, and instantly recognized his Tony.
“Weirdly enough, Stockwell made another film immediately prior to 'Married to the Mob': a Canadian feature called 'Palais Royale,' due for an October release, in which he plays a character almost identical to Tony Russo.
“'It's very curious,' he says. 'For all my years I'd never had a role like this come my way, and here it was twice. The Mafia don in New York, the Mafia don in Toronto, both of them colorful and charming and also threatening. And I just thought, "What am I gonna do? It's the same character." So I decided to do the same character in both those movies.'
“To take the coincidence 'one nauseating step further,' Stockwell says he's also got a part in the recently completed 'Backtrack,' Hopper's next film. This time he plays a corrupt mob lawyer, dropping the Italian accent for a generalized East Coast sound.
“It would be difficult to find a film actor who's busier than Stockwell at this moment. And it would be difficult to find anyone whose job history better illustrates the vicissitudes, serendipities and insecurity of a Hollywood career.
“Looking back on his misfortunes -- at the career that he was forced to accept as a child, and the humiliation he felt when he couldn't maintain it as an adult -- Stockwell says he's not bitter. 'When you reach your maturity, I think it behooves you to accept the fact that it's absolutely futile and fruitless even to speculate on changing anything in your life. All you can do is get embittered. So I accept everything that's happened as part of my life, and try to push it in a positive direction from the moment right now.'”
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wherelibertydwells · 5 years
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How about a little background. I'm from the wrong side of the tracks. My siblings would have stolen railroad tracks and sold them for scrap. When we left the farm, we went to the trailer park. The trailer park was, naturally, on the wrong side of the tracks. I wore hand-me-downs and Goodwill clothing. I was a high school dropout who moved out at 15. So I'd seen the bad side of living in the US. I remember my dad sending me in to buy 10 cent candy with a $1 foodstamp so I could give him the change. We did that till he had enough gas in the car to take me to school and he could get to whatever job he had at the time. Or to buy booze. Whatever. So, I'd seen the bad part. It wasn't fun. I enlisted, and the Army was great. When you lived in a trailer with a leaky roof and shoddy electrical and drove a car that you epoxied the passenger door shut, and went to bed hungry on the four days before payday, well, the Army is the fucking life. I went to Europe. Assigned to West Germany. I liked it. Then the Wall fell. Now, West Germany was a modern nation. Luxuries everywhere. Plenty of food. In accordance to the independent streak I still had, I had moved out onto the economy as soon as S2 gave me permission. I wasn't a barracks rat. There were places to see and people to fist fight. When I went into East Germany, I saw East Germany through my own biases and colored by my personal experiences. And I was suddenly glad that I was born on the wrong side of the tracks in America. That girl I mentioned? I knew she was only fucking me to get access to the PX and maybe hoping I'd take her back to the US with me. (Hah, those titties may have been like POW! and that ass may have been like BLAM! but I ain't taking you home) I didn't care. Don't look down on her. Don't you fucking dare. She was East German. Her father had been taken away when she was a kid and she never saw him again. She had grown up, many times, without heat, without food, without decent fucking clothing. She sat on my couch in my little apartment looking at my photo album and asked me what my parents did that we were so rich. My family. She knew what it was like to not have heat in the winter, or have the roof leak, or be evicted from her home. Only it was different. We were evicted because booze was more important than rent. Her family was evicted for 'reasons' she didn't know. Just it was after her brother got arrested and vanished. Like father, like son. Touring East Germany was like touring one big trailer park. The factory parking lots full of rusting junk? Yeah, seen that. I asked what was being made. She just shrugged. They weren't allowed to know. She worked there. I met her neighbors. I listened to them. They told me things about living in Communist East Germany. Learned to hate the Stasi just like they did even though they had vanished into the dustbin of history. Well, were being swept away. I knew about police brutality and excess from being poor white trash. Nobody will kick your ass in the interrogation room like a cop who knows your family can't afford a lawyer. But they aren't allowed to kill you. Not so with the Stasi and the rest. The apartments made me sad. Her apartment made me sad. I had more room and better living conditions in a Cold War Era barracks on top of a frozen fucking mountain than she had grown up in. If I didn't pay my power bill, they turned off the power. Her power was turned off, apparently for shits and giggles. Just random fucking times. She told me, and her mother told me, that it was better