Newcomer Adam Paddock Talks His New Single and Musical Journey
Adam Paddock decided to release his first single in August of 2020 right in the midst of the pandemic. He was shocked when his song hit 20,000 streams considering he didn’t have much of a following. Paddock proves that it’s possible to do it all by going to school while simultaneously releasing his music but let’s start at the beginning.
Paddock didn’t always know how to sing. In fact, he only started his musical journey during his junior year of high school when he auditioned to be a part of the show choir.
“[My friends] said, “Hey man, are you trying to dance with some pretty girls like we do every week?” And I was like, who wouldn’t?”
He learned how to dance for the audition and hoped for the best with his singing. Luckily it turned out he was quite good at it considering he was named one of the top 25 soloists in America.
Once he realized he had a knack for singing, he decided to start dabbling in songwriting during his freshman and sophomore years of college. Songwriting came as naturally to him as singing and it’s all thanks to his mother.
His mom has a master’s in poetry and she would tell Paddock he couldn’t leave his room in the morning until he finished reading some poems or a hundred pages in a book. The experience helped him learn how to write, create poetry portfolios, and even landed him in a public speaking competition.
“She’s always been very hands-on in editing everything so… when people say I don’t like that or change this, for a lot of people that kind of hurts them to their core, but I’ve been hearing that forever. Then it makes the phrase, that’s so good, even more [meaningful] when you actually know they’re going to be legit about their feedback,” Paddock said.
However, he never considered any of those songs good enough to release until his junior year.
“There’s that one Ed Sheeran quote where he’s like you have to write so many bad songs that eventually you find a diamond in the rough… It was just after COVID hit and I wrote the first one that I thought could be actually decent.”
That song is called ‘Milky Way’ and even though he didn’t have much of a following the song managed to hit 35,000 streams on Spotify and is continuing to grow.
Currently, Paddock is a senior strategic communications student at The Ohio State University and is also a resident advisor. While most students study and sleep in their dorms he has transformed his dorm into a recording studio.
“I bought a ton of one dollar carpet squares from Goodwill and I hung them up with command strips, and you would not believe how dead this room sounds… I’m very strategic with where do I hang my clothes, where do I place my bed in the room?” Paddock said.
Paddock’s dorm recording studio (not all carpet squares are hung up).
His dorm has been an amazing opportunity to promote his music but social media has been another that has also played a large role in his musical journey.
Paddock has gained a following of 17,400 followers on TikTok by creating content about his music. Additionally, Instagram is what led him to collaborate with Xander Sallows and release his latest single ‘Glad You Stayed’.
“One of my buddies Leyton posted Xander on his Instagram story and 99% of the time people don’t actually look at those songs, but I thought, you know what the heck Leyton’s got good music taste, I’ll listen. And then I was just floored,” Paddock said.
After listening to Sallows’ song he direct messaged him to collaborate and Sallows wasn’t completely on board with the idea until Paddock joined his live stream and they connected.
While this experience isn’t that abnormal in today’s day and age it is crazy to consider how they wrote, mixed and mastered that song all in 24 hours.
“[Sallows] was in Southern Michigan and I went up for release day… and we said, you know, I’m going to be here all day so what if we start a song now and just try to finish it by the time I leave?” Paddock said.
The entire song was built on a riff that Paddock came up with and was layered with a different pattern. Sallows recorded the percussion and together they created a verse instrumental, a chorus, and the entire song structure. That took about four hours then they began to record demo vocals. Another four hours later they recorded the real vocals and the song was finished. The music video came a couple of days after the release and is an ode to their online friendship.
Paddock’s musical future is looking as bright as ever as he’s getting the chance to be an opener at Nationwide Arena, the Schottenstein Center, and is singing the national anthem at the Columbus Crew Stadium.
He plans to move out of Columbus once he graduates, but he’s not sure where. In the meantime, he has a new single coming out soon titled ‘Golden Eyes’, is working on some remixes and his EP, and is finishing out his senior year of college.
“Things are just walking in the right direction so my biggest goals are to continue to be people-focused in general, because if you’re not doing it with anybody that you love, and that loves you, there’s no point.”
With a talent that is so versatile and shines as bright as Paddock, he is definitely an artist on the rise that you need to keep an eye on.
Keep up with Adam Paddock here:
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