Ingrid Michaelson interview: Parachute, 2010 tour, and indie life

“You’re weirding me out,” Ingrid Michaelson jokes when I point out that she’s the indie artist whose success other indie artists tell me they’re trying to emulate. But her status as the most commercially successful indie artist of her generation has never been more apparent than when she released the one-off digital single “Parachute” last month and saw it immediately climb into the top twenty on the iTunes pop chart. She’s between albums now, building her audience through the age-old method of touring the country even as she also continues to build her audience through the decidedly twenty-first century method of getting her songs used on television (including a double digit number of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy).

Parachute, as it turns out, has been in the making for awhile. The glasses in the photo, for those wondering, are for real. And Ingrid’s next album, while slated for release in less than a year, is still up in the air as far as the direction it might take. But first thing first.

The short story of Parachute is you wrote it awhile ago, and then Cheryl Cole sang it in the UK, and you’re singing it now. Is that the gist of it?

Pretty much. I wrote the chorus like two years ago, and then I finished it with my friend Marshall in LA last year, a year and a half ago. Then Cheryl Cole picked it up, and I was like you know what, I’m not gonna put this out. It’s a little bit too poppy, the way it was produced, the way our demo was produced was a little too poppy for me. And then my producer Dan Romer from my last album, he made this really funky cool version of it, and I was like you know what, the song is so cool and I really think this production is more me. I felt like it just fit me better. So I went in and recorded vocals and we all really liked it, and we decided to see what happens.

I have a lot of new material, I just haven’t been able to get back into the studio and record it because I was touring pretty extensively this year on my last record which came out a year ago. And so I haven’t really had time to do a new album, but in this day and age people want things all the time. So I figured let’s just put this out digitally and see what happens, and then plan on a next full album sometime mid 2011.

Is there a distinction between writing something you think you’re going to use, and just writing something? Do you ever sit down and say okay, I’m going to write something that I wouldn’t use?

Initially, this song, I was writing it for somebody else. Not anybody in particular. But the lyrics were different. The lyrics and the verses were completely different. Then when I kind of was like wait a minute, this is really good, I like this, I completely rewrote all the verses to fit me. But then I still was like, you know what, I’m not sure. And then Cheryl Cole did the version that I wrote for me, basically, not the version that I wrote for somebody else. But there is a difference when writing for other people, because I have done it before, and it becomes more of, like, a project.

Is it that you’ve always stubbornly wanted to remain indie, or has it just sort of happened that way?

It kind of happened that way in the beginning, because I had all this success from TV and commercials without any major label. And so the labels kind of came around late to the game. They were like “Oh, now let’s do stuff together.” And it’s like, well, we kind of already did all this stuff on our own, so basically you’d just be coming in and taking credit and money for things that you didn’t work to do. So that’s why we never went full on. We did another joint venture with a label called Original Signal, and they have upstream capabilities to Universal Motown, so I could call on their radio stuff and their marketing people if we needed, or if they felt like doing it, that kind of a thing. It was very loose. So I had access to things, sort of, but I’ve never had a cut and dry record deal. I don’t think I ever will. There’s no need.

But you do realize the position you’re in, or how you’re perceived. I’ve interviewed indie artists who’ve said to me they don’t want to sign with a major, and they say “I want to be like Ingrid Michaelson.” They’ll specifically invoke your name as the standard of what they want to pull off.

I really didn’t know that. That’s kind of funny. I don’t think about that really, I guess. You’re weirding me out (laughs).

Sometimes I see you wearing glasses, sometimes I don’t. What’s your relationship with your glasses?

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was in the fourth grade. Up until college I would only wear them when I would have to see the chalkboard at school, and then when I started to drive I had to wear them when I was driving. But I didn’t really wear them all that much growing up, even though I had to. Then I got into college and I discovered thick glasses, and I was like oh, I’m gonna be the cool nerdy girl. So I bought these glasses and then I never took them off. I got contacts but I never really wore them. I always wore my glasses. They’re just comfortable. I don’t like putting things in my eyes. I don’t trust surgery.

I need them to see, basically. My whole thing is when I first came out on the scene, everybody was saying that I sounded like Lisa Loeb. And that was just dumb to me, because while she’s great and lovely, I don’t sound anything like her. It’s just that I wore glasses and people were stuck on that. So I’ve kind of gone back and forth wearing them, not wearing them.

If Parachute brings you some new fans who are looking for more from you and they see there’s no new record coming out this year, I suspect they’re going to find their way back to Everybody. I know it’s a year old, but if someone is just discovering that album now, what do you want them to know about it?

That record is very dear to me. It’s very personal, and I feel like the first real record I made was called Girls And Boys, then I made a glorified EP called Be OK, and then I came out with Everybody. There was this string of singles that were released because they were on Grey’s Anatomy or something, so there were other little songs here and there that came out. Complicated way of saying that Everybody was really my second full length release. I felt at the time that I was kind of a little bit more of a fleshed out grown up, not grown up, but for me grown up sound. I was being very honest in my lyrics. I wasn’t masking it. I wasn’t storytelling. I was just basically saying things that had happened to me. So it’s a very honest, autobiographical piece of work.

