Skylar Grey — Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter (born Holly Brook) known for co-writing hits like Eminem & Rihanna's 'Love the Way You Lie' and Diddy's 'Coming Home.' She now lives on a biodynamic Napa vineyard and is releasing a new album, 'Wasted Potential.'
The gist
Skylar Grey traces her musical life from singing harmonies as a toddler and touring the Midwest with her folk-singer mother to dropping out of school at 16 and moving to LA alone at 17. After her first record deal flopped and she went broke, she took odd jobs (including a two-week stint editing porn) before retreating to an isolated Oregon cabin where she rediscovered her creativity and wrote the hook for 'Love the Way You Lie.' The conversation ranges across the creative process and impostor syndrome, the failures of the US education system, the AI music debate, and a long stretch on rural ranch life, hunting, and a harrowing saga of mountain lions and coyotes killing her livestock. She closes by discussing turning 40, her fear of having 'wasted potential,' and her goal to release an album every year.
Big reveals
- At 12 she went solo and left her mother's act, even though singing together had become her mom's career.
- Dropped out of school at 16 after an algebra teacher told her 'music isn't a career.'
- To survive after going broke in LA she worked at Barnes & Noble, taught gymnastics, and edited hardcore porn.
- Quit the porn-editing job after two weeks because she started hallucinating images from the footage (the 'Tetris effect').
- Wrote the 'Love the Way You Lie' hook in about 15 minutes from an Oregon cabin; it was a number-one song a month later.
- Mountain lions (it turned out to be two hunting together) killed 17 of her 20 sheep in Napa.
- Reveals her new album 'Wasted Potential' is a coming-of-age story about her Wisconsin childhood and sexuality.
- Says turning 40 left her deeply depressed but pushed her to stop torturing herself and have more fun.
Things worth remembering
- Her first hour-long set, at age six, was a Mother's Day show at a library in Madison, Wisconsin.
- Detroit was, by many accounts, the wealthiest US city in the 1950s thanks to the auto industry before its collapse.
- Roughly $34K once circulated as the global top-1% income, but better data puts that figure closer to the top 5-10%; the real global 1% is nearer $50-70K.
- The US top 1% income threshold is around $730K-$790K a year.
- Her Oregon cabin was a converted fire lookout atop a sand dune with one light bulb and an outdoor bathroom.
- She wore a mask on the back of her head to deter mountain lions, mimicking Sundarbans honey collectors who do it against tigers.
- Mountain lions whistle to communicate with each other.
- A black bear that gorged on blueberries had purple fat and blueberry-flavored meat.
- The island of Lanai has about 30,000 axis deer and only 3,000 people; you can hunt them and stay at the Four Seasons.
- Eminem named Skylar Grey's dog 'Marshall' (Eminem's real first name).