Music

Twin Shadow will listen to your demos

by Anne T. Donahue

Twin Shadow (real name George Lewis Jr.) knows music is a business. But as far as he’s concerned, whether an artist is making music for the money or for the art shouldn’t matter to anyone but the musician himself—provided the end product is that of quality, value, and alludes to something more.

“I do [think of it like a business],” Lewis reveals. “But you shouldn’t think about whether I think about it as a business or not. You shouldn’t concern yourself with that at all. Even if I’m doing the most outlandish business moves in the world, if you listen to my music with those kinds of thoughts in your head, it’s going to ruin the music for you.”

“It’s not your job as a listener to be concerned with what I’m doing as a business,” he continues. “That’s my business. And if I keep the quality up, then it probably won’t ever cross your mind. But if my quality starts shit-tanking, you’re probably going to be like, ‘oh, well George, I talked to him—he just wants to be a millionaire.’”

Lewis’ realist approach to the music industry shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s learned of the pop artist through blog culture or the support of his peers, as the Brooklyn-based musician has embraced the freedom allowed by ‘new media,’ and rejects the idea that artists are suffering because of it.

“It’s kind of total freedom right now,” he asserts. “It’s kind of the Wild West. You can write whatever you want and say whatever you want and that’s probably not going to last forever, so I think it’s a good thing.”

“There will always be a vehicle for those who are talented and those who are imitating talented people,” he adds. “There’s always going to be a vehicle. I don’t think it’s any faster than it used to be. Bands used to get made overnight all the time, then you’d forget about them if they didn’t have the right people behind them to keep pushing them in the face of everybody else.”

“Talent isn’t just about you having good ideas. It’s also about your – dare I say, ingenuity or whatever. How you push it out, how you kind of predict your audience’s next move. If you want to treat your music or your art like a business, then there’s a talent to doing that. And it is up to you to kind of do it and to come up with good ideas.”

Inspired by Washed Out, The Weeknd, Kanye West and Tame Impala, Lewis is no stranger to bankable talent. And while he admits he “could probably list all the bands [he likes] on both hands,” he’s not only open to collaborations down the road, but considers it vital to the music-making process.

“Music’s always been about collaboration,” he maintains. “Maybe what we’re noticing is that a band or ‘being in a band’ with four members or whatever—maybe people are tired of it. Maybe it’s cliché. Maybe it’s boring, I don’t know. But what you’re seeing is people who essentially want to be in a band, but don’t want to be tied into what a band means. We know what it’s like to be alone in our room with a computer [and] we really understand that. So we’re alone in that sense, but you can’t stop that feeling of wanting to create with someone. And collaboration is almost always the reason things become so good. You can’t have perspective [otherwise].”

And if you’re hoping to work with Lewis yourself? Consider this your in:

“I’d love to produce a band this summer,” he reveals. “It’s up for grabs. I’m not closed off to it. I listen to demos. I listen to all the demos people give me. I want the world to know that. That may not be forever, but for now every time somebody hands me something, I’ll definitely listen to it.”