Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Livingston

Growing up in the suburbs of Dallas, producer, singer, and songwriter Livingston struggled to find his place in the world. While facing relentless bullying, self doubt, and anxiety, Livingston turned to music and found solace in his craft. He’s taken those experiences and channeled them into his brand new album Lighthouse. Pop Culturalist caught up with Livingston to learn more about his career, the release of Lighthouse, and finding his confidence as a man and artist.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Livingston: Definitely life experiences as a whole. Going through middle school, there wasn’t a place where I fit in. I had a lot of time for free thought to find out who I was outside of peer pressure and external judgement. That was a huge thing, trying to focus on what I wanted to do in life. So, I’m thankful that I didn’t have a lot of friends or a lot of external support for that reason. It allowed me to make an unbiased decision whether what I was doing was the right thing or maybe I should try something else entirely.

As far as musically, there are so many different guys. You have everyone from this group Odesza, who makes this incredible ambient electronic, to Imagine Dragons to John Powell, who’s an incredible composer, to Jon Bellion. It’s all across the board.

PC: You just released your debut EP. Tell us about Lighthouse and the inspiration behind the collection.
Livingston: Lighthouse is the story of when I was eight or nine to about three or four years ago. It covers a span of my life. That was one of the most difficult seasons. It was when I was going into middle school and I had all these expectations of who I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to act like, and what I was supposed to look like. At that point in my life, I was still relying on the opinions of others really heavily to fuel my confidence.

I had a very lackluster experience in that regard. “Fairytale”, the first song, is about the expectations that I had based on the heroes that I grew up watching and these ideals set by culture, movies, and music. These fantasized, romanticized versions of people that I thought I could actually look up to. They manifested in the real world in the forms of the kids that I always thought were going to be on my side, who I looked up to, and who I wanted to be like. When they turned their shoulders, I realized that not only are they human, but they’re negative at times. They looked and brought me down instead of bringing me up.

“Home” is a jump far forward in the future. I wrote that song in my junior year of high school right before finals week. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life or career. I feel like, especially in more traditional Southern school environments, there’s this imposed idea that you have to know what your plan is, what your path is. It has to be traditional—it has to fit a bill of what a majority of adults will approve of. I was at that point, really, really scared of not living up to their expectations, but also not living up to my own. I was afraid that I spent the last four years locked in my bedroom being as creative as I could for nothing. Was it futile? Was it a waste of time? Should I have been out being a high schooler and taking the last four years of freedom that I’ll ever have? Did I waste that on a pipe dream? That’s what the song addresses.

Then, we skip backwards in time with “War”. That song is directly about the over-dramatization of playground battles that I used to be engaged in when kids would chase me down and they’d pin me down and slap me or whatever it was. That experience happened to me so often. I had to beef it up and make those moments slow-motion to at least romanticize it in my head a bit that I was always going to be the odd one out and the one who was picked out for stuff like that.

The rest of the EP follows suit to that whole time of my life—self-identity, self-discovery, and battling through insecurity, despite the oftentimes very, very disheartening opinions of other people. Everyone deals with those moments in their lives, having to find your identity through the white noise and the static of everybody else’s judgement on who they believe you should try to become, regardless if that’s in your nature or not.

PC: You’ve said in previous interviews that putting together your debut EP was a discovery process. What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself as a man and as an artist?
Livingston: Personally, as a human, I discovered that the only thing that I’ll ever be able to do well is be myself. That’s super, super cliché, but I tried to run circles around who I was for so long because I was scared of it. I tried to be cooler than who I was. I used to have this rap persona when I was in eighth or ninth grade. I made a stage name for it and wore clothes that didn’t fit my body. I was super swagged out, like I thought I could become more than who I was. It’s a really poignant thing through a lot of people’s lives—that they spend their whole lives trying to pursue being someone they’re not because they feel that’s how they have to impress people.

Thankfully, the reception of this EP, both in the industry and also personally (most importantly), by so many people and the feedback that I’ve gotten from it has shown me that I resonate with people without any gimmick, without a shtick. I was scared to put this EP out because it’s my heart on a plate and everything that I felt, and it didn’t hold back on that front. Fortunately, I discovered that was what I needed. That was the only ticket that was going to get me to where I wanted to be. So, that’s how I think personally it affected me.

Musically, there’s a whole other thing. I’m still trying to grow as a producer and writer, first and foremost; that’s what is going to shape my artistry in a holistic way. I realized that it’s okay to be an amalgam of everything that you love. There’s this weird standard that you have to have a balance between originality and external influence. You have to sound like things that have been out and also have to sound entirely new at the same time. I think that something most people don’t realize is that when you spend a very long time being inspired by a lot of different artists at different skill sets—be that different producers, writers, and artists—you allow yourself to be equally influenced by each of those different elements. You focus on not looking or sounding like one of these guys.

I’m actually building a vinyl wall right now across the room from me. On that wall, there’s Urban Flora by Alina Baraz & Galimatias, T R A P S O U L by Bryson Tiller, Under Pressure by Logic, 2014 Forest Hills Drive by J.Cole, The Human Condition by Jon Bellion, the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack by John Powell, and Views by Drake. I look at all those albums and they all did something for my musical pursuits. I realize while I am looking at it, my music is slowly but surely conforming to a middle ground between all of those different things. Elements of the really good hip-hop drums I loved growing up are now bleeding into my music and elements of, like, the melodic lines and the string sections from the movie scores that I love are bleeding in now. Overall, Lighthouse showed me that it’s okay to combine everything you love and create something totally new out of it.

PC: You talked about tapping into your vulnerability. Was that ever a scary prospect? How were you able to overcome that?
Livingston: Thankfully, when I first started taking music seriously, I didn’t really feel a pressure to share it. I was able to be vulnerable pretty quickly with it because I knew that my mom, my friends, and I were going to be the only people to hear that music as it were. It helped me break down those walls pretty quickly, and from there, I was directed to vulnerability. You’ve got to find a way to laser-focus it into something that not just you, but something that other people can feel a part of. Once the walls are down, that next part is easy. It’s just takes practice.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: A band or artist that fans would be surprised to learn is on your playlist?
Livingston: There’s nothing surprising—it’s like all Kanye, Travis Scott, Post Malone, and Jon Bellion.

PC: First album you bought?
Livingston: Incredible True Story by Logic.

PC: First concert you attended?
Livingston: TobyMac.

PC: An album that changed your life and why?
Livingston: Night Visions by Imagine Dragons. I had this old Sony or Panasonic jam box and only had Pandora on it when I was nine or ten. I would sit in my bed and go to Imagine Dragons radio. You only have so many skips, but I would use all the skips just to get to “It’s Time”, then “Radioactive”, and then to get to “Demons”. That first Imagine Dragons project really opened my eyes to how dope music could be and how energetic it could be, too. It was gritty. I loved all that.

PC: A venue on your bucket list to perform at?
Livingston: I have a voice note on my phone from September 17, 2017; it was the day after I had gone to a concert. The voice note goes, “Hey mom.” She’s like, “Yeah, Drae?” I was like, “Mom, this time, five years from now, I want to sell out South Side Ballroom in Dallas, Texas.” She was like, “Okay, honey. That’s great.” So, the secret dream of mine is to sell out South Side Ballroom by September 17, 2022—that’s like my dream venue.

PC: A must-have on the road?
Livingston: I love green and protein smoothies. I also love Koia protein shakes—they’re plant based.

To keep up with Livingston, follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify.