Quote:Sierra Tishgart ‏ @SierraTishgart
Enjoyed meeting American Idol alum @HaleyReinhart @TeenVogue! Heard a sneak peek of her song with B.o.B. - definitely a summer smash hi

Quote:Reinhart, who returned to the "Idol" stage last week to perform "Free," says it's the perfect song to define the artist she's striving to be.

"I picked it out while I was touring with the 'Idols' and I was getting all these songs shipped into me," she said of "Free." "This one I just had to stop and say 'Hey this has my name written on it.' It's something that I can look in the future and see it being able to define me. It's got elements of the sultry, even hints of jazz in there."

...she's bringing that playful, fresh vibe to Listen Up! which features collaborations with rapper B.o.B and Reinhart's own father (whom she performed with on "Idol").

"You're going to be surprised to hear a lot of different flavors, but at the same time it all meshes well together," she said of the album, which hits stores May 22. "I show a lot of different sides. I have my roots I come from a lot of different genres, so you'll hear definitely sultriness throughout the entire thing, very retro yet modern take, and there's pop undertones in it with some funk jazz rock, it's got a lot going on."

Quote: Where did the album title come from?

I was doing a lot of the creative [stuff], like the album artwork at the same time, and I had this idea and it kind of coincided with the title. I’m going to have an exclamation, like I really just want it to be a known thing. Like, “Hey new generation, old generation, whoever, take a listen to this stuff.” I put a lot of hard work into it, it’s organic and raw, and has a lot of elements that I’ve grown up with, as well as being very modern and fresh. I just want people to give it a listen.

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-haley-reinhart-wants-music-fans/page-3/#ixzz1qdJH2z92

Quote:We don’t usually hear about singers coming off of Idol having a lot of creative control initially, but it seems like you have taken your project by the reins. How did you approach making this record with your recording team?

Starting off with tour, I knew in my heart that for me to be all over this project, which is the biggest thing of my life, having an album, being given this opportunity, I didn’t want to waste it or let it slip beneath me to do other written material. I wanted to be completely hands on with the process, and it went really well. I’m lucky to say that they let me wait until after the tour, and as soon as I got off tour and moved to L.A. and hopped right into the writing process. I flew all over the city and did a lot of speed dating for about three months and wrote the whole album – wrote about 30 songs in that period of time. It went really smooth.

Quote:When you’re starting to brainstorm a new song, do you usually start with the lyrics or the melody?

First and foremost, I like to fill out what I’m going to be talking about. I like telling stories. I think words are just as important as the melody, but they need to make sense and they need to have substance to them. They need depth.

Melodically, melodies always come very, very easy to me. Words do as well, I’ve been writing poetry since I was really young, but at the same time when you’re co-writing, the lyrics really need to come from both ends. Melody-wise, my melodies pretty much stuck through with all the material, because it just comes to me really quickly. I probably owe that to The Beatles and a lot of the great musical geniuses that I grew up listening to.

Quote:Since your lyrics are really important to you, are you drawn to certain topics or do you just go with whatever comes to mind in the studio?

I like to have a direction, they need to make sense. So in order for them to make sense, we have to create the story that’s going on. When I walk in, I always have an idea and the more and more that I got into the process, I’m like, “Alright, I want to talk about this story about a girl and boy who are best friends. I’m in love with this guy, and I want to make him see that I’ve always been here for him. And any flaws that he thinks he has, I think they’re beautiful,” and we’d write a whole song about it. That one I did with busbee, called “What You Don’t Know,” it’s fun, you know. I like songs that take you on a journey and take you somewhere else and really sink your teeth into it.

Quote:You started out your performance in this giant birdcage, and I was wondering where the idea for that came from?

Most of the times with the whole album and the creative process, and the video and everything like that, all my ideas have been there. But this one, there’s been so much going on and Idol’s just been one of the things going down. And it’s so important, so we got Wade Robson to come in, creative director, and he actually had this idea for the birdcage. And I’m all about vision, so we made it happen. It’s huge, it weighed tons! It was really cool to actually see it in person and make it come to life.

Quote:"Walking On Heaven" is most likely a co-write with Aimee Proal and Mike Elizondo. (Based on the fact Aimee has told us she has 2 tracks on the album and a tweet from Aimee a while back which hinted a title with Heaven).