Getting real with Oliver Tree — Transcript

Oliver Tree discusses his artistic persona, vulnerability in music, and the balance between character and authenticity in this deep interview.

Key Takeaways

  • Oliver Tree’s character is an exaggerated, authentic reflection of himself designed to stand out.
  • His music reveals a more vulnerable and genuine side than his visual persona suggests.
  • Artistic success often involves trial, error, and finding new approaches rather than repeating the same methods.
  • Juxtaposition and contrast are central to Oliver’s creative expression and message.
  • Mental health and emotional honesty are important themes in his work and life.

Summary

  • Oliver Tree explains the difference between his real self and his exaggerated character.
  • He describes the origins and symbolism behind his unique costume and persona.
  • The interview explores the juxtaposition between his visual image and the vulnerability in his music.
  • Oliver shares his artistic philosophy of using contrast and extremes to reflect society.
  • He discusses the challenges and failures faced on his creative journey.
  • The concept of 'quantum leap' is used to describe his approach to finding new ways to succeed.
  • Oliver reflects on themes of death, hardship, and emotional release through art.
  • The interview touches on the importance of therapy and mental health.
  • He talks about the ongoing evolution of his career, including new music and touring plans.
  • Oliver emphasizes the balance between entertainment, authenticity, and creative expression.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
I still play a character. I'm just not a character right now. I'm a real person.
00:05
Speaker A
I'm on stage playing for 20 thousand people. I'm gonna be a character for sure.
00:09
Speaker A
I don't really need it to always be one way or the other. There's room for both to exist.
00:18
Speaker A
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Visit betterhelp.com/padilla because sometimes existing is exhausting. And if you want to watch an extended version of this interview because it— it is a deep one— click the join button down below to become a member just like all these amazing people.
00:34
Speaker A
Anyway— back to Oliver Tree. Hello, Oliver Tree! - Hello! - Hello, how are you doing?
00:39
Speaker A
- Doing good, how are you? - Good. I feel like we're seeing a very different side of you today.
00:43
Speaker A
- The costume off? - The costume off. The character is gone. How does it feel sitting here on camera being genuine, though, not being your character?
00:52
Speaker A
- I feel like, um— it's not that big of a deal because this is how I talk to people all the time.
00:58
Speaker A
- Yeah. - So, it's just normal. The other thing is more like, "Oh, I have to prepare." This is a lot easier.
01:03
Speaker A
Pretty much do no prep. Don't have to bring— - Do you— Oh, dude, I'll do interviews where I film the interview with my friend asking me questions that I think they could ask and I usually try to run the interview where I give them the questions to ask me.
01:14
Speaker A
Sometimes I'll bring out— When I did Steve-O's thing, I interviewed him and had 100 questions waiting for him.
01:19
Speaker A
So, this is very easy. It makes my life a lot easier. - You kind of over-prepare.
01:23
Speaker A
- I do because I want to make it something special and I have to get all these props and these things and it's like, "Jesus." [chuffs] Could have just shown up with a t-shirt.
01:31
Speaker A
- When I first started doing these interviews, I would do like 40 hours of research on the guest.
01:35
Speaker A
- And, what, you did one hour on me? - Yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it, you know?
01:39
Speaker A
I pretty much got through the whole catalog that quick. Found some nude pics in there, don't know how that came up.
01:44
Speaker A
- Is it on my Spotify? - It was on the Spotify, yeah. - My manager did that.
01:47
Speaker A
He's my old manager, I fired him. - Yeah, yeah. He should be fired because they didn't look that glamorous.
01:55
Speaker A
- Yeah. - Yeah. - I was eating good. - Yeah, I mean you gained all this success and popularity as a character, as Oliver Tree, the character, the persona.
02:05
Speaker A
Can you describe what that character was like? I mean— - I feel like it was myself and authentic to me but turned up to I want to say an 11, but it's probably more like a 22 or something like that
02:17
Speaker A
but just taking everything that was true about my life but then putting it into overdrive, you know?
02:23
Speaker A
So— The haircut was the haircut I had my whole life. I was too scared to get any other haircut.
02:27
Speaker A
The jacket was something I stole from my mom and my mom and my dad would wear it in the 80s, like I have pictures of them skiing with it.
02:34
Speaker A
It's almost like a family relic. The pants are the pants I always wanted. The socks and sandals, those are the shoes that were the most goony shoes.
02:42
Speaker A
The glasses were like the little glasses I would wear as a kid that made me feel cool, so it was kind of taking all of the things that really was the most ridiculous version of myself and putting it into one place.
02:53
Speaker A
So, it came out of necessity. I had my first opportunity to be in a music video where I would be on MTV and I was like, "How do I want to present myself?
03:02
Speaker A
Do I want to try to sell sex and blend in with everybody or do I want to try to stick out like a sore thumb and do something different?" For me as an artist, it didn't feel right to use sexual attraction as my main device
03:16
Speaker A
to try to get people to get behind my art. I was just really turned off by that and I decided, "Hey, I'm gonna go the route of trying to look as ugly as possible," hence this beautiful, ugly haircut that I have.
03:27
Speaker A
- It worked, you turned yourself into a meme. - Yeah, and I can still make more memes but realistically there's more than just the meme, you know?
03:33
Speaker A
- I kind of thought that your music would be shallow before I listened to it just because I've just seen images— I've seen different clips, you know?
03:42
Speaker A
I haven't seen any actual— I didn't sit down and listen to a full song until much later and when I listened to your music, I was like, "Oh, shit." This is deep, this is vulnerable, this is tapping into a place of genuine self-expression.
03:56
Speaker A
There is that creative art side. I can see it matches the visuals to a certain degree, but it's so much more vulnerable and genuine than what I was seeing.
04:05
Speaker A
- Right. I think in the music you can see the real guy and get a sense of who I am much more but then the image was just the exact opposite and for me that was actually fun because I'm so into the idea of juxtaposition,
04:16
Speaker A
taking things that don't go together and trying to find ways for them to fit because in art, there are only so many songs that can get made.
04:23
Speaker A
There are only so many lyrics and chord progressions that work in a pop context and just in general so everything's played out and pretty much already been done.
04:30
Speaker A
I've found as an artist that one of the ways you can do new things is by meshing together things that probably shouldn't go together.
04:38
Speaker A
When you look at my project, it's at the core a juxtaposition. - What was the goal with the character?
04:44
Speaker A
Was the goal to create that mask to say, "This is totally different than the sound," it's that juxtaposition?
04:51
Speaker A
Was it a way for you to kind of— give something else for people to focus on while you were able to express that vulnerable side?
05:01
Speaker A
- That's a good question. I think the answer ultimately is that as an artist, my job is to put up a mirror in front of society.
05:08
Speaker A
To show just how ridiculous and how stupid things have gotten, I kind of had set that mirror up to show society, "Hey— This is an extreme version of where we're at right now." - So when you fully dove in with the character,
05:20
Speaker A
it was really to grab attention and have them then pay attention to the lyrics and— - Who's "they?" - I guess audiences?
05:26
Speaker A
- Right. Yeah, it was just a way to see, like— For me, I think it also stemmed from I spent many years of my life with another project and I tried to take myself so seriously and I was like,
05:39
Speaker A
"Oh, my god, why won't anyone take me seriously as an artist? This is so—ugh," just mad at the world and trying this angle and I think like— When you're focused in, hyperfocused on trying to do something and it's not working,
05:52
Speaker A
you have to look and find another exit or entrance in so it's like— Are you familiar with the idea of quantum leap?
06:01
Speaker A
- Tell me about it. - I'm not super well-versed but a friend gave me a book.
