#TheBluPrint: Your Pop Star’s Favorite
By Trevor Trout (@totaltroutmove)
When you are looking for the next great pop artist, you have to take all things into account. Even the things we hate that come with building an artist in that genre.
Yes, you have the obvious things such as the look, gravitation, and the ability to make music that’s a soundtrack to the lives of others. Once you past the basics, you ask the tough questions.
What’s their ceiling?
Can this act make hit records with others?
Do they have a real ear for music?
Can they create a niche fanbase that dies by them?
Can they do multiple things well that keeps me coming back for more?
Before the pandemic, New York native Blu DeTiger was a touring bassist. She’s lived the band life since she was in middle school. When these venues shut down, she did what many did and went to TikTok and performed in front of her tiny iPhone screen. It’s how she would communicate with her friends as most do in the modern age of music.
Especially pop.
February of last year, I was listening to music one night as I usually do. I always check the new releases, but indie rock acts are always important follow. This is where you find the “up and comers” in the new age of pop music. Either that or the alternative section. I was in the “indie rock” that night and this blonde girl with a guitar on the cover with a “Future Nostalgia”-type font appears in new releases. I can tell they really thought this shit out and was going for it. It was her single “Vintage.”
I pressed play.
“This is a star.”
I had to call somebody. I had to get loud. I had to make sure SOMEBODY heard the same thing I’m hearing. And those folks that got it, GOT IT.
This is it.
The first thing I noticed about Blu DeTiger was her ability tell stories through the eyes of the twenty-something hopeless romantic who doesn’t know what they want. She takes you to that episode of “Riverdale,” but you’re in a club and you want to go home with someone with bad intentions. The person is everything you look for, but they don’t want you.
She nails it.
“Dirty sneakers and a motorcycle jacket
He loves TV, not into acting though
He never smiles, he keeps it candid
He breaks the rules but I wish that I could have him…”
The best part about it all is I didn’t know if she knew what she had, but in an interview with Apple Music, you can tell she knew exactly what she was doing and she did exactly what she set out to do. She knew the record she was trying to make and who she was making it for. The funk. The soul. The rock. The “alt-pop.” She said when she made the record, she was thinking about the song “Mr. Brightside.”
“Oh my God, she gets it.”
She released her EP “How Did We Get Here?” later that March, and the rest of the history. People understood where I was coming from.
They heard the same thing I heard.
And it’s only the beginning.
Last November, Blu DeTiger signed with Capitol Record and dropped the music video for her latest single “Blondes.”
And the best part about it is she’s doing everything I’m expecting her to do. She was featured on GAYLE’s latest EP “a study of the human experience volume one” who had the smash hit “abcdefu” that was one of the hottest songs in pop music last year. And to put a cherry on top, she released her single “Hot Crush Lover” and two other records “Blutooth” and “enough 4 u” with Grammy-nominated duo Chromeo.
DeTiger isn’t making the mistake of getting in the room with folks that don’t match her sound. And that goes a long way with me, especially after you’ve been signed already.
She’s picking music that sticks over the name. And those are the folks that win.
What makes Blu DeTiger special isn’t the fact she’s just the cool white girl that has a couple ‘Tumblr bars” that pop off the headphones. It isn’t even the fact that she has this luscious blonde hair that flows over the guitar as she terrorizes it on stage. It’s the fact you can tell that she can hear her fans and give them what they want, but also knows what the masses are really hungry for. And if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be where she is right now. She did it her way. She went against the machine. She made music she wanted to make and knew that real music will always win.
