Meet Savannah Staples

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Savannah Staples. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Savannah below.

Savannah, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

Growing up, I struggled with mental health in many ways. The one thing that always gave me hope to keep going and the strength to get up day after day was music. I listened to music, covered songs, or wrote, and it was the only thing that was able to make me feel real. Music was the realest thing for me. It was something that was never going away, never going to abandon me, and something I could always count on.
When I started to make music, I knew it was my purpose. It was the most important thing in my life. Additionally, going through the mental health struggles I did, I wanted people to know they weren’t alone. When going through hard things, I listened to music to know that I wasn’t the only one going through these challenges. Making music, was my way of returning the favor. I want people to know they aren’t alone, and to keep going.
Furthermore, music is my way of turning pain into something beautiful. I often get asked why all my songs are sad. It is mostly because songwriting is my coping mechanism and gives me a voice for hard things that I otherwise have a hard time articulating.
Music is my purpose. It is my entire life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a singer-songwriter. My main focus is to make people feel seen with my music, as well as make my music as real as possible. All of my songs are true stories or based on true stories. Music is how I communicate. It is my most true voice. In middle school, when I started to make YouTube videos for my music, I was set on perfection. I wanted every note to sound perfect, no background music, and zero mistakes. As I’ve grown up, learned more, and gained more influences, my focus is not perfection but reality. I don’t want perfection. If you hear the piano bench move, or the strings buzz in the studio recording, it makes it more real in my opinion.
My songwriting doubles as storytelling. I want to tell a story with my music. I want people to see themselves or be able to put themselves in my opinion, I want to spread awareness and I want to create what I want to create.
Right now, I am focusing on writing an album that I hope to finish by this summer. It will be my first big project and a lot of it will be experimenting with what I want to sound like. I have many ideas on instruments, harmonies, and visual aspects to my album. The summers tend to be when I gig as I have more free time not being in class, but I hope to gig in Rochester, NY in the spring if I have time.
Right now, I have an EP and a single out that I’m very proud of. I had little resources and big ideas, and I am very happy with how it turned out. My voice teacher, Lori Diamond and her husband Fred Abatelli helped me to record, added harmonies and other instruments, and encouraged me through the entire process. They are much to thank for my career thus far and some of my biggest supporters that I am forever grateful for.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Originality, perseverance, and belief. These three qualities are qualities that are hard to have, but also so important.
While making music, I usually have many influences. The hard thing is, while you may have an influence for a song, to make sure you still have originality in it. You don’t want to sound like Ariana Grande. Well of course, you probably do she is amazing, but sounding like yourself is important. Music is for you. Your music should be made for you. For example, my biggest inspiration and influence is Lizzy Mcalpine. While aspects of her storytelling, instrumentation and vocal inflections I love and sometimes adopt, they are pieces of my music, never directly stolen (that would be plagiarism) and I do it in my own way.
Secondly, perseverance is so incredibly important. The music industry is a difficult place. Whether you are Taylor Swift or your mom is the only one who listens to your music, it is a hard place. The most important thing is to acknowledge this, but also to not be discouraged by it. If you go into the music industry expecting that everything will go as planned, you’ll blow up overnight and that you will never face hardships, it will be very hard. On the other hand, if you expect nothing will go as planned, you’ll never have people listen to your music and that you’ll never make it, you won’t be helping yourself either. Knowing that the music industry is hard but going into it anyway shows perseverance. If you work hard, you can do it. If you have the ambition and perseverance to keep going past any hardships you may come across, you can do it. If you don’t have the work ethic or perseverance, it will be very hard.
Lastly, belief. You always hear “fake it ’til you make it,” and in this case I mean it. Believe in yourself. Even if it is fake at first, if you don’t believe in yourself, you cannot expect others to believe in you. Be confident, know that you can do this, believe that you will do it. When I started doing this, my confidence spiked and more people latched on to my ideas and music. They saw someone who believed in themselves and decided to believe as well.
You can and you WILL do it. <3

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I love musicians. The community that we have is so beautiful to me.
Currently, I am preparing for my first album. I am a college student and lack resources, but the community I have built is beautiful, and I love expanding it.
If you are an instrumentalist who would like to have a part in my album, I would love to collaborate. If the instrument isn’t what I am looking for, I am always down for a jam session as well.
Additionally, I believe in this day and age, social media is so important in a music career, but it takes a toll on me. If anyone has tips and tricks or would like to collab on my social media to make it more reachable, welcoming, etc., this would be amazing.
Overall, I am always welcome to making more music industry friends. Whether it’s the business side, the performing side, or any other side that you may be a part of, I would love to collab 🙂

If you have any interest, my website is savannahstaplesmusic.com and you can go to the contact section to contact me.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Jay Guarino

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