06:04
Speaker A
I don't read books, I was like, "Bro, I'm not gonna read this." He was like, "You gotta read this, it's only 40 pages." I was like, "I'd like to say I'm going to but I'm not," but I did read the first two pages.
06:12
Speaker A
- Okay. You got enough? You got enough from that? [laughs] - The first two pages talk about a fly trying to get out of a room.
06:20
Speaker A
It's stuck in this room and it's at this window and it's hitting the wall.
06:24
Speaker A
[buzzes] The same result time after time. The idea of the quantum leap is not necessarily to figure out how to get through the window but to find another entrance or exit of that room.
06:35
Speaker A
So if the fly goes around and finds there's a door or another way out— For me, the way I look at it is the idea of entertainment is 360, it's a circle, so trying to find these different ways to penetrate into the center
06:50
Speaker A
to try to get to whatever the goal is. For me, every time I try something, I'm trying a slightly different angle and I keep trying to go so it's like, "This didn't work so I'm gonna try and go this way or this way,"
07:01
Speaker A
and that's why my style is very eclectic 'cause I'm just constantly one failure after another trying to figure out how to break into the place I want to get and how to get there.
07:11
Speaker A
It's never there, it's never close, but there are certain times when in the reaching for the impossible, you reach the impossible.
07:18
Speaker A
Very few, it happens very rarely and I
07:23
Speaker A
I use the word "failure," and not in a negative way. For me, everything is a failure unless it's those one or two things that bring life-changing success but I don't have a negative connotation around the idea of failure.
07:35
Speaker A
It isn't bad. For me, the biggest part of success is failure. That's how you get to success.
07:40
Speaker A
- So it was to get to the goal. Have you put words to what that goal is?
07:45
Speaker A
- For me, the goal is to inspire as many people as I can while I'm alive.
07:50
Speaker A
So that's why there's the need of the shift like, "Okay, how I present myself isn't serving me to make the greatest impact." If I'm just gonna always be that, people— There's gonna be a large margin of people who are always off-put by that
08:02
Speaker A
so the greatest inspiration I can make as a human and harness is not gonna be able to be reached if I'm just stuck in that character which is very one-dimensional, you know?
08:11
Speaker A
It only shows a small part of my range especially if I'm here doing my interview with you and now what, I'm gonna put you in a headlock and we're gonna fight and that's every interview I do for the rest of my life?
08:19
Speaker A
I kind of did that and got it out of my system and there's still room for me to go back to that depending on the right setting for that.
08:25
Speaker A
- How would you know if you reached that goal, or is there ever going to be a time where you're satisfied and you're like— "That goal has been reached?" - The goal won't ever be reached, but that's not the reason why I do it.
08:37
Speaker A
The reason why I do it is because I have to do it and I'll do that 'til I die.
08:40
Speaker A
- There's just a drive within you that you can't escape? - It's just like, you know— Why do you drink water, why do you eat?
08:46
Speaker A
It's just part of our survival. For me, to survive is to create and I thought about this recently.
08:53
Speaker A
Something bad happened to me and I was really bummed and I thought about music, for example, and music is the one thing that's always there for me.
09:00
Speaker A
Music has kept me alive, realistically. - Mmm. One thing that I noticed in your music videos is this imagery of you falling to your death.
09:10
Speaker A
Is there anywhere that that comes from? Does that represent anything? I— In my childhood, I had a lot of nightmares where I was always falling to my death and I wake up before I hit the ground.
09:21
Speaker A
Falling off the slide— - Your body jolts, too? Yeah, I'd wake up. - I get those still.
09:24
Speaker A
- I feel like that imagery, there's something about it that's eerie but nostalgic at the same time.
09:30
Speaker A
I don't know, is this a common thing that— - I've explored death a lot, especially in the first album.
09:35
Speaker A
I explored death heavily because I think ultimately that that's why people go to religion and a lot of different things is what happens after life.