now than it was before the Wall fell. The power was on more often than it wasn't. The architecture was brutal, simplistic, dehumanizing, and above all, trailer trash cheap. The concrete was crumbly, the windows had gaps, all of it was shit condition. The trailer I'd moved in to for $50/mo when I'd first left home was better than that block style apartment building. My high school dropout in and out of juvie white trash ass had it better than everyone in her building. Bags of potatoes at the Commisary were $2.50 a 50 lb bag. We're talking half of what I spent on a quad-151 and coke with 2 cherries for a 50 lb bag of fucking potatoes. Well, for her birthday I bought some groceries at the Commissary. Nothing major. I wanted to make corn beef and cabbage stew for her. I spent like $30 at the Commissary. Nothing major. I mean, that's like 1 night of drinking cheap well whiskey. (Yes, I used to measure my expenditures by how much booze I could swill down for the same price. Like father like son) The next internet commie who tells you that food was plentiful in the 1980's in Communist East Germany, feel free to beat with a sack of cheap potatoes. Maybe in the city, but I liked my girls from the country. And it was a small town built to support a factory that everyone was forcibly relocated there in the 1960's. Ever been embarrassed by someone's reaction to something you take for granted. See, in the US, corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, all of that is 'poor people food'. Shit you learn to make on the wrong side of the tracks because it makes a lot, cheaply, and keeps for a few days. THeir reactions still embarrass me to think about. I was a farm boy originally before we ended up in the trailer park. "It's just basic food..." went through my head at one point. I'm Irish descent. Potato, butter, and beer, and I'm good. Her grandmother accused me of trying to buy her. Yelled at me till I left. I sat on the curb, trying to figure out just what the fuck happened, when her mother came out, called me a good boy, and had me come back inside. Grandma apparently had a flashback to when political officers would bribe families with food like that and then take the daughters. And that was when things had gotten better and the Fabulous Stalin Rape Fest of 1945-1952 was over. But sitting there, looking around, smoking a cigarette, I saw that while it was just as bad as the trailer park, I mean, it WAS a factory town, the people did their best to make it into home. They hadn't given up. There was faded colors here and there on that shitty cement. The curtains were bright and decorative. Little flower gardens here and there. There were some kids kicking a ball. But it "felt" different. If you're from the bad side of the tracks, you'll understand this... Sitting there, in the sunlight, smoking a cigarette, the Wall is down, the USSR is losing its grip, there had been a riot that took out the Stasi headquarters in Dresden, but there's a certain feeling. It felt like it did in the trailer park when a half dozen cop cars pull in, blocking off the way in & the way out. That few seconds before the cops get out of the cars looking for a "person of interest". There was nothing to really cause it, not that day, but it was still there. And there was this "gray" feeling to things I guess, that went along with that subtle feeling of dread. I got it, sitting there. Knowing that you're powerless against the State. That the powerful can do whatever the fuck they want to you and nobody will care. Hell, they'll be glad it isn't them if they don't snitch to avoid being looked at too close. It was Communism that had pushed them this far. That had taken the German people, who only had 43 years of difference between their Western counterparts, and done that to them. No beer fests. No fests no pay phone on the corner, no corner butcher, no store full of food, none of that. It had all been robbed from them in the name of collectivism. All funneled toward Moscow and the powerful. No checks and balances. No "equal before the law" that the US at least gave lip service to when someone might be looking. The whole fucking country was the wrong side of the tracks. That's Communism. Dividing a country in half * turning half of it into a goddamn trailer park. Worse than a trailer park. Compared to them, I was lucky. And that makes me mad. /fin
https://twitter.com/TWillardAuthor/status/1074214723711889409
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onestowatch · 6 years
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Q&A: Nina Nesbitt Might Be The Britney Spears of our Generation
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Already off to an impressive start to 2018, which includes numerous sold-out tour dates and amassing upwards of 100 million streams to date, Scottish singer-songwriter Nina Nesbitt is just getting started. Nesbitt’s vibrant voice is derived from her musical influences Britney Spears and Whitney Houston, and her rapid growth as an artist only further contributes to her confident classic pop style. Her flair for catchy pop and R&B blended with her own confessional songwriting has gathered fans such as Chloe Grace Moretz and Taylor Swift, who included ‘The Best You Had’ on her “Favorite Songs Playlist.”
