Payton Moormeier leaves his mark on the music industry
On Feb. 8 2021, Payton Moormeier talked exclusively with Headliners In Education.
March 22, 2021
On April 18, 2020 “Love Letter” premiered for the first time on YouTube. Since then, Payton Moormeier released three other singles, and has risen to great heights since first starting his TikTok career, before moving on to start his musical one.
“When I started [my music career], I obviously did want to go somewhere but I didn’t expect anything, it’s like how anybody gets it, like, oh yeah that would be cool. But, no, I never thought it would take me here ever in my life,” Moormeier said.
Moormeier didn’t know what to expect with the release of his first song. He’d known that there was going to be publicity and attention because of his influence on TikTok (a whopping 13.7M followers on the platform), but outside of that Moormeier wasn’t sure whether the song would perform well. Considering that the lyric video for “Love Letter” currently has over 3.5 million views on YouTube, it’s probably safe to say that it’s been well received.
Moormeier’s TikTok fame has contributed to a lot of other changes in his life too. He said that it’s made quite an impact on his life, as it’s something which he views as a gig which comes with its own set of stereotypes.
“It’s always weird just going anywhere. If I’m hanging out with people for the first time, and a group of fans comes up to me and they’re talking about my social media stuff and all this, it’s just different for them, and my lifestyle is very different from anybody else that lives around where I live,” he said.
However, TikTok has included many more benefits than any drawbacks for Moormeier. He said that he’d “obviously wanted [his music] to go somewhere,” but didn’t have any major plans before getting the platform.
As an independent artist, Moormeier has to shoulder a lot of costs related to his music work.
He started the Artist In You scholarship for independent artists, to help them save money for anything related to their aspiring career. The deadline to register passed on Feb. 22, 2021.
“I’m not signed to a label, [so] everything I do comes out of my pocket. Every music video, every song I make, it all comes out of my pocket. And it just gets really really pricey. And so I started the Artist In You scholarship just to help out any other independent artists out there trying to do what I’m doing and give them a little financial boost. You have to be 16 or older, [and] that’s the only requirement. There’ll be a link [on] my Instagram,” Moormeier explained.
COVID has taken a toll on Moormeier’s plans for the year. It’s harder to plan events and film music videos in the middle of the pandemic, due to all the regulations one must follow to keep the work environment safe and comfortable for everyone.
“It’s definitely just really kind of like put a hold on traveling and basically just making things easy is made everything difficult because you have to you have to like rewire how you dare is to do everything because say like for music videos, you can’t have a big production crew and everybody has to get COVID tested and all this stuff it’s just stressful, but yeah [it] just makes everything a little bit harder,” Moormeier said.
Due to the pandemic, Moormeier’s concerts have also been postponed for now.
“There’s this stuff planned for 2021, [hopefully] for the summer. But right at this moment, I’m just looking at live like pre-recorded stuff, just like live stream stuff like that. But yeah I mean I’m hoping for the summer, that’s when we have like a tour and everything planned out. If you know things get better by then, but right now it’s just so up in the air, you can’t put your foot down and say yeah, this is when we’re gonna tour this,” he said.
