Up-and-comer Knox sat down with Audacy's Bru to talk about his latest releases, songwriting process, and even a quick mentorship from fellow TikTok breakout Noah Kahan .
Listen Now: Knox Talks with Bru
Though he admitted that his record label is sending him, “around every radio station in the country,” Knox couldn’t be more thankful and appreciative. The TikTok singer-songwriter has been growing busier and busier as his music enters the mainstream, but told Bru that he’s “as happy as could be.”
“I'm working harder than I ever have” he told host Bru, “and just always constantly doing stuff to just, like, move the needle a little bit further, which is so much fun.”
The press tour comes as part of Knox’s current single releases and first full-length album release. The single "Change Your Mind" was released barely two weeks ago, and follows Knox in the aftermath of a one-sided breakup. But the inspiration behind the song is actually other musicians.
"You know, Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan , they're kind of like making songwriting cool again. I feel like the songs, they're just so artistic and so visual and whatever and that folk style. And so, this is honestly like a song of me just trying to like, take a swing at that vibe.”
“So it was like, ‘Dude, let's make a stomp clap, throw huge guitars on it. And then let's just write the hell out of it.” And that goal can be heard perfectly in the song, with the rhythm focused entirely on stomp claps and the chorus as an ensemble yell-singing highlight. It’s already easy to imagine a crowd singing the central lyric: “ I'm losing my mind tonight / 'Cause I can't change, no, I can't change yours.”
“I'm really proud of the songwriting in it,” Knox said. “And I feel like it can hang with those style songs. So, I'm stoked for the world to hear it.”
And as it turns out, Noah Kahan isn’t just a one-time inspiration for the 25-year-old singer-songwriter. The two were actually pen-pals for a short while, where Knox would ask for Kahan’s advice as a fan.
“So I posted this video like seven years ago,” he began, already sounding embarrassed of himself. “And Noah responded to it like, this is sick. And so we DMed briefly. And then like four years ago during COVID, I was sending him songs that I was writing. I was just taking videos of me on the piano and I just be like, ‘hey man, what do you think of this?' You know, fanboying.”
And though he cringes at how he messaged Kahan after receiving a record deal (having been seemingly ghosted), Knox is still more than thankful for their brief exchanges. “I'm like, 'bro, you helped.' I would send him songs and he would respond and be like, ‘These are great lyrics.’ It was so cool. Now he's like, so big and I'm like, 'hey, I'm here too, bro,'” he joked. “If he listens to this, Noah, I'm so sorry. And maybe one day we'll make a song.”
In the meantime, Knox is only growing busier. He continues to write for others as well as himself, and estimated that he’s written over a thousand songs. Those in the works, he said, are an “ Ed Sheeran style ballad” and some hits in the Rock and Punk scenes.
“And I have a Country song coming out that I featured on. I can't tell you!” he said to Bru’s almost immediate reaction, the two chuckling together “Oh, I'll tell you after these cameras are off.”
As for his own work, Knox estimates that the full album will be released in the fall and it’s singles are being released gradually until then. And though he admitted it seems to change all the time, Knox has a clear vision for his first full length album. “I know what it's gonna be called. I kind of know the vibe of it, the theme of it. It's gonna be really sick.”
“Even though it's not finished, I already can tell it's gonna be something that I'm super proud of,” Knox said. “It’s just the music that I, as a kid, always wanted to make. And so it's cool to be in a position where you can make those kinds of things. You know, it's the music that I would have loved listening to growing up.”
Check out the full interview above with Bru.
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