09:44
Speaker A
As an artist, it's something that I ponder and to process the thoughts, especially because I lost people in my life when I was younger and it was pretty heavy-duty for me, that was always a big thing, like, "What happens after life,"
09:59
Speaker A
and almost in a way preparing myself for my own death. So kind of putting myself into those scenarios and kind of living it so that I can experience it and process it so that it's not such a big deal
10:11
Speaker A
'cause death is something that especially in the West we don't really know how to talk about it and it's something we sweep under the rug and it's like, "Well— Someone died and we go to the funeral and then let's not talk about it too much," you know?
10:24
Speaker A
- It's scary. - Yeah, "Let's remember the good memories, but let's not talk about the death side." In the East and certain religions like Buddhism, they're spending their life almost training for death.
10:36
Speaker A
How do we try to skyrocket the farthest we can when we pass and how do we make the next life better?
10:42
Speaker A
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10:52
Speaker A
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11:02
Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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11:29
Speaker A
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11:46
Speaker A
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11:51
Speaker A
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11:59
Speaker A
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12:05
Speaker A
As I'm sure many of you know by now, I've been a huge proponent of therapy since I started going about six years ago.
12:09
Speaker A
It's been hugely helpful in giving me some empathy to understand my past self which has in turn allowed me to better understand my current self.
12:17
Speaker A
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Speaker A
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12:28
Speaker A
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12:34
Speaker A
Visit betterhelp.com/padilla to get 10% off your first month. Now, back to the world of Oliver Tree.
12:45
Speaker A
You mentioned that you've dealt with a lot of death and hardship in your life.
12:50
Speaker A
Is that— You mentioned that you're sober, that you used to have all those addictions— I don't know if you're fully sober.
12:57
Speaker A
- I am fully sober. - Nice. - I do drink coffee, but— - Damn.
13:00
Speaker A
- That's it. - That's pushing it. - I know. But yeah, I think weed has been approaching three years— - Mmm.
13:09
Speaker A
- Alcohol two years. Tobacco was the hardest one for me to cut off. That was, um— I would say it's been like ten months or something, but— I mean, hard drugs and everything, it's been a few years as well, maybe four.
13:26
Speaker A
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get off substance. For me, I struggle with it and, um— I've done every drug under the sun.
13:35
Speaker A
- Were you numbing? - Yeah, for sure. I started getting into drugs after my cousin passed away and I was like, "I could die at any moment, what else does this life have to offer?" I think that was my excuse of trying to numb the pain of that
13:47
Speaker A
Before that, my friends were like, "We're gonna smoke weed," and I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we're definitely not," and they would go out and smoke without me.
13:55
Speaker A
I was raised with the right ideals, but we have to go down those paths ourselves and someone could say, "Don't do that," but you kind of have to learn that on your own.
14:05
Speaker A
Also, yeah, touching on the death thing— I had enough experience where I did enough drugs and I was kicked out of my parents' house in high school and they threw all my clothes out and they threw all my DJ gear.
14:18
Speaker A
I used to be a dubstep DJ back in the day. - Oh, hell yeah, with Skrillex, right?
14:21
Speaker A
- Yeah, I played with Skrillex in high school. It was one of those things where even in that scene you're around all these people that are basically zombies that are dilapidating themselves.
14:29
Speaker A
Each time you see them, they get more decrepit. They're like— [moans] tripping out. You're kind of just like, "What am I contributing with this?" Once I— There's a story and I won't get into it, but I had a rebirth at Burning Man where I went on a family vacation
14:44
Speaker A
and I ended up taking way too much acid and a lot of other drugs as well and I was running naked through the desert and I watched my funeral play out and my death and— I went to my own funeral and these things played a huge factor in my storytelling with death
15:02
Speaker A
but ultimately I'm working on other things as well and death is so intertwined with that because I'm still trying to understand my experience with what I've seen and what I've seen through those trips and being able to let that play out through my life
15:17
Speaker A
'cause it's such a profound thing. I guess we're always just preparing for that moment.
