Chaz Cardigan grew up near Louisville, KY, and bought himself a four-track recorder to record himself when he was ten! By the next year, he started playing gigs, and he ended up moving to Nashville when he was 17. In 2017, he released his first full-length album I, and went on to sell out headline shows all throughout Nashville. Chaz is the first artist jointly signed to Capitol Records and Loud Robot, which is the record label from J.J. Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot.
Earlier this year, Chaz released his Vulnerabilia EP, which allowed him to explore his mental health on a deeper level. Just recently, Chaz released his new single “Everything’s Wrong,” a track about picking yourself up after you’ve fallen down.
Today, Chaz dropped the music video for “Everything’s Wrong.” Directed by Haoyan of America, the visuals feature a scanned 3D model of Chaz being brought to life! The model was made by using photogrammetry in a virtual environment. The video is also a part of a four-part series, and each video will build on the previous one.
I got to chat with Chaz about “Everything’s Wrong” and how everything’s going right now. Keep reading below!
Hi Chaz! How’s it going?
All things considered, I’m really good right now. Pretty focused and happy in the middle of all of the crazy outside.
I want to start off by saying I really admire and appreciate how open you’ve been about your mental health in your music! Would you say that singing about your experiences has helped you cope when things get tough?
Totally, thank you for that! I like being pretty open lyrically and in interviews, because it kind of gives me no option but to be transparent privately as well. It really makes me walk the talk, and I’m better for that.
Your latest single “Everything’s Wrong” mentions that things can really only get better. I think we could all use that reminder right about now. Did the current state of the world have an influence on the making of this song?
In making the song, not really. Putting music out is usually a pretty structured process, so songs will exist for 12-18 months sometimes before they’re released. My buddy Julian Dente and I wrote “Everything’s Wrong” around October of ’18. When we wrote it I was trying to figure out where to go sonically and thematically after Vulnerabilia, which I was finishing at the time, and I realized I didn’t want to just keep writing about having panic attacks or breakdowns over and over again. So we tried to write the antidote to that.
But, the state of the world definitely influenced me deciding to put the song out and to put it out now, for sure. I think it’s taken on a totally new subtext with the pandemic.
It’s definitely been an interesting year. You’ve been keeping everyone both educated and entertained on TikTok and YouTube, what are some other ways you’ve been staying busy during quarantine?
Me and Busy are best friends, I’m actually trying to give him some space right now. Honestly when quarantine started my instinct was to hit the ground running and write a bunch of music. Well, I did that, and there’s still another year or more until we can play live music again, so I’m really just soaking in the stillness right now. Playing games on my Switch, reading books, running every day, painting a lot more, really spending time with some good friends, that’s all I’m focused on right now.
Speaking of videos, you just released the music video for “Everything’s Wrong” and it’s gorgeous! What inspired the 3D visuals?
The pandemic! There’s a lot of red tape from my label about video shoots right now, so we all put out heads together and got creative. We found this awesome director named Haoyan of America and his animator Alex Futtersak who do these really great CGI video pieces, the chemistry and the ideas really flourished. I’m glad you like it!
For those who might not know, you started recording yourself singing when you were a kid. What sparked your interest in music?
I’m not sure where it came from really. There was always music on around my house, and I really loved making things as a kid; little inventions out of shoestring and duct tape. Somewhere along the line, music really clicked for me as The Thing to make, and I just got obsessed with learning how to play instruments and write songs and record them to tape — it was a really comprehensive creation, and you could repeat it over and over again.
Over the years, who have been some of your biggest musical inspirations? And if you had the power to bring all of them together for dinner, what would you want to chat about with them (besides music?)
Oooh this a great question… My top 3 are always Bowie, Imogen Heap, and Prince. I feel like you could get those 3 together for dinner, and they’d probably have a lot to say about visual art. I’m a sucker for art, really into Surrealism, and I think that would be such a cool way to start a conversation with them. It would drift into politics or movies or religion, probably, but it’d be interesting to put 3 true musical geniuses together and to say “you can’t talk about music”.
Finally, if you could visit any planet for a weekend, which one would you choose?
You’re speaking my language! Jupiter is pretty impossible to survive on, but if you could find the right kind of suit to survive the gas storms, I think there’d be some cool stuff to see while you’re floating around in the atmosphere.
Check out the “Everything’s Wrong” music video below, and say hi to Chaz on Instagram and Twitter @chazcardigan!
