On July 7th, Braden Bales released his first EP, NOMAD. Throughout the six-song collection, the 21-year-old summarizes how he’s felt since leaving home while showcasing his unique sound and songwriting ability. The EP is a mixture of pop, rock, and a bit of folk. During a virtual press conference hosted by º1824, I had the opportunity to chat with the singer-songwriter about his latest work.
NOLA Concerts: How does it feel to have your first body of work out there? And what does the EP mean to you?
Braden Bales: Having my first body of work is great. I always underestimated the whole EP project thing. I just had never done one so I put so much value on singles and that feeling. [But] dropping a body of work at once has been great in terms of just feeling understood. Because any single I feel like is one aspect of your mind and dropping something together that is obviously a bigger piece of work has more angles to it.
But having you only put out one song since “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” over the last little bit has really felt to me that people can understand where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to. For a while I felt like “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” was all they were seeing and now having how I felt about “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” more out there and I feel much better and more comfortable as a person feeling understood.
NOLA Concerts: That kind of leads me to my last question, if you can describe your new EP, NOMAD in three words, what would they be?
Braden Bales: I would say ‘angsty’ maybe…angsty is definitely existential. So I’ll say angsty and emotional. I want to say catchy but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing to say about your own music but I do love a hook.
NOLA Concerts: Well, it is catchy!
Braden Bales: I like the hooks in every song. The hooks are what I love about each of those songs so maybe that.
NOLA Concerts: Those are a solid three.
Like his lyrics, Bales was vulnerable and introspective. During the press conference, Bales opened up about his mental health. He shared that he, like many, is still figuring out how to take care of his mental health while in this era of his life. His mindset is to take it one day at a time and just keep moving forward.
NOMAD is the story of the past 6 months of his life. “It was just looking at a picture of the last five to six months of my life and just realizing how I’ve been feeling…and a lot of the songs even though they’re about different subjects, they hold the same raw feeling about insecurity and the feeling on being a nomad,” Bales shared. Over the last year, he has left his home in Ontario (as mentioned in “PICK ME UP”), moved to LA where he lived out of his car, and then traveled across the country before settling in Nashville. His songwriting is essentially honest but catchy storytelling.
His Songwriting Process
His advice for anyone interested in songwriting? Focus on the feeling. “The hardest part for me originally was sharing the music,” Bales said. The 21-year-old writes an average of five songs per week and as you can tell from listening to his EP, he expresses his current feelings when writing music. It can be difficult and intimidating to be so vulnerable to so many listeners but unlike others in the music industry, he isn’t focused on the future marketing tied to the song or even where the song is going.“It’s really easy now…when I realize in my most vulnerable points I’m not alone because everyone else feels the same thing.” His end goal is to express his emotions and figure out the rest later.
Also, to my surprise, his pre-studio session ritual is listening to Afrobeats. “I don’t understand the words so I’m not focusing on anything but just the feeling and letting go [of] anything in my brain.”
Going Viral On TikTok
There’s no doubt about the impact TikTok has had on artists’ careers. With over one billion active users worldwide, the social media platform has become a key tool to help artists grow and cultivate an audience. But it takes more than one viral video to skyrocket to stardom. In February, he built momentum up with the release of “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” by sharing over 15+ videos – one of which resulted in a duet from Elyse Myers. Bales opened up about the feelings after virality, “There was a numbness past a certain point. I was at 30,000 monthly listeners when that started blowing up…within a week I felt numb to all the numbers. And the biggest thing I took home from going viral is that nothing actually changes.”
“I think that TikTok is amazing for music. I think that short-form content makes the music industry more accessible to the everyday person…anything that helps artists get discovered and builds careers for musicians is great,” Bales shared. Since going viral earlier this year, Braden Bales’s “CHRONICALLY CAUTIOUS” has over 24 million streams on Spotify alone. And he has garnered over 918k monthly listeners!
What’s Next for Braden
“The singer-songwriter genre has been super inspiring to me,” Bales named Jeremy Zucker, Alexander 23, Quinn XCII, and Chelsea Cutler as songwriters that inspire him. He later shared he would love to collaborate with those artists in the future. “Just meeting up and making music would be a dream come true for me.”
Until then, Bales is promoting his recent EP, NOMAD. Music videos for “PICK ME UP”, “ROI” and his favorite track, “FAIRWEATHER FRIENDS” are up now on his Youtube channel.
This is just the beginning for Braden Bales. He’s definitely an artist to watch!
Follow Braden: Instagram • TikTok • Spotify
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