{"id":30316,"date":"2026-01-06T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T10:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30316"},"modified":"2025-11-05T10:49:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:49:36","slug":"colbie-caillat-a-sustained-overnight-sensation-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/06\/colbie-caillat-a-sustained-overnight-sensation-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Colbie Caillat: A Sustained Overnight Sensation (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"You mentioned MySpace. When MySpace launched, it was touted as the Next Big Thing for artists. But for most of them, it wasn\u2019t. Yet it worked for you in 2005. Why? <\/b><\/p>\n

Colbie Caillat:<\/b> You know, it\u2019s so interesting how so many things can line up to make something happen. I think it took so many different people and timing of things that aligned that way. But overall, what I\u2019m most grateful for with MySpace is that fans got to choose the songs, and they chose my music. It wasn\u2019t a label pushing a song out to radio. It was truly fans who heard it randomly from someone else\u2019s page, and then added it to theirs; it was their choice. And they helped build my career. That feels so much more meaningful to me. I [still] meet those people at meet-and-greets, the first people who started listening.
\nBut that\u2019s how it happened.<\/p>\n

Your first album went triple-Platinum; <\/b>Coco<\/b><\/i> was a success all around the world. That\u2019s pretty amazing for a debut release. Did that success catch you off guard? <\/b><\/p>\n

It all<\/i> caught me off guard. It happened so fast, I really couldn\u2019t keep up with any of it. There was MySpace, I became the number one unsigned artist, and then I got a record deal. And then months later, I went on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls, and then doing TV and then traveling the world for two years. Every moment was like, \u201cI can\u2019t even comprehend what\u2019s going on!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a lot to take in because it happened so fresh for me. I wasn\u2019t one of those artists that had been doing it for years, trying to \u201cmake it.\u201d It just literally happened, and I had no preparation. So I think it was a harder experience for me than, for other people. You have to just go with it: \u201cI have this opportunity that people are dying for and waiting for; I have to go with it. It doesn\u2019t matter how unprepared I am.\u201d You say yes.<\/p>\n

You wrote something like 40 songs for 2009\u2019s <\/b>Breakthrough<\/b><\/i> and 60 for <\/b>Gypsy Heart <\/b><\/i>(2014). What happened to the ones that didn\u2019t make the albums? <\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great question. Sometimes we\u2019ll save them for other albums or other releases. Sometimes we\u2019ll give them away to other artists. But most of them are just sitting in the computer. Every artist or writer has these same things; they have hundreds of unused songs.<\/p>\n

There are a couple songs that my manager keeps sending to me: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you release this? I always loved this one!\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t fit me anymore. I would love for someone to hear it at some point, but it\u2019s not something I want to record and promote.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then sometimes I\u2019m like, \u201cYou know what? This song, I liked the chorus, but let\u2019s rewrite the verse.\u201d Or maybe the verses were great, but the chorus fell a little flat. I\u2019ve always loved to go back and kind of save a song, tweak it and make it better. I hate wasting them.<\/p>\n

One of the adjectives that\u2019s used to describe your music is <\/b>relatable<\/b><\/i>. Do your early songs still resonate with you? Do they mean the same thing to you now that they did when you wrote them? <\/b><\/p>\n

No, they don\u2019t. That\u2019s something else that I\u2019ve really been enjoying. Sometimes it hits me on stage; I\u2019m singing \u201cRealize,\u201d and I\u2019m like, \u201cThis is making me think about this person right now, someone I\u2019m dating.\u201d Or another song makes me think of something a family member is going through. It can either be really uplifting, or it can be emotional and heavy. And I\u2019ve found that a lot of the songs have new meaning [connected] to whatever I\u2019m currently experiencing.<\/p>\n

Some songwriters write for themselves, and others write to connect with listeners. Where do you fall in that continuum? <\/b><\/p>\n

I start for myself, and it\u2019s really therapeutic. Sometimes you just play the guitar or sit at the piano and play a couple chords, and then melodies start falling out and some words fall out with it. And then you home in on what you\u2019re wanting to write.<\/p>\n

Or sometimes I just have an idea I really want to write about, and I\u2019ll call up one of my writing friends: \u201cCan you write this song with me? I want to get this sentiment out.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think that it always starts with the therapeutic aspect for me. If I\u2019m writing the lyrics, I\u2019ll maybe try to tweak it some way to where it can be more broad. But on the other hand, I\u2019ve also found it [effective] for lyrics to be very specific.<\/p>\n

Listening across your body of work, one hears little hints of reggae here, a little bit of hip hop flavor there. 2023\u2019s <\/b>Along the Way<\/b><\/i> is a country album. Is that your new direction, or a one-time thing?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a natural progression. I\u2019ve been in Nashville for nine years, but I didn\u2019t grow up listening to country music; I was never a fan of it. But it was something that really grew on me once I was here, being in the lifestyle, and having a lot of friends that are in country music.<\/p>\n

I love the dobro and the steel guitar; the steel guitar comes from Hawaii, and I grew up listening to Hawaiian music, so that always had a nostalgic feel. And at a certain point I was like, \u201cI want to use these [sounds]. Am I not allowed? [Is it a case of] \u2018You have to stay in your box\u2019?\u201d And once I allowed myself to do that, I felt like, \u201cI write the same songs, but now I add steel guitar and dobro.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One\u2026 You mentioned MySpace. When MySpace launched, it was touted as the Next Big Thing for artists. But for most of them, it wasn\u2019t. Yet it worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,41,51],"tags":[5795],"class_list":["post-30316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-country","category-interview","category-pop","tag-colbie-caillat","cat-20-id","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30316"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30323,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30316\/revisions\/30323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}