Songs for Capital Cities, Five for Fighting, Hailee Steinfeld, Ke$ha
“It’s been a pretty good month,” muses songwriter, artist and producer Tim Myers. Indeed: he has two songs in major trailers, the first promoting Wonder, an upcoming film starring Julia Roberts, and the second song utilized in the Coco trailer for the Pixar animated Disney-released feature. Myers has also penned the end-title song, “Can’t Stop This Love,” for the upcoming Owen Wilson and Ed Helms movie Father Figures and has songs featured in Google and Coca-Cola Christmas TV ad campaigns this winter season. Add to these credits “Lover My Love,” a song from his latest full length Portraits that recently hit No. 5 on the Billboard Dance Chart.
Tim Myers is no stranger to this realm. A California native who launched his career in a children’s Christian vocal ensemble, it was through a friend at a church gig that he connected with Ryan Tedder, with whom he would become a founding member of OneRepublic and a co-writer of the No. 1 hit “Stop and Stare.” Departing the band, Myers unleashed his prodigious career as a songwriter for Capital Cities, Five for Fighting, Hailee Steinfeld and Ke$ha while becoming a go-to resource for sync usages––which exceeds well over 1,000 placements. He is also the founder and CEO of Palladium Records, a label that releases his solo projects plus music by artists including the Unknown, FM Radio and MoZella.
Despite these successes, Myers says he was surrounded by doubt. “I was told my entire life, ‘You’re not good enough, you’ll never do it.’ I was around people who would tear me down to nothing. But with Portraits I was able to write about that, to create a self-portrait, and to let it go. And radio, press, playlists, music videos, remixes—all of this started coming together.”
He notes that the songs that comprise Portraits reveal his confidential side. “I have been reflecting on my life and my childhood. I think it’s important to connect to songs on a personal level so others will connect to them emotionally and draw on their own experiences. It’s interesting, when we share with others what we’ve gone through, how many people have gone been through the same things.”
The lyrical honesty on Portraits is disarming. “Lover My Love” references two partners who don’t have sex anymore. “Tana: Sorry Don’t Live Here” is about a close friend of his wife’s who committed suicide. “The King” is a pointed treatise on life in Trump-era America. Counter balancing the weightier themes are the delightful “Daughter,” written about his two children, and “18” and “Born for This,” whose joyous choruses are positive and affirming. Add to this “Portrait of Home,” the song that gives title to the collection, an exquisite avowal of the rewards of enduring love.
With a well-appointed recording studio in his home, Myers writes and records daily. “I will probably have a hundred tracks at the end of the day, and I throw in different combinations of sounds. Then I strip it away, peel back the paint a little bit and see what colors are there. If it was a canvas I’d be throwing tons of paint, scraping and moving things, but at the end of the day it would become, hopefully, beautiful.”
With Portraits, Myers reflects the artistry of a deeply evocative songwriter whose lyrics and melodies connect the emotional dots with irresistible hooks. “If you listen to this album and dive into every lyric, you’ll figure out who I am pretty quickly. I’m not one-dimensional. I’m a friend, a husband, a father a co-writer and a worker,” Myers says. And of this process of creating music he adds, “There is no formula––It’s magic.”
Contact Amanda Blide, Director of Publicity, LaFamos Marketing & Publicity Dept., [email protected]