I’m not reinventing the wheel. I don’t claim to be trying to impress anybody. I just like to sing, I like to make really pretty harmonies and melodies, and I like to say things in ways that maybe they haven’t been said before, because I’m saying the same things that everybody has said for thousands of years, but hopefully in a little bit of a different way.

Is Parachute any indication of where you might be headed for your next record, or do you think it’s more likely to pick up where Everybody left off.

It’s gonna be somewhere in between. I definitely don’t want to do the same thing I did on Everybody. I kind of am shying away from the singer-songwriter thing because I think I’ve done that so hard. I have more up my sleeve and I’m interested in other sounds, sonically and melodically. Not to say that I’ll abandon my ukelele, but I want to move into a little bit of, I don’t know, something else. I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m not gonna become a Britney Spears popped. I know Parachute’s really poppy, and I really like it. Actually I love it. But I don’t see it as defining my sound. I just think if I can make lots of different kinds of music, then why shouldn’t I, as long as I’m not confusing my fans.

With your current tour you’re playing not just New York and LA, but you’re playing places like Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho. Have you played those kinds of places before?

I’ve played every place you could think of in America. Salt Lake City was one of our best shows ever, on our last tour last year. There were fifteen hundred people and it felt like we were in an arena of twenty thousand people. They were the best audience ever. So you never know. The little pockets in the middle of our country are clamoring for attention, so when you go there, they’re just so receptive and wonderful.

interview by Bill Palmer

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Ingrid Michaelson interview

iProng Magazine talks with Ingrid Michaelson about her new album Be OK and more in this interview from our December 16th, 2008 issue…

interview by Natalie Gelman

We caught up with Ingrid while she was touring as part of the Hotel Café tour earlier this Fall. “BE OK,” her new EP, had just been released and she was preparing to go on the road with her band for her first ‘real’ full band tour – complete with a tour bus – as she called it.

Ingrid has come into her own since she self-released “Boys and Girls” in January 2007, gaining exposure through licensing the single “The Way I Am” to Old Navy for a commercial and through key song placements. Lynn Grossman, who owns a music licensing company specializing in independent music, discovered Ingrid on Myspace and got Ingrid’s music placed on Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill. Since then Lynn became Ingrid’s manager and they chose to keep Ingrid an independent artist and build her fan base as organically as possible.

It’s really important to Ingrid to be accessible to her fans. She posts candidly and regularly on her Myspace blog and Twitters with her fans. “I think it’s really important to connect with people because they are what keeps me afloat, …it’s a whole other element outside of the music to make that personal connection and draw them in.” And who can blame her, today fans are bombarded with so much free music the only thing that cuts through that clutter is the personal connection.

It is just that need to be personal that lead Ingrid to the photo shoot for the album cover. The cover is a close up of Ingrid with “BE OK” written across her face, “I was interested in the idea of not wearing glasses, having it be a very vulnerable looking picture – wearing your sadness or problems right on you, not hiding it but embracing it.” The song, Be OK, is an anthem for anyone going through a tough time and 50% of the proceeds from the single go to the Stand Up to Cancer charity.

The music video for Be OK shows how we all are better off when we are supported by and connected to one another, Ingrid plays her ukulele barefoot on a couch while people slowly gather outside her window and sit down, she gets up and goes outside where they all stand up and pick her up above them slowly passing her along carrying Ingrid and letting her down easily at the very end of the song. On her website there is a video of the song posted that features her fans photos of “Be OK” written on their faces.

Ingrid said she usually doesn’t re-write her songs, “the first time it comes out, that’s it.” She doesn’t have a record label to answer to and has grown to feel even more free to do what she wants to do with her music. You can really hear her looser, delicate phrasing on the live solo voice/ukulele or voice/piano tracks on the CD. My personal favorite is Ingrid’s cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Originally performed as an encore when she opened for Dave Matthews Band at Madison Square Garden earlier this year, Dave was moved by the performance because that was one of the first songs he heard LeRoi Moore perform. LeRoi was in the hospital at that time and Ingrid didn’t ever get to meet him, but she included it on the EP as a tribute.

The vulnerability Ingrid exhibits on the album is one of its most defining and meaningful qualities. “I like the idea of being fearless, to a degree, lyrically and melodically.” That enables the songs to be specific in a way that captivates listeners. It’s like listening to your best friend or sister tell you her fears and let you know how to get through it yourself.

Ingrid was really excited to go out on tour with her band when we spoke. She has been playing with most of the people in her band since before she broke with The Way I Am.


I also asked her what she would be doing if she hadn’t gotten an email from Lynn Grossman two years ago: “I don’t know if I would have gotten picked up by a label or probably still working with children’s theater – its always an option for me if it all falls through.” I doubt it will fall through for Ingrid.

Her next album is set to be released in the Fall of 2009. Definitely pick up a copy of the EP, if it isn’t on your holiday wish list it should be – the breezy music will clear your head of all the holiday music you’re already tired of and help you kick off 2009! If you are looking for new holiday songs, Ingrid and Sara Bareilles wrote “Winter Song” for the Hotel Café Winter Songs CD and Ingrid released “Snowfall” as part of the Barnes and Noble “Sunday Music 5: Holiday” collection.

Learn more at IngridMichaelson.com.