If There Is One Artist to Bet on It Is Will Bryant
If there is one artist to bet on it is Will Bryant. Listen to any of his songs on Spotify or take a quick look at his TikTok and you will soon know why. Bryant is a musical triple treat. The London-based artist is a singer, songwriter, and producer—and is equally talented at all three. While Bryant’s production abilities sometimes seem to take center stage, his tracks are always paired with thoughtful lyrics and an honest vocal. Bryant’s music is raw and unfiltered, and when we got the chance to ask the artist a few questions, his answers were the same.
Read the interview below.
DID YOU GROW UP IN LONDON?
I grew up in the countryside, south of London. The speed of life is much different there. London is a hundred miles an hour all the time. Where I grew up, the internet sucks, but it’s super green and there are dogs everywhere. My parents like to sit and read and drink tea. It’s a great place to go for a tech detox.
DID YOUR FAMILY PLAY MUSIC?
My dad was in a Christian rock band when he was at uni. My mom didn’t really do any music. My sister and I were in Cathedral choirs, and I played the trumpet in different orchestras. When I was 17, I started singing and playing more modern stuff. I made a guitar covers Instagram account where I would play Ed Sheeran songs.
WERE YOU EVER IN A BAND?
I was never in a band, but if you’ve been on my Spotify, I have some songs with an artist called Sebb Masters. We’ve done loads of gigs in London where I’m the front man and then a bunch of our mates are the guitarist and drummer and so on.
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST SONG YOU WROTE FOR YOURSELF?
Yeah, it could be on my SoundCloud actually. It’s called “Broken” and it’s like 6 minutes long. I didn’t know how to arrange a song then, but it’s actually pretty okay. It’s really depressing and angsty. I got dumped when I was 18 and that’s when I started doing the whole writing thing.
THE PRODUCTION ON YOUR SONGS IS INCREDIBLE. OBVIOUSLY, YOU DID FIGURE OUT HOW TO ARRANGE MUSIC. HOW DID YOU LEARN HOW TO DO THAT?
I started on GarageBand and then switched to Logic. I did a session for one of my songs “Find Me” with a producer called Duncan Brookfield. I went to his studio, and he was using Ableton. It just blew me away, watching him use it. He gave me his download link for all these plug-ins, and I started to teach myself to use those. It's really my main hobby. I stopped doing sports at uni. I was studying acting and so I was performing and doing theater stuff during the day, but whenever I had a spare second, I would be on Ableton trying to teach myself something new. At first, I basically just copied other songs. I would hear a 1975 song and be like, “Oh I’m going to try to remake that,” or at least mimic the sounds in it. The thing is—there is an infinite amount of stuff you can know about all of the software. People put out new plug-ins and things all the time. I was just filling my time with it. If you love it that much, then it's not a hard thing to do.
WHEN YOU’RE WRITING SONGS WHAT COMES FIRST? IS IT THE BEAT?
It usually is. I try to be conscious of the fact that I should try different methods. People tell me I should back myself a bit more, but I’m not really an instrumentalist and I don’t have a big theoretical understanding of popular music, so I really just play around on guitars and pianos until I find something that sounds nice. As someone who usually self-produces, I get lost in making the drums and different sounds. I just love all that kind of stuff. Every now and then, I’ll write first. The newest one, “I Want U Back,” I wrote first on a guitar before I started producing it. But usually, I get carried away making an entire track and then I’m like, “Oh, this needs words now.” I don’t really see myself as much of a songwriter, but I guess that’s for other people to decide. I’m still figuring that one out.
WOULD YOU EVER PRODUCE FOR OTHER PEOPLE? IS THAT SOMETHING YOU’VE CONSIDERED?
Yeah, I'd love to. At the moment, I’m in a weird phase of talking to industry people and having meetings, but I’m still not doing music full-time. If I was, I would want to be like Matty and George, who do the 1975 and have their own thing, but also do other people’s stuff and loads of other bits and bobs. Sometimes people comment on my TikTok. Usually, they’re asking if I want to write for them, and I want to. I just haven’t gotten around to it, to be honest.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO FINISH A SONG?
Some are faster than others. “I Want U Back” took a couple of weeks. My Achilles heel is that most of my songs are just a verse and a chorus, and I listen to it on loop for a couple of weeks and then never get back to it. It can sometimes be quite a while. But then “Bethany” I wrote in a day or two. It kind of just happened. For other songs, I have to sit at my computer for a while. I don’t know how to explain it.
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT A SONG IS READY TO BE RELEASED?
Good question. I think I kind of have a feeling. Before “I Want U Back” was made, I was working on a dance tune. I had sent it to friends and put it on TikTok and I couldn’t quite tell if people liked it. I had this voice in my head telling me that it wasn’t amazing. And then, I think I had been at the pub all afternoon and I got home and started messing around with my guitar, and that’s when “I Want U Back” started. As soon as I started putting it into Ableton I was like, “Okay, I’m not releasing that other one. I’m putting this out next.” And then I sent it around to people and they all seemed to like it. So, I think I do go off of friends and family a bit. Everyone I know has quite good taste. I have definitely made some absolute crap. Sometimes, I do need friends to tell me the drums sound stupid or what I’m saying sounds silly, or that I’m not singing as well as I can. They are all quite harsh critics, which is good. So I think it’s a mixture of me knowing when the time is right and listening to friends.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PART ABOUT RELEASING A SONG? WHAT WAS THE RELEASE PROCESS LIKE FOR “I Want U Back?”
Something I’m trying to steer clear of a little bit is the TikTok hype thing. I have seen so many people post a clip of a song and have it blow up and then everyone starts asking when it’s going to be released. Obviously, it does take a while if you’ve just posted the first verse and you haven’t finished the song. I’ve now started to invest a little bit more into the mixing and mastering which does take quite a bit of time. For “I Want U Back,” I used a guy called Josh Ager for mixing who has done some live Sam Fender and Tom Grennan. He has a big catalog. I reached out thinking he wouldn’t say anything, and he got back to me. I wanted to deliver the song the best I could. I could have downloaded some software and mixed and mastered the song myself and put it out the next day, but I gave myself a bigger window to work with the right people.
Some people say you should be putting out loads of stuff and others say you should put out whatever you want when you want. I want people to go to my Spotify and say, “Wow. This all sounds really good.” Rather than, “Oh. He’s got 50 songs, but they are all mixed really badly.” I do take quite a long time to put out music. All my releases have been about 6 months apart, which I am working on a bit. One of my goals this year is to put something out every couple of months. But it can usually be quite a long process. I'm also not very organized. My brain is kind of all over the place.
When I’ve written a song quite quickly, like with “Bethany,” I’m pretty good about what comes next—finding artwork, messaging people about mixing, and putting a release date in the diary. I try to pick a date that’s 4 weeks out, so the song has the best chance of being picked up for playlists, which obviously can happen, but sometimes doesn’t. That’s the other thing. You could spend weeks getting a song perfect and then it doesn’t get picked up and it can feel like the music sucks, but that’s just the industry.
I NOTICED YOU WERE TEASING A FEW UNRELEASED SONGS ON TIKTOK. ARE YOU POSTING THOSE TRACKS AS YOU’RE WRITING THEM?
I'd say 90% of them are unfinished. There are some I posted a while ago that didn’t get many views and so sometimes, I’ll reupload them. The most recent few that I’ve posted are one’s I’ve just made. It kind of depends. A big thing I have to remind myself is that you don’t have to be releasing the most recent thing you’ve made. As the artist and the person who has spent hours listening to a song and making it, it feels organic to put out the last thing you’ve made. I always try to remember that whoever is listening to it will be listening to it as if it was just made today. Some of my best stuff is from a few years ago and I know I’ll eventually get back to it when the time is right. TikTok is kind of like a free art exhibition. You’re bringing people into your studio and being like, “This is everything I’m making. What do you like?” It’s a cool place to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
I KNOW YOU JUST PLAYED AT THE TROUBADOUR IN LONDON. WHAT’S THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POSTING ON TIKTOK AND PERFORMING LIVE?
It’s a weird one and kind of goes back to the band thing. I don’t have a band, so at the moment, I’m singing over all the stuff that I’ve produced, which is obviously super similar to the videos I’m filming at home in my bedroom. I have been an actor, so performing is okay, but I’ve done way more acting than I’ve played gigs. It’s funny with the Troubadour—it was quite a small, intimate gig. Stage presence was kind of hard to get across. I know people who started putting out music during the pandemic and are now doing gigs and terrified of there being physical people in the room. The nice thing is that many of the people that come to the gigs I’ve done are family and friends. It’s pretty straightforward singing in front of them. It’s weird with TikTok. I’m definitely aware that there’s a camera up in the corner of my room and that I’m trying to interact with it in a way that doesn’t feel super lame and instead feels sincere and honest. And then suddenly you are in a room full of people and you can see their eyes and see the people that are talking and doing whatever. It’s super new and something that I am still getting used to.
WHAT IS THE MUSIC SCENE LIKE IN LONDON RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU MEETING PEOPLE AT SHOWS OR IS IT MOSTLY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA?
The London scene is doing well for a lot of different genres. There’s a lot of R&B and soul and loads of up-and-coming rappers. The electronic scene is also pretty huge right now. There are loads of people trying to be like Fred again..— and understandably so. There are a lot of people I want to work with this year and a lot of that is through TikTok. You used to have to go to shows and stay after and try to get someone's number, but now you can comment on someone’s video and start texting and put a date in the diary. I want to do a lot more collaborating this year in different genres and styles. That’s the plan.
DO YOU HAVE A DREAM COLLABORATOR? WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH?
I could see myself working with a Holly Humberstone or a No Rome maybe. I’d love to work with Fred again..too. Long-term—Frank Ocean, Justin Vernon, and probably Matty and George. Those would be the three studio sessions that would make me lose my mind a bit.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT MOVING FORWARD? WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH THIS YEAR?
One of my main goals is to do my first headline show in London at some point this year. That would be a good thing to aim for on top of putting out new stuff. I’m sitting on a lot of files that I want to get out. I kind of have this weird premonition about the way I might succeed in music—which sounds really ominous. You know, some people do gigs for years and years and eventually get picked up or they do a really big TikTok. I kind of think that more of a Fred again.. thing might happen to me or someone like No Rome would ask to do a session and I’d have a feature or a co-produce or a co-write with someone I’m obsessed with. I’d like to think that could happen this year. I’d like to expand my contacts so that I could get in touch with their managers or someone on their team instead of just staring at their Instagrams all day. Those would be some goals.
WHAT DO YOU WANT LISTENERS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR MUSIC?
I think I'm still figuring it out artist-wise. We are all super complex, and we all have stories. Everything I write about either stems from me or someone I know or a conversation I hear on the street. I try to write in more of a conversational tone. I’m not trying to be overly poetic or take you out of where you are and to another place like I know a lot of music can do. I want my music to be super honest and upfront. I’m not trying to make any big sweeping statements about mankind. I just want it to be super relatable because life is relatable.
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