15:22
Speaker A
- What did seeing your own funeral,—your own death—teach you? - Well, the best part of that story was I woke up the next day and I was alive and I got to say, "Oh, my god, I'm alive!" My body was covered in cuts, my head was—
15:38
Speaker A
I was trying to pull my head open to pull my brain out of my head.
15:41
Speaker A
- Oh, [bleep]. - My head was warped and my whole body was covered in cuts from my feet to my face.
15:47
Speaker A
That alone was something that made me rethink everything. I'm like, "No [bleep] way, I get to be alive again?
15:53
Speaker A
I get another shot at being a human?" That was where I really shifted all my attention and energy over to music and that's why for me music is like a religion.
16:03
Speaker A
It saved me in those moments of darkness, in those moments where I had nothing and it was that one friend that was there for me that could always lift me up and gave me something to harness that energy,
16:14
Speaker A
yield that negative energy that wanted to go in and just pretty much just self-harm myself but instead pouring it into something that I could be able to share with others.
16:25
Speaker A
- You mentioned that music, creating music has saved you, saved your life. It's put— It's allowed you to put your energy towards something.
16:32
Speaker A
One thing I feel like a lot of people don't talk about is that in the creative expression and process, you are releasing emotions that would otherwise be trapped within you.
16:43
Speaker A
Can you talk about the process of putting these emotions out instead of holding them in?
16:47
Speaker A
- So the greatest part of making art is the idea that you can be filled with so much negative energy and feel so much pain and suffering—which every human does— and you can harness all of that and create something out of seemingly thin air
17:02
Speaker A
and turn all of that negative energy that's bottled up inside you into something beautiful that makes you want to move and dance and cry.
17:08
Speaker A
When I make music, by the end of the night when I've finished the song, I'm literally just like, "Oh, my god, play it again," and I'll listen to it like 20 times.
17:18
Speaker A
I'll listen to it on the ride home and when I get to bed, I'll lay in bed and listen to it and if it's really good, I'll know because the next day I'll wake up and start listening to it again.
17:27
Speaker A
Pretty much that's the experience is that I make it for myself exactly where I'm at at that point and that moment in time and it's made to my exact taste that I love in this moment and the suffering and pain I'm going through.
17:39
Speaker A
We're not that unique it turns out. We think, "Oh, man, my problems are so big and everyone is living such a different life," but we aren't very different.
17:48
Speaker A
We all are happy, we're sad, we're mad, we eat food, we have sex, we go to the bathroom— It's not that complicated, - If we're lucky.
17:57
Speaker A
you know? - Yeah. Whatever you're going through, there's billions of other people. Every single person has felt those feelings.
18:03
Speaker A
Obviously, there's unique anomalies and people who are dealing with other things and not to say we're all exactly the same, but we're not that complex.
18:11
Speaker A
Whatever you're going through, there's a very high chance that most people are also maybe not going through it that moment but have gone or will go through it.
18:19
Speaker A
That art piece will be relatable to them at one point in their life. - That point that you made about putting all of your energy— whatever pain, suffering, emotion you're feeling in that moment— translating it into a song, into sound waves, into something that's not even physically there
18:34
Speaker A
but it completely transforms the way that you feel and changes that emotion, that pain, that suffering into something that you can feel something positive from, you can dance to it, you can connect with it in a way where it changed that form from something negative.
18:50
Speaker A
That energy is now not negative, it's something that feels positive. I think that's just so interesting.
18:57
Speaker A
I think that is the power of art and that is why so many people connect with music, with— You have lyrics that are dark that express the pain you're going through, but yet it's almost addictive to listen to it, you know?
19:12
Speaker A
I have not been able to get your song "Miss You" out of my head for the past two weeks and you have lyrics that are like, "Don't fret/ I don't ever want to see you/ And I never want to miss you again/
19:22
Speaker A
One thing/ When you're angry, you're a jerk/ And then you treat me like I'm worth nothing." You have these lyrics that are coming from— - Are you reading that?
