T.Mills
T.Mills has turned experimenting with music on his laptop in his bedroom into national tours and a recording contract with Columbia in just 2 years.
Travis Tatum Mills grew up in California knowing he wanted to make music. The 22 year old will fly to the UK on Saturday where he's due to perform 3 shows in London.
I feel like when I make music I don't really have boundries, and it comes out sounding so unique. I always have a hard time comparing my music to anyone else or talking about the sound
Part of a new generation of talent, T. Mills began his career uploading songs onto myspace and quickly developed an army of fans who are partly to credit for his growing success. Loyal fans and a do it yourself attitude has meant this young artist's star has just kept on rising.
Describing his music as "young and energetic", his music is unbound by genre. Excitement, determination and a dedicated love of music has landed T.Mills where he is today.
We caught up with T. Mills to talk about his latest album, where his inspiration comes from and what's next for him in 2012.
How would you best describe your music?
See this is always a hard question for me..I feel like my music is free. It's young, it's energetic and at the end of the day it's totally me. I feel like when I make music I don't really have boundries, and it comes out sounding so unique. I always have a hard time comparing my music to anyone else or talking about the sound because I just go into a studio and make whatever's in my head. It's an energetic mix between pop and hip-hop and electronic.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I get my inspiration from honestly everything. I can be reading a book, or I can be watching a reality tv show or a movie or talking on the phone to a girl or even like Tumblr or something or see a picture and just wanna write a song. Driving on the freeway, literally if I find something I like that hits a creative nerve I can pretty much write about it.
You've got a huge following of fans on Twitter and Facebook, does the feedback from them influence you?
Definitely. I feel like in the beginning, when I first started I would post a song and say tell me what you guys think and talk to them about it and see where they were coming from. I was getting my feet wet and everything, so their feedback helped formed my first body of work. And now when I put out new songs, free songs on the internet, their feedback and their reactions, it helps me gage, the people who support me and what they want to hear.
So your latest album is called Leaving Home, what can you tell us about it?
Leaving home took me 6 to 8 months to record. I recorded 140 songs, I worked so hard. It was the most I've ever done and I'd be in the studio everyday from 11am until at least midnight and I was at least writing 1 or 2 songs a day. So then, I have this huge itunes playlist of the album I want to put out there with 140 songs on it and I narrowed that down to 16, then narrowed it down to 12 and then settled on 10 tracks...