Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Griffith Frank

Singer-songwriter Griffith Frank may come from a long line of artists, but this rising talent is carving his own path in the industry. Earlier this year, he dropped an emotional single titled “You’ll Be There.” The deeply personal song showcases Griffith’s ability to strike a chord with listeners.

Pop Culturalist had the pleasure of speaking with Griffith about his career.

PC: How did you discover your passion for music?
Griffith: I grew up in a musical household where music was around me all the time. I started playing piano at a very young age—when I was about five or six years old. Singing came very naturally. I started to figure out how to hit notes as a kid. I always had a good sense of tune. Singing with a fuller tone and imitating the singers I heard growing up made a lot of sense to me, so I kept doing it.

One day when I was ten years old, something clicked. I was in a school play and I had a song to sing. People gave me a standing ovation. It hadn’t occurred to me before then, but in that moment I was like, “I guess I figured out how to sing.” So I kept doing it. But music has always been a part of my life. It never really occurred to me to do anything else.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Griffith: The biggest influence was definitely my dad. He’s a songwriter and producer himself. Of course, when you have that significant of a role model, the possibility of making it a career was always there. I know a lot of people who didn’t necessarily grow up in musical households but decided to pursue a musical career. It tends to be fifty-fifty if they’re supported or not. But for me, it was never a question. Being raised with that possibility very much open to me, I dove headfirst into it. My dad was never a singer, so I forged my own path there.

PC: Tell us about “You’ll Be There” and the inspiration behind the song.
Griffith: I wrote “You’ll Be There” back in 2013. It was right before my mother was about to enter hospice. She had been fighting cancer for about three years at that point. I was going through my own grief and my own struggles with the situation. Then I heard about this tornado in Oklahoma that had hit a school full of children and killed a number of people. Here I was going through my own situation and then I hear about this unbelievable tragedy befalling these other families and I’m going, “Wow, this is just unreal devastation.”

I came up with the lyrical idea. I was working with my really good friend Jordan Richmond, who is a wonderful producer I work with regularly. We were coming up with melodies and piano parts and talking about whether anyone really knows how to get through situations like this. We wrote the song around that idea: does anybody really know how to deal with these tragedies that we all face? That’s how the song came to be.

PC: You’ve been steadily releasing music throughout the years. If you had to pick one of your songs that best encompasses who you are as an artist, which would it be and why?
Griffith: Absolutely “You’ll Be There.” “You’ll Be There” is how I want to be represented as an artist. The lyrics are personal and hopefully communicate a message that a lot of people can relate to at this time. The production is minimal, yet there’s an epic quality. The melodies are beautiful. My singing on there is the result of all the different ways I’ve tried to get my voice to come across over the years. I went through a very winding journey in terms of discovering how I wanted to present myself as a singer.

PC: As we look ahead to the rest of 2021, what does the year hold for you?
Griffith: The way that we consume music is changing. I cut my teeth initially on the old-world music industry ideology. Everything about that is gone. It’s totally changed. Even now, it’s changing even further in a very interesting way, and it’s really not up to us how that changes. It’s up to how people want to listen to the music they want to listen to.

I’m approaching 2021 keeping that in mind and thinking, “Okay, so what am I going to do that really speaks to me that I think goes well with where we are right now?” Because some artists are still releasing albums, and I think you can still do that. But then a lot of artists are just releasing singles. So I’m thinking, “What is the artistic arc that I want to create?”

Lately, I’ve been reimagining classic songs in a different way. I still pay homage to the original song, but I add something of my own when I feel like I really land on something that’s important to say. That’s how I’ve been approaching it, and people seem to like it.

That’s what people can expect from me. I’m going to keep trying to produce different takes on classics while continuing to work on my own compositions. It’s really interesting: if you’re familiar with the history of music, we’re almost back in the eras of the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s now, where we have these standards that people would put their own spins on.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: First album you bought?
Griffith: I think it was the tenth anniversary of the cast recording of Les Misérables.

PC: First concert you attended?
Griffith: The one from when I was very young that has stuck with me was an *NSYNC concert.

PC: An album that changed your life and why?
Griffith: Either Absolution by Muse or With Teeth by Nine Inch Nails. They opened me up to music that I hadn’t really heard or been exposed to before. Growing up, I was around either classical music or theatrical music or straight pop and R&B because of what my father was doing. My love for the music in these albums was very much my own because while my family was very musical, none of them listened to rock music.

PC: A venue on your bucket list to perform at?
Griffith: The Hollywood Bowl.

PC: A must-have on the road?
Griffith: Books on tape. When I was younger, my dad would go to England and buy us classic literature on tape: The Cricket in Times Square, Chronicles of Narnia. I would listen to these books every single night. It really helped me develop a lifelong habit of listening to audiobooks. I attribute my love for writing lyrics to that as well.

To keep up with Griffith, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Music. Listen to “You’ll Be There” today.