Earlier this year, Nina Nesbitt partnered with Spotify for their Louder Together program to record the first ever collaborative Spotify Single Original called “Psychopath” with fellow Ones To Watch Sasha Sloan and Charlotte Lawrence. 
Fresh off her summer tour supporting Jesse McCartney, Nina released a brand new single, “Loyal To Me,” which was inspired by the “independent-women spirit of the 90s and is a self-help to dating.” She plans on releasing a full-length album in early 2019.
Ones to Watch recently chatted with Nina Nesbitt to chat about her musical journey, Spotify’s Louder Together program, post-tour plans, and more. Read more below and be sure to catch the rising songstress on her upcoming fall tour with MAX:
10/4, Neumos, Seattle, WA 10/5, Fortune Sound Club, Vancouver, BC 10/6, Hawthorne Theater, Portland, OR 10/9, Holy Diver, Sacramento, CA 10/10, Slim’s, San Francisco, CA 10/11, Voodoo Room @ House of Blues, San Diego, CA 10/12, The Observatory, Santa Ana, CA 10/13, El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, CA 10/16, The Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, AZ 10/17, Sunshine Theater, Albuquerque, NM 10/19, The Complex, Salt Lake City, UT 10/20, Bluebird Theater, Denver, CO 10/23, Scoot Inn, Austin, TX 10/24, Bronze Peacock @ House of Blues, Houston, TX 10/25, Cambridge Room @ House of Blues, Dallas, TX 10/26, Voodoo Lounge @ Harrah’s Kansas City, Kansas City, MO 10/27, Delmar Hall, St. Louis, MO
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OTW: Let’s start from the very beginning. Why music? What made you realize music was path you wanted to pursue?
NN: It’s something I have loved doing ever since I was a kid. I was the only child--I had a lot of spare time by myself, and so my parents often times encouraged me to do something that I enjoy and that is creative. I did a lot of art, story writing, and music. Music was my favorite thing out of all the creative arts. Eventually, I put my stories into music and so I started songwriting. It’s something I never thought I could do as a career but I really enjoyed it. Suddenly, one day, I ended up doing it as a career I guess and earning a living from it, and it kind of just stuck.
OTW: How have you grown musically and personally since you’ve released your first EP “Live Take” in 2011?
NN: I’m from a little small village in Scotland, which is very far from the music industry and anything else, so the only opportunity I had was to buy an acoustic guitar and put my music out that way. There were no studios or really any other artists that I could work with. I really liked acoustic music and once I got signed, I moved to London. I feel like the move was key to my sound and style changing and just overall growing as a person. Coming from a small place to one of the biggest cities in the world is a culture shock. You have to grow up. You get to know a lot of different characters as people, and you figure out how things work a bit more. I think that’s what personally matured me. And musically, I had the chance to collaborate with so many amazing people like writers and other artists that have influenced my music. I have a studio set up as well where I produced “The Moment I’m Missing.” I wrote all of the new album there.
OTW: Which of your songs took the longest to write and why?
