THE ANTHEM OF MATT FREEDMAN
Singer/ Songwriter Matt Freedman talks his latest anthem Good Love.
How are you living your best life right now?
Currently, I am living my best life by pushing every aspect harder than I ever have before. Music, home life, fitness, etc. I definitely feel stretched at times, but at the end of every day I can look back and truly look in the mirror and say I gave everything I had to myself, my family, and my music/co-writing community. Currently, I'm training for the Marine Corps Marathon on 10/31. My brother served 10 years as a Marine, and it gives me an incredible amount of pride to be running next to him through Washington, DC knowing all he sacrificed for our country. Homelife is a bit chaotic, but incredibly fun. I have two daughters, Harper (5) and Hannah (3) who run our life. They both just started preschool so our days are school, soccer practice, swimming lessons, and playing music at night. My wife Lindsey is pregnant with our third baby (coming March '22!) so I do everything I can to support her and pick up the slack. I love to cook, so all the meals are a therapeutic outlet for me! On the music side, I have never been more inspired and busy. I do 3-4 co-writes per week, and write every day for my own catalog. I just opened for Miranda Lambert, Brett Young, Maddie & Tae, Jon Langston and Lily Rose this summer, so as festivals wind down more regional and local shows are picking up on the weekends. So, suffice it to say I'm doing my best to fire on all cylinders while trying to not miss details in any aspects. It's also football season, so that makes me a very happy guy. Especially when Penn State, or the Philadelphia Eagles are winning :)
Talk to us about Good Love! Congratulations on the release! Where did the title come from?
Thanks! This song was truly a reflection of how I am feeling right now. Sort of an anthem, or an ode to the one that you love just reflecting on how grateful you are to be with that person. It's a reminder to my wife that I'll always want what she's got :). As an observer of the human experience, I find that too much time goes by a lot of times without truly telling the other person in your life how you feel about them, especially as we start to have children, work and other priorities. I never wanted too much time in my life to pass without reminding her how I felt about her, and those little subtle things she does that still make me feel like we're 18 again when we met. It can be anything, like certain looks she gives me or certain things she wears.. those subtle moments are the good stuff. And to me represents good love. I thought it would be cool to write an upbeat lighthearted anthem to represent how I feel about the person who is most important to me.
How did you become inspired to make this song?
Good Love was one of those songs that really wrote itself very quickly, in under an hour. Typically, that does not happen I can assure you haha. The majority of the time when I sit down to write something, I tend to over-stress about the sensory details of the moment I'm writing about. The smells, the images, the scene that I'm painting. I wanted to step away from that for a moment, and truly just write about how I FELT. The things I was feeling in that moment about my wife, and all of the things she does. I didn't want to overthink it, or over analyze the emotions or codify the feelings. I set out to write a very simple, easy light hearted fun song that could represent a moment in time with my wife and I.
How did you approach this song vs. songs past?
This song had a specific goal when I set out to write it, and it was to leave a watermark on this particular moment in time with my wife. Our life is chaotic right now with two toddlers, and her being pregnant again trying to balance my music career, her career as a nurse, our kids, school, sports, and everything else. The fact is that I still feel about her the same way I did when we were 18. She still makes me laugh, I still get butterflies every time she walks into a room, but now for all different reasons, including the old ones. So I wanted to capture that emotion in writing the music as well, a very bouncy, flowy and positive uplifting backdrop for the simple lyrics. I forced myself to not overthink the lyrics, the arrangement or the production when layering instruments.
Describe your upcoming EP?
In a lot of ways, I've found myself through this project. For a period of time, I was depressed, struggling with anxiety and stress when my wife said to me, "You know Matt, you're a better person when music is in your life." At that point about 3 years ago, I made a commitment to myself, my wife, and my family that I would somehow bring music back into my life again in a big way. I decided then to take the first steps to writing again, compiling all of my old notes, napkins, voice notes, notepads in my phone, old books and fragments to build an arsenal of songs. I decided that the next half of my life will be heavily influenced by music, like it used to be prior to taking time away to build a family. My upcoming EP is going to be a snapshot of the last 15 years of my life getting to this point. I have never released music as a solo artist prior to this project, and had written over 100 songs to get down to the final batch. Each one of the songs is a personal story, and has defined a moment in time in my life. There are songs about love, loss, heartbreak, and everything in between. I'm incredibly proud of the amount of work that went into this project with other co-writers, producers, a few session players and collaborations with other artists to make this come to life. It's in a lot of ways the EP I've always wanted to make, with some deeply personal stories about my family, my daughters, my wife and things that I've gone through as a person. It's going to be the first of many releases that I hope to have in the short and long term, and has taught me a ton about patience, and follow through. It's easy to say you're going to start something, or to actually start something but never finish. This project is representative to show my kids that if you put your mind to something, work your ass off, surround yourself with really GOOD people, and build a tribe around your vision, that you can accomplish anything in this life. You can make YOUR life, YOURS. I hope the stories, the lessons, and the emotions that come through on this record can teach my daughters about where their dad was in his life as a young father, trying to navigate his way and find himself through music.
Where can fans stream and support you?
Everyone can stream my first 3 singles on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon or wherever they stream. This fall, I'll be shooting acoustic videos for Youtube, and follow along on Instagram and TikTok!
Leave us with sneak peek of what to expect from you for the rest of this year?
Absolutely :). The EP will be released before the end of the year 2021, with a documentary on my story being released on Youtube. We're also in the studio filming acoustic stripped down videos for each of the songs on the EP. I'll be writing a lot more, and working on getting more songs placed with publishers !
Social media and all links! Thank you Matt!
Listen On: Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mat
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5umTr
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/artists/B07W
iTunes: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mat
Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/artist/matt-f
YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_T9
Follow Matt Instagram: https://LC.instagram.com/mattfreedman
Facebook: https://facebook.com/musicbymattfreedman
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/mattfreedmanmusic
Official Website: www.mattfreedmanmusic.com