“You know, when I was younger, I should have known earlier! I would stay up and I would play piano, and I would try my best to sound like how it sounds on the radio. And I wanted to get the feeling just right. But when I got older, I started doing other things like basketball in college, but I just wasn’t good enough to go pro. I also did stand-up comedy, acting, modeling, all that stuff that I never felt in love with the process of. But when I got back to music when I was around 23, 24, 25, that’s when I really fell in love with the process of making music,” said rising pop artist Tai Verdes.
Tai Verdes is a rising artist in his own right, with his top 10 songs on Spotify alone totaling over 288 million streams, with his current single a rehash of his biggest smash hit “A-O-K” featuring rising rapper 24kGoldn. “A-O-K” itself has already garnered almost 109 million streams.
“I just went into the studio and heard that guitar lick (then proceeds to hum intro melody), and I was, like, ‘Doesn’t this guitar sound so good?’ Tai bared when asked about the origin of “A-O-K” “And after I did that, it really changed the way that I was going throughout the rest of the day. We stuck all day long to that song and we just went through and we cut it, and we had that chorus ‘Living in this big blue world...’ We put it up front and it just felt so good, the entire vibe of that song. It really came together nicely.”
His full-length debut album TV is named as such as Tai feels that the album is a TV series of the last few years of his life.
“My entire album is a diary of my last four years of my life, to where if you listen to the first track, it’s an episode of TV with me dropping out of college,” Tai shared. “And then it goes with me feeling alone, and then me doing some ‘Drugs’, and then me figuring out that I met a girl, then getting ‘Stuck in the Middle, then breaking up. From the break-up, I try to be ‘A-O-K’ with myself. That’s the last song in the album, because even through all the problems I experienced, you still have to try to wake up and be okay.”
Three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, singer-songwriter Tai Verdes was an essential worker with a nine-to-five job at a Verizon Wireless store. Now he has one of the biggest songs in the U.S., which saw his social following and streaming listeners skyrocket in 2020; gaining a genuine, engaged fan base despite of the unprecedented global epidemic. It has not gone unnoticed - Tai has received plaudits from Rolling Stone, Billboard, Nylon, Genius, Ladygunn, Lyrical Lemonade, The Independent, EARMILK, NOTION, PAUSE, Noctis Magazine and 1883 Magazine. Tai has gained support from Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and also performed for TikTok’s virtual New Year’s Eve 2020 party, hosted by Lil Yachty and Brittany Broski. He is already starting his sold-our tour after making waves touring in festivals and opening for other artists.
When he was asked where he draws songwriting inspiration from, Tai confessed that, “I draw from my actual life. I don’t sing things that I haven’t experienced. That’s the big thing, that’s where the authenticity comes from, these are the things that I have actually felt in my own life. It’s not like I’m rappin’ about gold chains – maybe I’ll sing about gold chains when I get one (laughs), but I don’t even want one, you know, it’s not really something I’m doing this for. I just want to tell stories that are good.”
And this side of his personality is very apparent when he was asked what kind of superhero would be if given the chance. “Oh my gosh, that’s a hard question! I’ve always wanted to be like Johnny Storm from Final (Fantastic) Four and be lit like fire!” Tai said. “Maybe (I would also like) to control all the elements, maybe I’ll be like the Avatar from The Last Airbender, and be able to control water, fire, and the earth, and air, that’s what I would love to do. And I don’t think I’d like to have a uniform, I just wanna be me and wear what I wanna wear.”
He also recognizes that a large chunk of his streams and views come from the Philippine community. “To everybody in the Philippines listening to any song of mine, I just wanna say thank you, there’s so much music out there that you could be listening to, but the fact that you’re putting the time to do so, thank you so much...”
Tai Verdes’ hit single A-O-K from his debut album “TV” is out on Spotify, Apple Music and all digital streaming sites.