 Music is art. Don't be afraid to be different. It is hard and you have to understand that like if you don't give it everything you have, you can't expect to, you know, have a crazy outcome. Life is so short and you don't have very much time to be young and to like go out and do what you want. It's a crazy world these days, but we're all just working on it. So don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to be yourself and just give it everything you got. I'm from Monroe, Washington. I got into music about three years ago by signing up for Battle of the Bands my senior year of high school. And I thought I was gonna play the piano, but our singer quit and I tried singing and it worked, so here we are. I kind of grew up more like on the outdoors, side of things. I never really tried singing as a kid. It wasn't ever something I considered. As I got into it, you know, everything started coming together really, really quickly. I started posting videos on social media and that's kind of when things started to pick up. I was going to college in American Idol Reach style. They saw some of my videos and they were like, hey, we'd love for you to be on the show and try out for American Idol. And I was like, cool. I'd never really watched the show, but I did it. I auditioned and I made it through and I went pretty far in the competition and then came to a decision where I kind of decided to step away from the show because I didn't feel right about it. I didn't know if like, if that's what I wanted to do the rest of my life and if I was, you know, being unfair to myself by like trying to do something I'm not very confident in. And so I wanted to make that decision on my own without a TV show. So I stepped away and honestly it was that decision that changed the rest of my life because shortly after Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons reached out and asked if I wanted to write music with him and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this. I'm going to start writing my own music and I'm just going to, I'm going to give it everything I got. A lot of people that I meet, a lot of people in this industry and a lot of artists, you know, I've been doing this since they were like four years old and they've been writing songs since they were seven and have like this crazy story of their whole entire life has been preparing for this and like, I don't have that. I wasn't writing songs when I was seven. I didn't know I could sing when I was younger but a lot of aspects of my life have led me to this moment. Writing poems, keeping a journal, like having my emotions written on paper has always been something that I've been able to do and being a charismatic person and always willing to, you know, entertain. There have just been little things that like have made me ready for this. I very quickly fell in love with it and now obviously like I love performing and I love going to different places and meeting new people and writing new music. It's all, you know, something that I'll do the rest of my life. When I was growing up, I mostly listened to older music. A lot of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, like Earth, Wind, Fire. And then when I was a teenager, like getting into high school, I listened to a lot of Adele and Sam Smith, Dean Lewis and a lot of artists like that. So I think my musical background is mostly like pop soul. And that's kind of where I've also taken my music. So I guess it makes sense. I'm just making music that I love. I'm making music that is an expression of my emotions and that's all I can do. If you don't have any life that's being lived, you can't write about anything. And so I do like to, you know, every couple of weeks every, every couple of months, have a week off or two weeks off to go out with my friends and just be somewhere in the world so that when I go to the studio, I have things to write about and experiences to write about and people to write about. Every song is written differently. I'll do all my writing on my own, just me and a piano and that's where I get all my ideas. Every song is about a different experience and a different time in my life, but they're all pieces of my emotional well-being. Like it's all a diary and artwork to me. My favorite songs that I've written, probably my top two are In the Stars and Coffee Cake. In the Stars is about my great-grandmother who passed away and it's a very personal song to me and it's very emotional. When I wrote that song, I was kind of in a place where like I didn't know what to write my songs about and I thought of my great-grandmother and the last couple of years of her life, she lived really close to us so I saw her every day. She'd come over for dinner, we'd take her to church and it was like I had a very strong connection with Gigi, that's what we called her. So when she passed away, you can never be prepared for a loss of someone that's close to you and I think when you lose someone, you have to do something to be able to overcome that loss. I'm still hoping I wanna say goodbye cause this one means forever. That's one of the most emotional songs I've ever written. Now it is just like a beautiful piece of art to me. Once we really just dove into the emotions of her being gone, that is kind of what helped me get over that experience. Just helps me remember her in a good way and the best parts of her and the good memories I have with her. It'll always be hard, but you can always have a good mindset about a loss like that. So yeah, that song has been very therapeutic to me. Growing up, I always told myself that I wanted to be famous. I didn't know what for. I think like five years ago, if I saw this, I would just be proud. Like I'm on my way to a dream that I didn't even know I had and I'm putting a lot of work to be here and I think, man, I just think he wouldn't really believe it. It'd be like a little shocking, you know? Five years ago, I didn't actually even know I could sing. It's just so fast and I don't ever really get a lot of time to like take it all in, which could be a good and a bad thing, but I think knowing all of the work that's gone into it, it definitely seems like it's taken more time. I think the biggest thing for me that I have learned is giving it everything you have and I have a lot of things I want to do and a lot of goals and I want to sell out Madison Square Garden. I want to buy my parents a house. I want to buy my parents cars. I want to be able to support all my sisters. There's a lot of things I want to do, but it all comes with hard work and I understand that. Sometimes it's hard because a lot of people just see the best things that I do. They just see like, when I'm on stage and you know, when I have a big video or when I have a big song and those moments are incredible, but also like that's not all I do. You know, like everything I do isn't the best moment. And so there's a lot of, just like any other job, there's a lot of work that goes into it, but it 100 million percent pays off. And so I'm just excited to keep going and see where things go.