Our guest on The Radical today is Eli Lieb, indie musician, Iowa native, and YouTube viral sensation with 50 million views and counting.

He has collaborated with artists, writers, and producers including Adam Lambert, Cheyenne Jackson, Hey Violet, Laura Marano, Forever In Your Mind, John Feldmann, Simon Wilcox, Crystal Bowersox, and Stacy Jones.

Eli and Nick discuss a wide range of topics from happiness as a compass for living your life to following the right advice from the right people and making decisions that work for you… Like not touring!

Key Takeaways

[2:10] Nick welcomes Eli Lieb and asks him to talk a little bit about where he grew up, his experience of transcendental meditation school as a child in Iowa, and how he made his way to New York.

[7:32] A lot can change abruptly. Eli speaks of following the traditional music industry path in New York — meeting label bigwigs and working with a lot of different artists — until he lost his father and his career came to a sudden halt in the span of one week.

[18:35] Eli touches on when he began realizing that this formatted music industry path really wasn’t enjoyable for him. He shares the story of when they had just auditioned a new guitar player and he had to make up a story about how they met for the President of the label.

[22:24] From dog walking to a serious piece of advice from A&R executive Scott Seviour — get to pioneer covering songs on YouTube, in 2012.

[28:15] Making his own career has been a very interesting process. Eli talks about what it means to create music rather than content, as well as his love of writing for other people — even if he had to walk away from L.A. because of how toxic it is.

[38:38] Eli talks about becoming the face of the two-year Allstate LGBT advertising campaign with his award-winning song Young Love and the importance of not being contrived when putting your art out there.

[45:33] A burning question for Eli: why no touring?

[48:57] Nick begins wrapping up and invites Eli to talk about his upcoming projects and thanks him for coming on and sharing so much of his experience.

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts and tune in next week.

Find out more about today’s guest, Eli Lieb

Find out more about your host, Nick Terzo

Mentioned in this episode

Places

Crush Music

RCA Records

Leo Burnett

People

@samiamhollander (Sam Hollander)

Dave Katz

@TheDoctorLuke (Dr. Luke)

@Kara_Dioguardi (Kara Dioguardi)

@ScottSeviour (Scott Seviour)

@StacyGlenJones (Stacey Jones)

@AdamLambert (Adam Lambert)

@CheyenneJackson (Cheyenne Jackson)