19:30
Speaker A
He's reading it off the thing! - Absolutely not! - That is straight from my head!
19:34
Speaker A
- You thought you could get away with it! - That is straight from my head, I would never read lyrics behind your head that I put behind you!
19:38
Speaker A
[crew laughs] Never! So those lyrics, they're painful, you know? If you just break it down to just the words, if I were to read that in a letter that someone gave me, I'd be like, "damn this person is— was feeling such pain."
19:51
Speaker A
I'm sure you remember to some degree the pain that you felt when writing those lyrics, but you changed it into something that's catchy that people get behind, that they— That's addictive to listen to and dance to.
20:02
Speaker A
- I think about that often. It's about harnessing energy and yielding as much of it as possible and pushing it into something else 'cause it's the time when you need the music the most.
20:11
Speaker A
It's like— I find, too, when I would be falling in love— and I've fallen in love many times throughout my life, I think five or six times now.
20:19
Speaker A
Realistically, when you're feeling in love, You don't feel the need to create as much.
20:25
Speaker A
Not that you can't but it's more like, "Oh, man, life's so good," but when you really need it the most is when you're going through the darkness.
20:32
Speaker A
That's the thing - That's true. that leads you to the light. It's like— I've found that so much more of my music is made during those darker periods to help me get out of the suffering, to help me escape.
20:40
Speaker A
- It helps you to release that negative energy when you're not necessarily trying to release the positive in-love feelings.
20:46
Speaker A
- And the one thing I will say on that is I feel like people get a little bit more out of someone's songs that are suffering because they might be suffering more, you know?
20:57
Speaker A
You're in love, you already feel great. You could have a song play that helps reflect that but when you're really in a dark place, those are the people who need to be lifted up the most.
21:04
Speaker A
- It's like you need it, you need the music. - That's where— And that's why you always get the messages, like— I get so many messages of people being like, "You saved my life, this music was the thing that got me out of this darkness,"
21:15
Speaker A
and, you know, whether that's true or not is out of the conversation. You can tell in general that people are suffering and they are lifted up by those darker songs more than the ones like, "Oh, I'm so in love, baby, perfect,"
21:29
Speaker A
and it's like "Cool, we're already in that good mood if we're in that state of mind," but when you're in the darkness is when you need to be having someone lift you up.
21:38
Speaker A
Making art in general, you're putting yourself out there, you know? People are gonna shit on you no matter what.
21:44
Speaker A
[bleep] 'em. [Anthony giggles] Who cares, you know? People are gonna judge you in life, and I find it's much easier to just be able to take a deep breath [inhales] and remind yourself who you are, what you do, what you stand for, what you live for
21:57
Speaker A
in that moment or constantly changing and evolving and growing. People don't resonate with that version of you at that moment?
22:04
Speaker A
[bleep] 'em. - Mhmm. - You can evolve and change and devolve as well in the case of your buddy Ian.
22:11
Speaker A
[Anthony laughs] - Total devolution— De-evolution? Devolution? - Wait, are you guys friends still? - Yeah, we— I don't know if you heard the news, we bought Smosh back.
22:22
Speaker A
- I thought it was a lie! [both scream] - Are you [bleep] kidding me?!
22:25
Speaker A
[crew laughs] Are you kidding me? - We're back, dude! It's crazy. I didn't know if it was true.
22:30
Speaker A
- You're gonna be in a video soon with us— [crew laughs] Right? - I'm gonna be in a video?
22:33
Speaker A
- Are you not? We were pitching it. - What the— Let's go! [Anthony and crew laugh] - We pitched it to you, I thought you said you were down!
22:39
Speaker A
- I'm in, let's do it. Let's do it right now! - We've got the set downstairs, let's go!
22:43
Speaker A
- I'm ready. [Anthony laughs] - You didn't know that shit? - No, I did, I'm [bleep] with you.
