Rising Music Star Michael Nelson of BANNERS On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Music Industry
Honestly, there’s nothing that anybody can tell you that’s going to make a blind bit of difference. Everybody has their own opinion and nearly everybody is going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. But they don’t know. They’ve just got their experiences of themselves but you’re building your experiences of you. The fact that I have a career in music feels like an absolute miracle so there’s absolutely nothing I’d change. No piece of advice I wish I ‘d taken because although I’ve had plenty of horrible experiences they all conspired to deliver me to where I am right now. And I wouldn’t change where I am for anything in the world.
As a part of our series about Inspirational Women In Hollywood, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Michael Nelson.
Liverpool based award-winning singer-songwriter Michael Nelson, aka BANNERS, was seven when he started his “musical apprenticeship.” He sang every day after school in one of the UK’s most well-known cathedrals but it was a chance trip with his producer father to a studio in Toronto that proved life-changing for the musician. He ended up meeting many musicians and started his first attempt at songwriting.
Shortly after, a demo CD he made found its way to Grammy-nominated producer Stephen Kozmeniuk. His first single shot straight to number one on the alternative radio charts in Canada, garnering 10 million Spotify streams overnight and an invite to perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
BANNERS quickly became a household name in North America and Canada, with a viral TikTok moment for his song “Someone To You” earning over 1.5 billion streams. The song went Platinum and Gold in multiple countries and led to an appearance on American Idol.
With the new EP, I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not, Michael says he’s drawn on his own personal experience of the last few years. Many of the songs focus on the things that matter the most when times are tough — like close friends, family and love.
“I finally feel like I’ve found the direction I want to head towards, and I know for the first time really how I want to achieve that,” he smiles. He’s Liverpool’s best kept secret, but that won’t last for long. It will only be a matter of time before the city has another musical hero to call its own.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit about your “origin story”. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
Hello! Thanks for having me. Well I’m from Liverpool so I grew up being really into football, music and inclement weather. When I was 6 my parents and a school teacher conspired to dress me up like an Ox and made me do a solo in my school’s Christmas play. He’s an underwritten character in the bible in my opinion. Then one thing led to another and I circuitously became a pop singer. My Dad claims he didn’t realize I could hold a tune until I was up on that stage dressed like cattle singing about a manger and I have to say it was news to me. Being a parent must be weird.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
See above. “Ox-gate.” After being an Ox I joined the choir at Liverpool Cathedral (as a lot of Oxen did in those days). So I did a lot of singing when I was little. My Dad works in music too so I spent a lot of time in recording studios. I love recording studios. I always just wanted to be in them. I loved being near bands and singers and engineers. I just thought they were the most interesting people so I suppose doing this career was the best way I could think to be in studios around musicians. Really I started writing songs to impress a girl I really liked once and now this is my job which is the greatest thing.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Before music paid me any money I did a lot of jobs that were temporary enough that I could go and do music if music needed to be done whilst also paying the rent. A lot of terrible jobs. Some real soul crushers. But one of the best ones was being an extra for about 3 months on Warhorse which is a Steven Spielberg film. There’s a lot more being blown up in the film business than there is in the music business (so far anyway) And tanks. Extras are weird. One extra told most-famous-director-in-the-world Steven Spielberg that he hadn’t had any dessert and could Steven do anything about it? Another one told most-famous-director-in-the-world Steven Spielberg that he’d wet himself and would need a new uniform. I was also a medieval knight for a while and in Batman. By the way If either of those extras happen to be reading this I just want you both to know that I think about you most days and have told those stories to literally everyone I know.
The best thing that’s happened in my actual career so far is when one of my songs, Shine a light, got played at Anfield when all the Liverpool players were all kicking a ball around on the pitch before kick off. The moment my Grandad believed me that this was my actual job.
It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I wish I could think of a funny mistake, or even remember specifics. Honestly a career as a singer is such an incredibly steep learning curve that you’re basically making so many mistakes, and are so naive to everything, that you’re just sort of one big long constantly happening mistake that’s just sort of walking round going “hello I’m Mike” and then maybe singing a song or something. It’s wild how quickly things accelerate from just being in your bedroom writing music that no-one cares about and then you meet one person who happens to be the right person at the right time and then you’ve got a record label and a publisher and a booking agent and a manager and you’re terrified of them all and you have to suddenly find a way to deal with all that pressure and expectation. And you’ve gotta put a band together and learn how to play live and be the main guy in that band even though you’re the one person who doesn’t know how to do it, and do radio interviews and you don’t even have social media and you don’t want to do it but you have to do it and what do you mean I’m playing on Jimmy Kimmell? I’ve never even done a gig. And with all that you’ve only got 5 songs and 2 of them aren’t very good. All this before you figure out how to make music that people are actually going to like and might maybe make a positive difference on people’s lives. It’s all so overwhelming initially that it’s a victory when you get ANYTHING right. The thing I’ve learned though is to communicate all these things that you’re going through. To talk. People want to help you.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I would say that all there is is help along the way. There’s help in every little aspect of a career as a singer. In fact you’re so reliant on other people’s talents to make you look and sound good that maybe the singer is the least talented one…? All you need to do is have the voice you’ve got and probably the face you’ve got. Without all the help you’re just someone sitting in a bedroom looking and sounding like you. I suppose the hardest, least tangible, part is the very first step. Getting anyone to notice you at all. Everybody needs somebody that sees something in them when no-one else has yet. About 8 years ago I met a producer called Stephen Kozmeniuk who liked all the music I liked and happened to be the most talented fella in the world. He put a load of time aside to work together and we wrote and recorded my first EP which is the thing that got me a bit noticed by record labels and stuff. Sometimes you get lucky and meet the right person at the right time.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Bill Shankly is probably the most influential figure in the history of my football club. There’s an interview where he’s talking about doing everything to the best of your ability. He’s talking about being in the army and “If I had a job to do, even if it was scrubbing the floor, I wanted mine to be cleaner than yours. If everyone thinks along these lines and does the small jobs to the best of their ability, that’s honesty. Then the world would be better.” I think about that and try to be like that every day.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
Since February I’ve been working with a producer called Cam Blackwood and I’m so excited about everything we’ve been doing together. I’d been living in Toronto for about 5 years when the pandemic happened and I did all the lockdowns on my own in a little apartment and I just couldn’t stand being so far away from my family anymore so I moved home to Liverpool. 2020 was such an uncertain time for so many industries and that was true of music too. When I got home I was a lonely, sad, uncertain ghost of a boy. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do music anymore or, really, if I was good enough to do it anyway. It’s so hard to find inspiration when you’re in a lockdown on your own I suppose. So it’s taken a while to get my confidence back really and working with Cam has been such a huge part of that. We just make music that we both really like together and if everybody else likes it well that’s great. The pandemic was a moment to think about what’s really important and I suppose I just want to make music that matters to me and to do it with my friends here in liverpool. Hopefully people will like it and it’ll help to make their day a little bit better. So that’s what Cam and I have been doing with all my friends. I’ve got loads of music coming out in 2023 and I can’t wait for people to hear it.
We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in music, film, and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
First of all I am a white, straight man. One of the things that needs to change in our society is asking white men about things that affect everybody. Ha, that sounds like a criticism of the question! I don’t mean it like that at all. But readers should take my answer with a huge pinch of salt because, as a white man, I’m the least qualified person to be writing this. I try my best to be truly sympathetic but how can I have any real experience of under/misrepresentation? It’s so demoralising when you see the political discussion of, for example, women’s rights and you see a photograph of the panel and it’ll be a load of old white men. Similarly with civil rights. And LGBTQ rights. Let’s stop asking straight men so much.
Art (music, film, television) is an expression of the soul. Art is what makes life genuinely worth living and that life is made so much more rich and interesting and vibrant when those expressions come from a vast and diverse array of cultures and experiences, challenges, difficulties, joys. The same is true of any society. A society is better when it is made up of many different cultures. Not just one. Music is a great representation of how important mixing a diversity of cultures is. If there was no movement of people from one culture to another gospel would have never inspired blues, which would never have informed rock and roll, which would have never come across the ocean from the US to the UK to become skiffle. Without Skiffle we’d have never had the Beatles. And if we’d never had the Beatles….well music would be completely unrecognisable now. And not in a good way! So of course we should have diversity in music, film and television. But we should have diversity in all aspects of our society. Because it’s in the places where that happens that humanity really thrives.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
Honestly, there’s nothing that anybody can tell you that’s going to make a blind bit of difference. Everybody has their own opinion and nearly everybody is going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. But they don’t know. They’ve just got their experiences of themselves but you’re building your experiences of you. The fact that I have a career in music feels like an absolute miracle so there’s absolutely nothing I’d change. No piece of advice I wish I ‘d taken because although I’ve had plenty of horrible experiences they all conspired to deliver me to where I am right now. And I wouldn’t change where I am for anything in the world. I’m glad things have been hard at times because I know that when things get hard in the future I’ve got the ability to deal with it and come out stronger. So there’s no advice I’d have wanted that would have helped me avoid some of the hard bits. So here’s my advice to everybody: It’s good that it gets hard. Because that makes you stronger.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
There isn’t going to be an achievement that, when you reach it, you’ll feel fulfilled. 1 platinum record is just going to make you want 2. 2 billion streams is going to make you want 3. So love the little things that you achieve every day. When you make a chorus slightly better. When you learn to play a new song on the guitar. Love the moment that you’re in instead of yearning for somewhere you want to be. You’ll never get there that way. I, for example, just carried a christmas tree up a massive hill and I’m feeling pretty good about it.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would love it if we, as a society, learned to say “I don’t know” more. Social media seems to provoke people into presenting opinions as facts and it’s so useless. Just a load of ill-informed, emotional statements flying around that, at best, add absolutely nothing and, at worst, are hugely dangerous. You don’t need to try to sound like an expert on everything. In fact, you don’t need to be an expert on anything. But when there is an expert talking, let’s listen. We’ll all get smarter. You don’t need to offer a dissenting opinion. When I first started working in music I used to feel like I had to know this or that song just because I wanted to fit in with the conversation and I didn’t want people to think I was an idiot or whatever. So I used to pretend I’d know a song or an artist or an album when really I didn’t. But what use is that?! So then I just started saying “I don’t know” when I didn’t know and that changed my life. No-one looks down on you. All that happens is then you listen to that song and then you know. And you haven’t filled the universe with another uninformed opinion. And you get to learn something. So let’s all say “I don’t know” more often. Let’s listen to experts because they do know. And then we’ll all actually know a bit more.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Oh I’m far too shy to ever actually meet somebody in real life but I really love Maggie Rogers’ new album so if you want to tell her that that’d be great.
How can our readers follow you online?
Oh you know. All the places. @bannersmusic on the good old socials.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
Thanks for having me!
