Skylar Grey went through the highs and lows of her music career, and “Last One Standing”, her most recent Billboard 100 hit recorded with Eminem, proofs her point: never give up.
The successful singer/songwriter, who recently concentrates more on authenticity than chasing commercial recognition, sat down with a fellow Midwesterner to talk on The Cripescast Podcast.
Skylar has written songs for many movies and TV shows, and usually, she tries to build a piece around the narrative and get into a character’s shoes. However, that was not the case with “Last One Standing”. Skylar already had what she needed to write a perfect anthem for Venom 2:
With this recent one that I did for “Venom”, that’s actually a hook that I had sitting around for like five years. I didn’t write it specifically for “Venom”, but it was in my folder. I have a folder with like 2000 songs that get pitched out. So it took five years for this one to find a home. […] It was a hook that I wrote with a couple of people five years ago. It was a collaboration. It was one of those when I was in the room with a couple of other people, and we were playing around and coming up with melodies and lyrics, bouncing things off each other. I don’t really remember the session ’cause it was so long ago. The song was sitting in my folder. Sometimes, for a songwriter, musician, artist, this game can get really discouraging. Because you put all this time, and energy, and effort into these songs, and they just sit in a Dropbox folder for years. So you think you suck. But then, things like this happen. And you’re like, okay, that was not a waste of session. It’s good to have these reminders to just keep going. No session is wasted. It’s never a waste of time to write a song.
The podcast host was interested in how it is to work with Eminem, the most consistent Skylar’s collaborator and whether Em’s sense of humour, so prominent in his music, is sipping in the process of making it. Apparently, it does, and Marshall subjects his co-writer to his dry jokes mercilessly:
He likes to give me a lot of shit. He’ll say stuff like, “The song’s really good. But it’ll be way better once we take your vocal off of it”. Just like constant shit-talking. Talking back to him? Sometimes. I’m not as quick.
It is all in the context and delivery, and Skylar laughs easily when talking about it. Obviously, she feels secure and confident enough around Marshall, and he knows it. The very fact that he has collaborated with Skylar more than with any woman ever, and their joint count goes well beyond 10, is a solid testimony to their healthy creative relationship.
Hopefully, this relationship will last, and Skylar’s upcoming solo album that she is producing herself will have another contribution from Marshall, just like her previous one, “Natural Causes”, had “Kill For You”.
Listen to the conversation below:
Full Podcast:
