LA-based Devin Kennedy made his musical debut in 2018, and has been on a steady rise! The singer/songwriter has racked up over 2.2 million streams, and sold out his debut headlining show at LA’s famous Peppermint Club. His music has been featured on Apple’s “New Music Daily”, “In My Room”, “Today At Apple”, and “Date Night” playlists, as well as BMI’s “Music Monday”. Devin has also received various placements on MTV and Xbox.
Devin recently performed his single “Happy Yet” on Elvis Duran’s Stay at Home Ball, which was streamed by over 300,000 viewers and received over 1 Billion social engagement impressions. Check out Devin’s performance here!
Last week, Devin released his new single “No Parachute“, which features an exciting blend of pop and R&B elements. We got to chat about what it took to make the song, and what he’s up to right now!
First of all, would you mind introducing yourself to everyone?
Hey! My name is Devin Kennedy. I’m from Los Angeles, born and raised, and I’m an artist, producer, and writer. I’ve been in LA for a long time doing my thing.
So let’s talk about your new single that just came out called “No Parachute”. Can you tell us the story behind it?
I wrote “No Parachute” in November during a writing camp that I was hosting to write some new songs for my artist project. I was writing with a crew that I’ve written a couple of my singles with, a super talented writer named Rebecca Perl, and a producer friend of mine Lukas Costas. We had originally started another idea, we kinda just jump around to different ideas when we’re doing my artist project stuff. We wrote this super airy chorus, the chorus of “No Parachute” and we were looking for that spark in the song, like what’s going to differentiate this song. Someone threw out “well what if we just dropped it and said ‘with no parachute’ because the lyric was ‘you make me feel like I’m flying’, so what if we just flipped it on everyone totally? So we did that and it sounded awesome and we rolled with that, but the song is about falling in love in a deep and emotional way and how that can be kind of scary at times. Like if you don’t know what’s going to happen or don’t know how this person feels about you, it kinda just feels like you’re falling and there’s nothing to catch you. So we wrote about that, and I think the extension of that thought is if you find the right person then they know how to catch you and bring you back to earth and pull you back down. That’s kind of a summary for you.
Wow that’s awesome! I gotta ask, have you ever been skydiving?
That’s the question I’ve been getting ever since the song came out haha. I fear I’ll have to now I mean someone’s going to pressure me into it but no I haven’t. I’m scared to DEATH of heights.
Same, literally.
Not a good vibe for me, that’s going to probably be a no moving forward, but someone asked me the other day “would you rather go skydiving or would you rather go bungee jumping?” I would absolutely rather go bungee jumping because there’s a cord there and you’re not jumping out of a plane, but I’ll take neither though.
But I mean skydiving is also a pretty good social distancing activity if you think about it, yanno?
That’s true! If you have the experience and you don’t have to be on somebody’s back, like if you’re an experienced skydiver, I would say now would be a prime time for you to be skydiving. You could probably land on the freeway and no one would even hit you… not that I’d suggest it… but it’s an option.
True true! Sooo, how did you get your start making music?
I grew up in a pretty musical family. My grandpa was a concert pianist, like classically trained. My dad plays drums and bass and guitar and did some music for film, tv, and infomercials. His involvement in that brought me into a lot of studios when I was young. I always had an interest in it, I was playing drums from a pretty young age, I picked up guitar, and he would bring me into the studio just to meet people he was working with. That kinda led to me meeting a lot of my first collaborators, and one producer in particular this guy Pat Regan who helped me produce my band in high school. That was kind of what really helped me get into it, like wow, I can actually produce my own band, that’s crazy. All of that together by the end of high school kinda led to me wanting to learn more about producing and writing more than anything else. So I went to Berklee in Boston and I studied production business, and a little bit of songwriting. When I came out of there I felt like I was well equipped to be an artist and produce for other people too, so that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
Who are some of your biggest musical influences?
I love artists like John Mayer, super musical artists Jeremy Zucker is a big influence for production. And I love really popular modern artists as well. I really love pop music so much, so Lauv, Bazzi, those are artists I love listening to. I also grew up going to Warped Tour and being in a band, so I love Fall Out Boy and All Time Low, bands like that. I think it’s like a combination of all those things, whether you hear it in my music or not, those are kind of those base level influences.
What are some of the ways you’re staying productive/creative during quarantine?
I’ve been doing a lot of writing. I’ve also really been enjoying the down time. I’m guilty I guess (out of quarantine) I guess of working way too much, and it’s really bad for me. I don’t see my family enough. I’m not somebody who has control of my schedule as much as I’d like to, just because I’m really bad with that kind of stuff. It’s not my thing. So it’s been a nice adjustment to have more downtime and focus on writing a lot on my own, but also seeing the people who I care about, going on more walks, playing some video games and actually having some down time in my life has allowed me to relax a lot. And I think creativity is very much sparked from boredom. I’m trying my best to find boredom so I can be inspired, which has been working out well. It’s been an interesting process!
That’s awesome! Have you tried anything new that you might have never tried before if you weren’t in quarantine?
Yes! I picked up the ukelele which was accidentally left at my house pre-quarantine by a co-writer of mine. That has been interesting. It’s very similar to the guitar but still a different instrument, so I’ve been picking that up. I’ve also been trying to focus more on working out, which is something I never do. Even if it’s like a walk or whatever, I’ve been going on three mile walks, I’ll just take my dog on a walk and go, just enjoying the outdoors. Those are things I wouldn’t usually be doing definitely.
Awesome. Now, to wrap all of this up, what was the last song you listened to?
The last song I listened to was the new song from Jake Miller called “Saved Me”. Jake is a friend of mine, and that song is awesome and my friend and I were just writing and we were like oh we should listen to the new Jake song so yeah. We were just jamming out.
“No Parachute” is out now, so be sure to check it out below as well as the official music video! Also, go say hi to Devin on Instagram and Twitter @DevKennedyMusic ♡
