Sleeping Lion
Following the release of “Casper”, Sleeping Lion is now revealing their latest smash single titled “CTFO”. The self-written/produced single came from tensions in a relationship. The personal story turned into a colorful and catchy pop record.
I think one of their biggest strengths as a duo is their production skills. It’s smart how they use each element to create something unique, big and different. The production on “CFTO” is just perfect.
Sleeping Lion is definitely a duo I want to keep listening.
CTFO is out now !
Photo credit: Meg Meyer
Introduce the duo - what's the story of Sleeping Lion?
Noah & I met on our first day of college (Berklee College of Music) - we were reading the same book and had dorms down the hall from each other. While we didn't immediately connect (more on that later), we did run into each other a lot. He knew I was ambitious & social, I knew he was extremely intelligent & talented. I was in a folk "band" that Noah originally joined, that eventually evolved into Sleeping Lion.
At what point did you decide to form a duo and release your original music together? What was the biggest struggle when you first started?
April of 2015 I was meeting up with my girlfriend at the time who had seen a show at a venue in Cambridge. There was a blue-haired girl outside the venue smoking a cigarette and we wound up getting into a conversation. She was brilliant, breaking down the pop music industry like it was a game that could be strategized and dropping major advice on how to break out as an artist. She said "you have the heart for this industry if you ever thought about being in it". Her words resonated with me and as I got back to my dorm I heard Noah working on a track in his room. With a sudden epiphany, I barged into his room and pitched the idea of making pop music together. It didn't mean anything to me at the time, but the blue-haired girl wound up being Halsey.
Noah's family actually lives in Rome, so the first big struggle was working on our record ("Patient Creature") entirely remotely that summer while I was in New York and he was in Italy. We learned a lot about each other: how to communicate & how we work best together/separately.
Who was the first person to ever believe in you?
Besides Halsey (abstractly/indirectly), I want to give a major shoutout to Ariza, Molly Boekenheide, and Josh Ford. While he was a work-study student at Berklee, Ariza sought us out to make a coveted "Berklee video" which helped solidify a certain school-based "clout" that gave us a leg up in connecting with our peers and building a community. Molly B was our first publicist and (unbeknownst to us at the time) she worked our music tirelessly (off the clock, sometimes only getting a few hours of sleep a night) to get our first blog & playlist placements. For years she moved hell and high water to get our name out there and keep our spirits high. Lastly (but not leastly), Josh Ford was our manager for 5 years and he originally found us from a lecture I did on music business. He said our songs reinspired his love of music and for years he just wanted to be a part of something he believed in!
"CTFO" is your latest single - what's the inspiration behind this song?
Noah wrote the bulk of this song back in 2019 about the tensions he was facing in his then-relationship. The song outlived the relationship and evolved lyrically a bit with some space from the relationship.
Could you describe the songwriting/production process for this single? Who helped you create it?
When Noah first created the song he was very precious about it (not sure if it was for Sleeping Lion or himself or pitch) and kept it close to the chest. As time passed and the song took on new meaning for both of us (and the themes of our record "Most Improved" started to come into focus) he let go of the song a bit, inviting more collaboration for us to shape the song together. Like our earlier stuff "CTFO" is 100% Sleeping Lion, but we had our friends Mason Maggio (Souveneer) and Victoria Alejandro record a fake movie scene that quietly plays in the outro ("What're we even fighting about?"/"What AREN'T we fighting about?!"), and it was mixed by Zach Pennington (Ziptype).
What can you tell us about the artwork?
This scene was inspired by Noah's experience, which I'm sure others can (unfortunately) relate to - the fight that spills out into the sidewalk and ends in a painfully tense quiet on the curb. The cover art was shot by photography legend Meg Meyer (@megmeyer).
As artists, what is the hardest part? And what is the best part?
Being an artist is relentless - the landscape is constantly shifting and there's rarely a clear good path or purely good decision. Even if you get your money right (which is a big IF), breaking through culturally in a way that feels authentic and "right" is a fight unto itself. But we love it. We love that ideas have value, that tough life experiences can be converted into art, that there's always new plans to be made, and a community of wonderfully talented people there to collaborate (and commiserate) with!
What are your thoughts on today's music industry? If you could change one thing, what would it be?
The industry has always been a great wheel: there's a problem, something solves it, everyone flocks to the solution, it gets overwhelmed by saturation, there's a problem...
A lot of the issues is an over reliance on gatekeeping and an aversion to risk. If labels will only sign artists that manage to find success on a platform like Tik Tok and will then only conditionally develop those artists if they can consistently recreate that success... that's a problem. Audiences are moving on and even a breakout artist risks a shorter half lives on virality.
I think finding avenues to incentivise FANS to be more hands-on and instrumental in creating opportunities to fund, collaborate, and/or book their favorite artists would help democratize the industry in a way that is platform agnostic (and not reliant on algorithms or major label budgets). I don't think NFT's are the solution (especially how they've been co-opted), but I think their current popularity reveals an audience desire for this sort of democratization.
What can you tell us about your podcast Talking Lion? What made you want to launch this podcast?
Talking Lion is an artist-to-artist longfrom interview podcast where we talk to our music friends about their life, philosophies, and songs! The idea for the podcast has existed almost as long as Sleeping Lion (despite starting 4 years after the band's start). I used to interview our music friends on our college radio station and I always loved it. Likewise, before our songwriting sessions, we'd tend to have these absolutely incredible conversations with the artists we were working with that I felt other artists (especially new artists) would benefit from being a fly on a wall for. For a while we just couldn't afford the equipment to record it, but once we raised a budget for it, we launched in 2019 and have since had 100+ guests on the show (including dozens of artists we chatted with before their big break like salem ilese, Lauren Spencer Smith, and Em Beihold). The podcast is a time & money sink, so it's purely run on passion - it's become an incredible way for us to make new music friends, build a community, inspire us, and hopefully help new artists feel less alone in their journey!
What biggest lessons have you learned since the beginning of your career?
Be kind and patient! No two journeys are the same and nothing is more important than taking care of yourself. Don't focus on everyone else's houses, focus on the brick you lay today. You just gotta keep playing the game and play it in a way that feels right to you. Find a community. Take the right risks. It's a marathon (not a sprint), but it gets infinitely better to share the journey with friends!
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