Artist of the Week: ColinResponse’s Q&A

1. Can you introduce yourself for people who don’t know you?

ColinResponse, that’s who I am. I’m a pop/soul artist man, I’m from Toronto, Ontario. I grew up in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto. I love music, music is my life. I love empowering people, and that’s what I do with my music, I bring people together.

2. How would you describe your sound?

I would describe my music as pop-soul. It’s music that is poppy enough to be accessible, but it has enough depth that you can derive meaning from it. And I genuinely believe that’s those are the defining factors of what make it pop-soul. Soul music is designed to make you feel; its got roots and passion in it. But I wouldn’t go as to say that its’ as universally as accessible as pop music, because that’s literally what pop music is designed to do, to connect with massive amounts of people– My music is a median between those two genres.

3. What are some of your musical influences?

Michael Jackson, Bruno Mars are two key ones.  I’m super inspired by performers and seeing the creativity of these two has truly had an impact on me as a musician and a performer without a doubt.

4. What about your nonmusical influences?

Probably my mom technically? I don’t know, I’ve always loved music. I used to play a lot of video games as a kid, and to be honest, that’s where some of my favourite composers and most significant inspiration came from.  If I didn’t play those games there’s no way I would be creating the music I make today.

5. Tell us a little bit about your new EP!

My major goal with this EP was to make great sounding songs and to represent myself honestly.  I genuinely believe that’s what I did – thanks to the help of all the people that were involved, and you know.  I spent majority of my adult life, working on this, paving the way for this. I want it to tell a story, and I want it to connect with people.  I want people to think, I want people to laugh, I want people to dance, and I want it to do things for people that I couldn’t possibly imagine.

6. What is something you would like to achieve by the end of the year?

I’ve achieved a tremendous amount this year.  I honestly can not say there are things I’m looking to tackle by January.  All the things I’m looking towards now are a far bigger scope at this point – I’m setting my eyes on 2-3 years down the road already.

7. What is your dream collaboration?

My dream collaboration would definitely be with the Smeezingtons; I would just love to see the way Bruno, Phil and Ari go about their writing process and their production process.

8. What is your songwriting process like?

My process comes in all shapes and sizes and my songs shares so many different influences. You can hear soul, you can hear motown, hip hop, pop but, it is all done to serve a purpose and that’s the key to my process.  It’s to do 2 things: Connect with you as a listener and have you be able to sing along and have it resonate and stay with you. And secondly, it does all this with the purpose of delivering the message of the song and telling a story.

9. What do you hope fans get out of your music?

I hope for nothing.

My mantra is “hope for nothing, expect everything”

Let me first clarify that when I say “expect everything” I don’t mean that you should feel entitled to what ever it is you want – because you’re not.

What I’m saying is I never hope for anything because it doesn’t actually require you to do anything. It’s so easy just sit around hoping, waiting for things to happen to you.  To genuinely expect something however, is different, it requires you to take actions that are necessary to actually give you a justifiable reason to expect something.  You can’t legitimately expect something without a having a reason to.  Hope does not require reason.

What I expect to bring to the music scene is just my individuality – I’m bringing myself to it. Really take it or leave it.  I genuinely believe is there’s gonna be people who absolutely love my music, and I also genuinely believe there’s gonna be people who absolutely hate it, and I’m happy with that.  Because you can’t please everyone, you just have to do what you do the absolute best you can do it and put your focus there.  If there’s somebody who actually hates my music, that puts me in a really good place, because for all the reasons they hate it so passionately, will be all the same reasons somebody else loves the shit out of it. Think of Kanye, some people love him, and some people f***in’ hate him, right? Same thing with Taylor Swift; in my opinion that’s great.  The real problem is if you’re anywhere in-between.  Then there is nothing to even talk about.

So, I just want to bring, what it is, and that’s what I expect people are going to get from it as well, I love to play music, I love to make music, I love to share music, and that’s what I’m giving through my music. I’m giving myself.

Fun Questions:

Coffee or Tea?

Tea, no caffeine for me!

Current obsession song?

We Find Love – Daniel Caesar

Favorite T.V. show?

Man, I haven’t had cable for a decade now.  But, if we’re talking about all media then I’m definitely going to say Black Mirror for right now.

Song you wish you wrote?

Thriller – What a fucking masterpiece.

Ocean or Pool?

Ocean for sure, fresh air, hot weather the beach I love it all!