NN: “The Best You Had.” I had the lyrics, “It’s crazy that you’re moving on so fast but baby it’s okay if I am still the best you had,” in my notebook for a good six months. I was really pleased with that line but kept trying to get it into a song. It means a lot to me. Those lyrics have been in about five different songs that never came out. I kept persevering with it and one day, I was in the studio with my friend Jordan, who I write quite a lot with, and we played these chords, and the song literally wrote itself within twenty minutes. I’m glad I kept trying to better it because I wasn’t happy with it before. It was a nightmare to write but in the end, it was actually one of the easiest songs.
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OTW: What has it been like supporting the Jesse McCartney tour?
NN: Great! So many different audiences from what I’m used to playing to. I wasn’t familiar with his music until before the tour.  All my friends absolutely love him, but I never had Nickelodeon as a kid so I never knew about him. He’s great. He knows how to work the stage. He’s so lovely.
OTW: Do you have any traditions you like to do pre-show/on tour?
NN: I try to stay healthy but in America, it’s impossible because you have so much space here. Like sometimes the drive is 10 hours some days and the only thing available is fast food, so I’m just enjoying being unhealthy. My tour ritual for this tour is to enjoy food and eat as much as I can.
OTW: Most memorable moment from your music career so far?
NN: There’s quite a lot of different memorable moments especially because I’ve been doing this for about six to seven years. I would have to say playing to ten thousand people at festivals -- that’s something I’ll never forget. “The Best You Had” got over 30 million streams, which is a really crazy number to me. It was so unexpected. I signed an independent deal with a label, a very casual record deal, just to put out songs that I like, and then suddenly I had over 30 million streams, I’m on a billboard in Times Square with Spotify, and all these things just happened so fast which I’m so grateful for. I feel like a lot of times you only get one shot as an artist and so I feel blessed.
OTW: What’s a city you’d like to someday perform in?
NN: Tokyo. I’m obsessed with Japan and I’ve never been. I’ve been to Hong Kong. I’m really obsessed with Asian culture because it’s so different from British culture. I’ve heard from other artists that go there just have the most amazing time.
OTW: We love your recent release “The Sun Will Come Up, The Seasons Will Change.” What does that song mean to you?
NN: That song was released because it was on a TV show, Life Sentence. That one is part of a collection of songs and represent a journey from start to finish. For example, “The Moments I’m Missing” is the intro track, and it’s about losing yourself and feeling lost. The middle point is “Somebody Special” because you feel like you’ve found your worth again and remember who you are. The last one is “Sun Will Come up, The Seasons Will Change,” and it sums up the whole album for me as a concept and represents the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping people listen to it and take what they want from it. It’s also the message I keep with me in life. Nothing is permanent. Whatever you’re going through whether it’s really shit or really great, don’t take anything for granted. Don’t think your life will be like this forever. If you’re having a bad day, just remember things keep changing all the time.
OTW: What is the first thing you’re going to do once you return home post-tour?
NN: Give my dog a big hug. I’m also shooting a new music video the day I get back.
OTW: Wow! Can you tell us about that?
NN: Yes! I’m really excited for the video I’m shooting because I think it’s going to be something people won’t expect.
OTW: We can’t wait to see it. “Psychopath” was the first ever collaborative single from Spotify’s ‘Louder Together’ program. What was it like being a part of that with Sasha Sloan and Charlotte Lawrence?
NN: It was great! I’ve never actually collaborated with other female artists before and I think like for so long, we’ve been conditioned to think that other females are competition -- don’t work with them, don’t support them. And it’s like come on, we can all have space here to put out music. I think Spotify has done given girls a platform, especially girls in pop. They put you on so many playlists to get your streams up, which means more people come to the gigs, and it really helps. This collaboration was really cool because I’m a big fan of both of them and Sasha is an amazing song writer and Charlotte is an amazing new artist. It’s cool to get in a room with like-minded females that also do pop and understand what we do on a daily basis.
OTW: Who are some of your Ones to Watch artists?
NN: So later this summer, I will be touring with Lewis Capaldi, who I think is amazing. He’s Scottish. He’s great. I think he’s going to do really well and everyone should check him out.
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