Savan kotecha biography of michael
Savan Kotecha interview: "The people with the longest careers are the people who learn how to do it on purpose"
Interview: Michael Cragg
In the last eighteen months or so songwriter, producer and former X Factor class clown Savan Kotecha has helped create some of pop's best moments.
We're talking grade A brilliance like 'Bang Bang', 'Problem', 'Love Me Like You Do', 'Can't Feel My Face' and 'Cool For The Summer'. Oh, and 'On My Mind'.
For over a decade he's helped 'pen' more proper hits than you've had hot showers and is, alongside mentor and all round actual genius Max Martin and various members of his Wolf Cousins collective, about to unleash a slew of new, career-defining bangers.
Despite not really doing interviews he agreed to a chat over some breakfast in Beverly Hills.
Here's what happened.
How has your songwriting developed since working with the likes of Westlife and Shayne Ward?
In the beginning I was hustling. I'm from Texas, it wasn't a musical family and I had no connections, so once you start getting chances and opportunities you take them. I moved to Sweden from Texas for songwriting and at the time pop was dead in America. I'd met Simon Cowell and he was giving me cuts on Westlife albums and I was making a great living. So for years I was making songs for record executives, if that makes sense, rather than the audience. When I was in Sweden, where obviously English isn't the first language, I probably ruined a lot of Shayne Ward songs with really bad lines whereas if I was in the States and around Americans we could have bounced lines around and someone would have said 'that's not cool'. In Sweden they were like 'you can do the lyrics because you know English'. When you're outside of an English-speaking country you don't realise what's cheesy.
Do you remember the song where you started writing more for the audience?
I think it was when I was around M
Savan Kotecha – The Man Behind Hits by Ariana Grande, One Direction, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber
One of the few Indian origin artist to have achieved fame and recognition in the international music space is Savan Kotecha. For the ones unfamiliar with the songwriter, here are the names of just a few artists he has worked with, One Direction, Demi Lovato, Britney Spears, Ellie Goulding, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and the current pop queen Ariana Grande.
In this interview we discuss Savan’s remarkable journey from being a boy band aspirant to writing some of the biggest hits for the best artists and more.
Take us through the Savan Kotecha journey. Your parents worked at IBM. How did they react to your choice of profession?
They weren’t that happy to be honest. It was obviously more out of concern of the unknown. They didn’t know anything about the music business and all they saw on tv about it was sex and drugs haha. It took them a long time to accept it. But I was so obsessed and focused more on music than school so at some point they accepted that I wouldn’t go into college like my peers in the Indian community. And they let me live in the house still so that was very nice! It wasn’t until a number of years after me being successful where I think they really accepted it and realized I was fine!
What lured you to music? Whom did you idolise while growing up? Has your style been inspired by any of them?
I am not sure what lured me into music. When I was a kid I always loved dancing and I was obsessed with Michael Jackson. But I don’t remember ever thinking I would do music until high school. There was a night after we had just moved to Texas and I couldn’t sleep. I saw my sister’s old keyboard and I just took it out when everyone was sleeping and began playing chords. I thought it was fun and then kept doing it and started writing songs from there. My biggest idol as a songwriter during those times was Babyface, Bryan Adams and Richard Mar
Meet Savan Kotecha: The Man Behind One Direction&#;s Rapid Rise to the Top (Q&#;A)
While Simon Cowell is credited with discovering and molding One Direction into the pop phenom known today, there’s more to the story of their rapid rise to the top.
Cowell himself spotted something special in Texas native Savan Kotecha (who has found a mentor in pop music legend Max Martin), bringing him on to serve as a vocal producer on the original U.K. version of The X Factor and later on the U.S. version, as well. During his time on the UK show, Kotecha worked closely with the newly-formed boy band as they developed their sound.
PHOTOS: THR&#;s Hitmakers
“I helped develop their voices on the show and all that, so I knew what they were capable of and what they could do,” Kotecha tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ is just one of those, you know, lightning strikes.”
The year-old songwriter &#; and mastermind behind Britney Spears’ “If U Seek Amy” and Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat”&#; is in the studio with the show’s fourth-place finishers Emblem3, executive producing their debut album under his newly formed Syco imprint Mr. Kanani.
“I just hope the public likes what we’re putting together,” he confesses. “It’s really good songs, it’s really different and it’s really their own sound. We haven’t really changed what Emblem 3 is. We’ve definitely refined it, but still at the core it is who they are.”
Below, Kotecha &#; ranked No. 30 on THR’s list &#; reveals the spark that inspired “What Makes You Beautiful,” why he compares mentor Martin to Michael Jordan and the challenges of working with budding talent.
THR&#;s Complete Pop&#;s Top 35 Hitmakers List
The Hollywood Reporter: How is it different working with show contestants versus somebody who’s been in “I also think the boundaries between genres of Western music are falling,” Kotecha nods vigorously. “Separating genres to me is also tied to the race issue, so I’m glad that people are noticing that we shouldn’t call things ‘urban’ anymore.” Still, it’s not a great time to be a songwriter on the come-up, he agrees. “Streaming has been great for artists and record labels, but it’s very hard for middle-class songwriters to make money. It’s an all or nothing game now – you’re either part of the big, big hits, the radio and TV syncs; or you’re working on minimum wage.” Kotecha himself might be the last of a generation of songwriters who got rich peddling their songs to big artists. “When I was coming up,” he recalls, “a song by Westlife, which may not have even been a big hit, but existed on an album that sold four million copies, would’ve made me, like, $, And I could live off that for a few years. But now that doesn’t exist, because it’s all streaming. I’ve been very lucky, but the reason I point it out is because as someone who loves the craft and would like to see others come up, this is going to kill the composers unless they don’t figure out this payment system.” His own way of balancing the odds a little bit is to spotlight new songwriters wherever he can. On Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, he did just that. When Amy Dunning, director of music at Netflix Entertainment, reached out to him for recommendations on Swedish producers to lead its music direction, Kotecha jumped at it. Once he’d created “Double Trouble”, with longtime collaborators Rami Yacoub and Arnþór Birgisson, he put together a team of new writers, also featuring real-life Eurovision contestants. “It’s a strange, wonderful tradition,” Kotecha says, recounting his first brush with the contest that once gifted the world a pop group named ABBA, and till date, brings all activity to a grinding halt in Europe. “The lyrics often sound like they’ve been pulled off Google Translat