IN DEMAND
Daniel Nigro vividly recalls the moment his obsession with pop music
started. While in sixth grade, he heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the
first time; soon after, he and his friends made their own music video to the
Nirvana hit using an attraction at Adventureland in Farmingdale, N.Y. “Even
making a fake music video, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I want to be playing for
people,’ ” he recalls. But after a decade leading the indie-rock act As Tall
As Lions, which disbanded in 2010, he realized, “I’m actually not that good”
as a frontman, “and also don’t really enjoy it.” Later that year, Nigro joined
some pop songwriting sessions while visiting a friend in Los Angeles: “It was
the first time in years that I had fallen in love with making music again,” he
says. Nigro spent those early days writing with his childhood friend Justin
Raisen and Ariel Rechtshaid, and has since landed credits with Carly Rae
Jepsen, FINNEAS and, most recently, Olivia Rodrigo. Thanks to Rodrigo’s
“Drivers License,” Nigro charted his first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and
has discovered that his biggest asset is “helping artists who have a lot to say
navigate their sonic landscapes.” —LYNDSEY HAVENS
While working on
the former Chairlift
singer’s 2019 solo
debut, Pang, Nigro
says, “She literally
came into the room
and said, ‘I want to write a song called
“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” ’
and we were just like, ‘Let’s go.’ ” The
project was shaping up to be moodier
than Polachek’s previous output, which
motivated them, along with co-writer
Teddy Geiger, to create something a bit
more fun. “I felt there was this moment
where we were like, ‘Can we not make
something heavy?’ ” recalls Nigro.
“SO HOT YOU’RE HURTING
MY FEELINGS”
Caroline PolachekThe same friend who
turned Nigro on to
Conan Gray, A&R rep
Max Wang, also intro-
duced him to Claud,
a singer-songwriter
signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ label, Saddest
Factory. Nigro says that the first day they
were scheduled to meet and write in early
2020 he didn’t feel creative — and was
nervous he wouldn’t be helpful. “But they
came in and said, ‘I have this idea to write a
song called “Soft Spot.” ’ ” All of a sudden,
it just flowed out, and I felt relieved that
they had had the spark of inspiration, be-
cause I wasn’t going to come up with one.”“SOFT SPOT”
ClaudNigro has always
gravitated toward
“music you listen
to by yourself,”
which informed
the process of
“Heather,” the somber ode to unrequited
love on Conan Gray’s 2020 debut
album, Kid Krow. “The vision was to
keep it as cinematic as possible and also
to keep the vocal almost uncomfortably
in your face,” he says. Since the track
wasn’t going to be worked as a single,
“we just did whatever we wanted to
do,” he adds, including tacking on a
25-second acoustic intro.“HEATHER”
Conan GrayNigro says he and Ro-
drigo share the same
impulse to endlessly
tinker with a track,
“so we constantly
were questioning
everything about [“Drivers License”],” from
whether the drums come in too late (they
don’t arrive until the bridge) to having
Rodrigo resing the vocals using different
techniques, “going back-and-forth to see
what the right emotion should be.” The
song has now topped the Hot 100 for five
weeks and counting, with Nigro admitting:
“I don’t think our expectations were even
one-20th of where it is.”“DRIVERS LICENSE”
Olivia Rodrigo40 BILLBOARD • FEBRUARY 20, 2021
NIGRO:^ AUBREY^ DEVIN.^ RO
DRIGO:^ FRAZER^ HARRISON/GETTY^ IMAGES.^GRAY,^ POLACHEK:^ AMY^ SUSSMAN/GETTY^ IMAGES.^ CLAUD:^ ANGELA^ RICCIARDI.^ CELESTE:^ ELIZAVETA^ PORODINA.DANIEL NIGRO
SONGWRITER-PRODUCERONE TO WATCHCeleste
FROM Brighton, England
AGE 26
LABEL Polydor (United
Kingdom)/Interscope (United
States)
FOUNDATION Celeste’s musi-
cal education started when she
was 3, sitting in the back seat
of her grandfather’s car listen-
ing to Aretha Franklin, Billie
Holiday and Nina Simone. (She
was particularly impressed by
Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You.”)But growing up, Celeste re-
sisted formal training. “As soon
as there was a heavy hand
from music teachers, I was put
off by it,” she says. “I fought
against doing music, but it
always came back.” In college,
she formed a band with school
friends and landed her first gig
at a local venue, with each of
them earning “a tenner” (about
$14 U.S.). “It felt like a lot of
money when we were 16.”
DISCOVERY While Celeste
— whose manager Duncan
Ellis secured her recording
contracts in 2018 — won the2020 BRIT Awards’ Rising Star
honor (past winners include
Adele, Florence + The Machine
and Sam Smith), U.S. audiences
are discovering the soul singer
through high-profile synchs in
TV and film. She has scored
placements in Grey’s Anatomy,
Disney/Pixar’s Soul, Netflix’s
Bridgerton and, most notably,
Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the
Chicago 7, for which Celeste
earned a Golden Globe nomi-
nation for best original song
(“Hear My Voice”). “Her music
is cinematic, so when cut to
picture, it helps elevate thevisuals,” says Brigitte Green, vp
film and TV creative licensing
at Interscope.
FUTURE On Jan. 29, Celeste
released her first album, Not
Your Muse — and later cel-
ebrated its No. 1 debut on the
Official U.K. Albums chart with
her boyfriend and cake while
in lockdown in their London
flat. Now, she’s already writing
her next album with hopes of
touring in 2022. “I’ve got the
time and literally can’t leave the
country,” she says, “so I may as
well get on with it.”
—MIA NAZARENO