Sometimes to make music, you’ve got to remove the music entirely.
That’s at least how Stephen Wilson Jr. views it. The rising country music artist is as unique as they come, and he may have revealed his secret to songwriting in a recent interview with Much Music. In it, he revealed that some of his biggest influences are Led Zeppelin, Death Cab for Cutie, and Nirvana.
If you’ve ever listened to anything from Stephen Wilson Jr., those make a lot of sense.
He’s also mentioned Willie Nelson as one of his heroes, and the country singer has admitted to copying some things from the Red Headed Stranger. But according to Stephen Wilson Jr., when it really comes time to write and create his own music, he separates from listening to other music entirely. The “Grief is Only Love” singer actually seeks out silence more than anything else:
“I don’t really listen to lots of music… really at all. I listen to a lot of silence. It’s really important, I think, for musicians to not listen to music as it is for them to listen to music. Because when you listen to things, you tend to start replicating them. Which can be great, when you first start.
But when you are trying to create your own path, I think the silence is where originality lies. It’ll never be music that snaps me out of writer’s block. It’ll be the sounds of a forest, or the sounds of nothing. The sound of a bus. The sound of a plane taking off. The sound of chatter at a busy bar. A lot of white noise, background noise… nonspecific, non-intentional noise.”
It’s interesting how he pivots from saying full-blown silence to “white noise,” which everyone knows is just noisy silence (for a lack of a better term).
And there’s no doubt that Stephen Wilson Jr. has a point. Even if you were to turn on music, and believe it was acting as background noise, the subconscious mind is always listening. There’s countless stories of artists putting together a new song, getting in the studio, and cutting it… only to realize that it’s too close to something that already exists (or even contains parts that were straight up and unconsciously copied).
There’s power in boredom, and just like Wilson Jr. proclaims that “there aren’t a lot of Garys these days” in his latest single, there’s not a whole lot of people embracing the silence in the modern day. The rising country music star knows that, in order to be his best self, and put forth his best work, it tends to mean that he has to put everything else by everyone else away… at least for a little while.
Considering Stephen Wilson Jr. was a scientist in his past life, the precision in which he handles music and its creation isn’t surprising. In case you didn’t know, Stephen Wilson Jr. has lived many lives in his 46 years on this Earth. At first, he was a boxer – as his father had trained him to be. Then, he went to Middle Tennessee State University and studied microbiology. After he graduated with his bachelor’s degree, he went to work for the MARS company (the one that makes candy and dog food).
Thank goodness that he eventually found music to be his calling… the country music world is a whole lot better with him in it. And you can hear him share some of his musical knowledge in the interview below:
