Today we’d like to introduce you to Luisa Wilson
Hi Luisa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and I first started taking voice lessons at 5. It was a pretty young age to start, but my Grandmother knew of this man who specialized in young voices in Germantown in a little shack literally right next to the railroad tracks. We’d have to take 5-10 minute breaks in lessons to wait for the trains to go by since it was so loud and so close that the entire house would shake. My first teacher’s name was Bob Westbrook, and he kind of opened the door of musical possibilities for me, initially in the form of Broadway. I’ve been singing regularly ever since and grew up in community musical theater in Tennessee and in North Carolina, where my family moved to when I was 8 years old. I’d go on trips to New York City with Bob and his other students to take master classes and to audition for agents in the Broadway Business, so I got a really good taste of that being a possibility for a career. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I veered away from that dream and got into making music. I was in an indie rock band for about two years and got to try my hand at writing music in a group setting. We wrote a whole album, it was pretty experimental and didn’t follow a lot of the conventional rules of thumb that that is found in most pop songs, but it was a really interesting experience to get me started. I followed that thread and spent some time in Nashville doing some more work in writing rooms and then went to school at the Clive Davis Institute in New York to study it. I studied sound engineering, production, writing, and performance, and was able to get some really great performance opportunities as a result. I’m now getting ready to release an EP full of songs that I’ve made over the years that I feel represents the artist I’ve been growing into in my early 20s.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all. I will say that diving into the mechanics behind making music and studying it/ being surrounded by so many people trying to do that same thing can cause issues of choice paralysis and comparison for me. Not to mention imposter syndrome which is something that I’ve also had to work on. I fell in love with writing music and creating something from scratch before learning the inner workings of what goes on behind the scenes of a creative; the biggest one being promoting your work and branding yourself. It’s definitely been hard learning how to sell not only my music, but who I am as an artist. I’ve always loved being in the spotlight, growing up in musicals and performing, but things get a lot more personal when you’re performing something you’ve written and composed yourself. Selling that music is extremely vulnerable. I think a time comes for all artists where we have to detach from that sentimental side of ourselves just a little bit to be able to look at our art through a more objective lens and to properly campaign for ourselves. The journey to believing in who I am and my music is long and ongoing but so rewarding.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a recording artist, guitarist, songwriter, and singer. I write and make r&b/ jazzy pop styles of music inspired by artists like Yebba, RAYE, and Sabrina Carpenter. I think I’m best known for my performances because I really love pushing the boundaries of what I can do vocally and dynamically. Singing my songs to a live audience gives the work new life. But I think what sets me apart from other artists isn’t my voice, but my melodies. I fell in love with the jazz style of singing and all of the accidentals and playfulness in that sonic world. I always try to incorporate those elements in my melodic style to shake things up a bit and make the music more buoyant.
I recently released a single called “Body,” following the first single “Small” that I released earlier this year to begin the roll out of my first EP that’s set to release this Spring! Before “Small,” I hadn’t released anything for a little over a year, the last release being a song called “Love For Her” that got a lot of visibility and love on Tik-Tok (which was a really sweet experience.) I took a year off to travel and experiment with my sound and, more importantly, to solidify it. I’m so happy and proud of where it’s at now, and I’m looking forward to releasing more very soon! My next single “Lies” will be coming out end of January or beginning of February… the date is still being decided. It’s an orchestral r&b track with a lot of vocal inflections and sexy guitar riffs. It’s definitely different from anything I’ve released before, but It contains the through-line of who I am and what I’m trying to achieve; to give people a small dose of life in a song. And hopefully y’all will be feeling sexy and hot while listening to it because that’s definitely the vibe.
How do you define success?
Embodying independence and security within yourself so you can be uninhibited in all other aspects of your career. That’s sounds like a fluffy answer, but I don’t think the feeling of success can really penetrate a person who hasn’t done the work to be able to acknowledge their own achievements when they’re alone with themselves and without the crutch of external validation. It’s hard to get to this place when you’re in a creative field, because half of the game is putting your work up for others to judge and critique. The worst case-scenario is when you let that inevitability steer your creative process. Success is when you’ve been through it enough times that you don’t need reassurance or praise from other people to feel proud of something you’ve worked hard to make/do. And the other obvious but real answer being when you start making a living off of making music without needing to put yourself through any other draining side-hustles to pay the bills. That would also be great.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.luisawilsonmusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luisawilsonmusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@luisawilson7140
- Soundcloud: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1g1RwWbMPNk9PofqhbovkQ?si=4G904-abQmqEuSNZTOlEfQ
- Other: https://linktr.ee/luisawilsonmusic4
Image Credits
Lily Beth Senkowski, Thunder Nguyen (Thunder Digital)
