For the final segment of Skyler’s Artist of the Week, Skyler reflected on her experiences and her song, “Carnival.” Read her reflection below.
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Hey everyone, so this is a little bit about my world and “Carnival.” I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia hanging out at the beach, on the farm and on stage with my dad. When I was little, I used to love playing outside in the mud and rain. I loved working on a petting farm with animals all day, and most of all I loved singing on stage with my dad who taught me all about music and how to use the voice he gave me. I remember at just six years old being on stage with my dad singing “Old Time Rock n Roll” by Bob Seger, having a blast being in the lights and having everyone listening to me and my dad do something we loved.
As I grew up, I kept singing with my dad and learning more and more each day, my favorite part about the whole thing is seeing how proud my dad was of the person I was becoming and how I had the same love for music that he did. I was only ten years old when I packed up my stuff and left Virginia Beach to move to always sunny California (which is funny because as I’m writing this it’s actually raining outside yet also ninety degrees). Anyway, upon moving to California I found some animal shelters to volunteer at, my mom is a shelter manager so that helped, and I started acting and modeling mostly to help me make even a small name for myself out here before I started doing music professionally. After doing a few acting gigs and a few print jobs, I started working with a great music producer, Mike Gonsolin at Trend Def, mainly doing pop and urban songs, but the older I got the more I really missed my hometown roots and so I started writing country music again.
When I turned fifteen I wrote my song “Carnival” in a completely different form than it’s in now. We started recording the vocals, but every guy we worked with, even though their voices were amazing, just didn’t fit the song right, so we kept working on other things hoping that at some point we would find the right voice for “Carnival” and we did almost two and a half years later, which sounds like a crazy long time I know but great music needs patience to become the masterpiece I see “Carnival” as. When I started working with Mackenzie on this project and first heard his voice on just a few of the lyrics I almost cried knowing I had found the perfect person to help me bring my lyrics to life. Now that “Carnival” has been out for a few weeks I am getting such amazing feedback from people and I couldn’t be happier that I waited so long and finally found the right person for the song, and that I know my dad and the people who saw me performing at only six years old are so proud of the person I am and what I am doing with the voice and writing skills I got from my dad.
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