Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Spencer Sutherland is a serious artist who doesn’t take himself too seriously. His tongue-in-cheek songs like “Freaking Out,”
“Wallpaper” and “Sweater” are witty, clever takes on love, relationships and modern life. “I feel my stuff is slightly left of center, with pop, soul and R&B influences,” says Sutherland. “I’m hopefully changing lives, but not saving lives with my music, you know? I like what I do and like to have fun with it. And I try to express that in my videos too, with quirky and funny nuances in them.”
Early gigs began for the twenty-something Sutherland around 2011, performing solo acoustic songs at local
”They liked my business model and saw it was working.”
restaurants. “I played in a punk band for three months and also did a cappella stuff before I found out what I really liked, which was being a solo artist,” he says. That path led to being discovered on YouTube by the UK X Factor TV show. Being one of the first Americans to appear on the program, the soulful and charismatic vocalist made it to the Top 12. Sutherland was also selected by iHeart Radio’s Elvis Duran as The Today Show’s Artist of the Month. It was experiences like these that led to his next level of career pursuits.
“We were meeting with a few labels when one of my manager’s friends introduced us to the team at BMG,” explains Sutherland. “I liked their energy. We chose BMG, not just because they were awesome people, but they let me be me as an artist. They told me, ‘You can put out whatever you want and look like whatever you want. Our job is to tell you what we think and help put gasoline in the car.’ That’s all an artist really wants, especially today when, to a great extent, an artist can put out a record himself. BMG gets that and wants to partner with you and let you be you.”
Actually a lot of that artistic freedom was largely due to the fact that Sutherland had released three successful songs on his own that were gaining considerable traction. “BMG said they liked my business model and saw it was working,” says Sutherland. “They wanted to help me take things to the next level.”
Sutherland’s debut EP, None of this has been about you, is available everywhere.
Date Signed: Oct. 25, 2018
Label: BMG
Type of Music: Pop/R&B
Management: Leslie Armour - New Entertainment Company
Booking: David Klein - UTA
Legal: Joseph Serling - Serling Rooks Hunter McKoy Worob & Averill LLP
Publicity: Nathalie Rubin, [email protected]
A&R: Jaime Neely - BMG
