Singer, songwriter, and YouTube personality Maddy Newton feels a bit like a long-lost friend. From songs like “Kiss You Yesterday,” in which she confesses to hoping it goes just a little bit further, to “Bye Now,” in which she kicks to the curb a guy who came around just a little too late, Newton can sing what’s been on her listener’s mind. When we caught up with her on a hot summer day in Nashville, she was full of energy, eager to discuss the resurgence of 90’s fashion – she proudly owns a stretchy black choker – and her love for Hilary Duff – “she was like my first person I was obsessed with!”
Though Newton’s sound has a highly pop feel – “What Was I Thinking” is a catchy uptempo, while “Kiss You Yesterday” leans Colbie Callait or Lily Allen – the Florida native has been shaped by the country influences around her. “Moving to Nashville and starting writing here made me feel like I was country pop,” she says, “because it was Nashville and because the songwriters I was being mentored by were country and my writing style was built on a foundation of country and storytelling, which I’m so grateful for now. I love writing country songs and I love having substance in the songs. But what I’m passionate about in my artistry is pop.”
Aside from her music, Newton curates a YouTube channel, where she talks about makeup, products, life, and sings covers, like her recent duet with Kyle Reynolds, a cover of Nick Jonas’ “Chainsaw” – the album is a current favorite of hers, drawing frequent spins along with Allen Stone’s Radius and Corinne Bailey Rae. Though being an artist is in itself a process chock full of vulnerability, connecting with an audience through YouTube takes it to an additional level.
“I feel like I just want to relate to girls – and guys – people that have felt weird or quirky or insecure about being themselves,” she says. “So with me through my music, being transparent [about] me accepting who I am and going through real things and just owning up to it and just being really real. I don’t want it to just be through music, I want me as a person to be transparent. And so I wanna show every aspect.”
Newton’s music highlights that mix – it’s catchy and invites the listener in, with lyrics nestled in life’s “been there” moments. Her songs are highly catchy, with production that plays an integral role in the music. “I feel like so much of music nowadays is including production in [that] it’s what you love about the song, there could be cool production in it, and being in pop that dominates so much of music,” she says. “I love telling stories still, so I don’t wanna do pop music that doesn’t have substance in it.”
For the writer and artist, the creative process varies by song. “What I’ve been doing lately is I’ll be driving and I’ll just open my mouth and just start like, saying or singing whatever comes out,” she says. “Sometimes it might be just, oh that was a cool melody but the words didn’t mean anything, and I’ll just turn my voice memo on on my phone and start doing stuff, or sometimes the words will be good, the melody needs to change, or it’s just like a hook of a song or the beginning of a verse or whatever and it just flows that way.”
She confesses that the appearance of song ideas isn’t always the most convenient. “I’ll be in conversations with people and I’ll have to like – I mean, I feel bad but sometimes – I’ll just interject [and] be like, I really have to go to the bathroom and just in the middle of the conversation will just leave and go and I’ll record it in my phone. Or go into a corner of a room and go up by the window and pretend like I’m on the phone and just be singing into my phone. It’s kind of weird,” she laughs. “But I know myself, and so many times I’ll be thinking I’ll remember that, and I won’t. So anything that I remotely think is something I should remember, I have to put it in in that moment or else I’ll forget it.”
Newton has been singing since she was in preschool, and put pen to paper to write her first song when she was thirteen. “When I was little, without knowing it, I would like write little choruses based off of Barbie movies I would watch and stuff like that,” she says. “I don’t know [if that] was really like writing songs, it was just I loved singing and so I would just create words to melodies and sometimes they would be melodies off of the Barbie songs that I would just change the lyrics [to]. So I did that when I was little but after moving to Nashville I wrote my first like structured song at 13. My parents had gone away on some songwriters retreat in Napa – they aren’t songwriters but they went with friends who are – and so they were doing this big thing out there and I was just inspired to write my own song. I knocked out two in a week and it was just instant.”
It’s a passion that continues to this day. “It’s weird to look back and think about a time where I wasn’t doing that,” she says. “At this point it feels like it’s been so long and just part of my life.”
Connect with Newton (“I love meeting people, because again, new friends!”) on her website, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.