Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with Michael Lanza

Michael Lanza is an artist who should be on everybody’s playlist. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Michael is living out his dreams. The singer-songwriter has shared the stage with Major Lazer and Drake Bell and has captivated listeners with a signature sound that blends his R&B-influenced vocals with colorful pop productions. He recently dropped his LP and a new collab, and Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with him about it!

PC: How did you discover your passion for music?
Michael: My dad is a violinist, and he’s been playing since he was eighteen or nineteen. He taught himself after he got out of high school. He started me on the violin when I was three years old. My parents pushed music really hard my whole life: the violin, saxophone, drums, guitar, bass, and trumpet. I played all these instruments.

Initially, I didn’t really like it all that much because they were forcing me to do it. I’d rather play sports. I took two years off in college and I started making beats on my laptop. That’s when I started singing. I’ve only been doing it for three to four years. It took off from there. I opened for Drake Bell in college. That was a big deal because I grew up watching Drake and Josh. That was cool. It all started because of my dad.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Michael: It was receiving acknowledgment from people in college after I released my first song. I put it out and wanted to see what would happen. People said it was cool. Then I did some promotions. I posted it all over Facebook and random people that I didn’t know started recognizing me at parties from the music video. I was like, “Wow. This is definitely possible.” That drove a lot of it. There weren’t many specific artists. I’ve been doing it my whole life, but Ed Sheeran inspired me to start writing. I used to study his lyrics a lot and Fall Out Boy too. Fall Out Boy has some of the best lyrics.

PC: You’ve had a lot of success already in your young career. When you look back, is there a particular moment that stands out?
Michael: I put out a song with some friends I met in college. The first day it came out, the Chainsmokers reposted it. That’s one really cool thing early on that happened. I also got a placement in Keeping Up with the Kardashians for a song. That was really cool. That was right when I moved to LA and I didn’t expect that to happen so fast.

PC: You recently dropped your debut LP, Human. Tell us about it and what inspired it.
Michael: It’s a collection of human experiences. They’re not all about me. Some are about friends, strangers, and stuff I think about in my head. The album is about all of us as humans. We can all relate to each song. Anyone that listens to it has a specific song on the album that they can relate to. There is stuff about being human in the first song. The next song, “Chasing You,” is about chasing your dreams. There are songs about regret, anger, loneliness, confidence, overcoming adversity. There is a wide array of different stuff.

PC: If you had to select one song off of Human that best encompasses who you are as an artist, which would it be and why?
Michael: Probably “Chasing You.” It’s really about not letting anything get in the way of what you want. One of the lines in that song is “I’ll waste away my youth chasing you.” I’m not wasting my youth, but my youth is moving fast because I’m working so hard to try and make my dreams come true.

PC: With this being your debut project, did anything surprise you about the experience? What was the biggest takeaway for you?
Michael: The biggest takeaway was that it’s possible to do everything yourself. You just need to be patient and learn how to do everything because I know so many people that are struggling to put music out because they’re trying to find other people to help them. I tried that for a month or two, and I realized really fast that you’re not going to get the product you want. It’s great to work with people, and cool stuff comes out of that, don’t get me wrong, but I found my sound by working alone, experimenting, getting frustrated, and starting over. I reproduced a lot of the songs five, six, seven times before the final version came out. I just learned a lot by grinding it out on my own.

PC: You also recently released a new single, “Islands.” What inspired that song and how did that collaboration with Chow Mane come to fruition?
Michael: I’ll start with how it came to be. Chow Mane and I had mutual friends in San Francisco. We had a little get-together. We were meeting other creatives—people that wanted to get into entertainment. It was a group of mutual friends. Then Chow Mane came and we talked. He’s pretty cool. We got along pretty well pretty fast. I had this beat. The beat was called “Islands,” and he came over to my place a couple of weeks later. He saw the name of the beat and he started coming up with ideas for the song. We wrote it there. We recorded it a couple of weeks later. It was a pretty fast process. We didn’t really think too much about it. We just started talking about mental health and keeping your feelings all locked up inside and trying to keep other people around you happy by suppressing your own negative emotions. That’s where the song came from.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: A band or artist that fans would be surprised to learn is on your playlist?
Michael: Fountains Of Wayne. They wrote “Stacy’s Mom,” but I don’t think anyone else knows their other songs. I’ve listened to them all and I love them. That was the first live show I went to when I was ten.

PC: First album you bought?
Michael: Kerplunk! by Green Day.

PC: An album that changed your life and why?
Michael: From Under The Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy. I really connected with the album and the lyricism. Their song titles are insane. They have these crazy twenty-word song titles. I really connected with their music. I found it when I was a young teenager, and it was pretty edgy. Everyone was listening to it.

PC: A venue on your bucket list to perform at?
Michael: Bill Graham in San Francisco. I’ve been to a lot of shows there, and that’s where I grew up in the Bay area.

PC: A must-have on the road?
Michael: I would love to just have Cuties at all times—the little oranges. I can eat those all day. Those help me sing too for some reason.

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

Photo Credit: Benjamin Farren