22:47
Speaker A
[crew laughs] - Look at this character acting. Look at this character. - No, no— - I mean, c'mon, I was— That was believable?
22:54
Speaker A
[laughs] - A little bit. - Okay. - A little bit. - Well, I'm trying— I tried to make— That was the least— I mean— I'm sorry.
23:03
Speaker A
- But the new album— You gave me a preview of the new album which just dropped and it's— It seems like it's coming from a lot more of a— There's some romance in there, there's some— there's some positive, in-love lyrics in there.
23:16
Speaker A
- Right, and that's the thing. I always would be falling in love and would forget to document it.
23:20
Speaker A
This time around, I was like, "I gotta capture some of this," because this moment comes and goes and if I don't catch this right now, especially when it's blooming at the earlier phases of it, that's when it's the most intense as far as the realization and—
23:34
Speaker A
I feel like every time we fall in love, it feels like we're falling in love for the first time again.
23:39
Speaker A
It's so powerful. It's as if you've never fallen in love. I was like, "Wow, I really need to document it this time," and not go out of my way to do it but I just made sure, "Hey, I'm gonna go a little extra right now and try to—
23:52
Speaker A
try to capture this," because it's always the other way around where I'm like, "Oh, man, I feel so great and I'm gonna enjoy this," and then I forget to document it and then I'm like, "oh, here I am picking up the pieces,"
24:03
Speaker A
and I'm trying to bring myself back up after falling down so lowly after my heart's been broken or it didn't work out.
24:12
Speaker A
- Yeah, so it's difficult for you to remember to take those snapshots? - This time, I said, "Hey, I'm gonna take a photo." - Uh-huh.
24:19
Speaker A
- I want to capture it for once. I always have all these sad songs.
24:23
Speaker A
- Yeah. - When will I get to make a happy one? - What's something you wish you had known when you first got started?
24:27
Speaker A
- Well, I think that we live with this idea that we are gonna get there and we will arrive, but the thing is, whenever you are doing a job like that, the bar just keeps going further and further away
24:40
Speaker A
so no matter what, no matter where you go— My manager's been talking, like, [rubs hands together] "When are we gonna do it?
24:47
Speaker A
Next year are we gonna finally get it?" Then we're like, "Next year," and that's every year.
24:52
Speaker A
Even when we get to the thing we were hoping to get to, it's like, "Next year it's gonna get good, just wait til next year." It's kind of this thing where at a certain point, you stop talking about it 'cause you're like,
25:03
Speaker A
"Next year is never coming." This is it, it's always like, "Let's just enjoy this." What happens then is you reach a certain point— and I've gotten a little taste of this point— you hit a certain point in your life where you're like,
25:13
Speaker A
"That was the golden part, that was the good stuff. I wish we could've just soaked it up more," because now the pressure is even bigger and now there's much more risk and it just feels like more of a job.
25:26
Speaker A
I think that in general being really— Enjoying the moments as they happen and not having this idea that it's gonna arrive 'cause there is no arrival.
25:35
Speaker A
I think when you die, that's the arrival. - What are you looking forward to most given the fact that you know that it's not reaching that goal?
25:42
Speaker A
You have this album you just dropped, you're about to go on a worldwide tour— - I'm excited to explore and meet new people.
25:51
Speaker A
I'm excited to make the next album. I'm excited to make some of these feature films 'cause for me, the actual process of making the art is far more exciting than the end result.
26:06
Speaker A
The journey of making it and the process of it is the high, so for me, I'm coming to terms with trying to take more moments to soak it up and enjoy it.
26:16
Speaker A
Just be there, be present. It's gonna be over shortly. - Very shortly. - Just like this interview.
26:23
Speaker A
[Captions by Davy Gerichten] Is it literally a bowl? - Yeah. Well, it's a— "Chili bowl" is the term.
26:28
Speaker A
- Oh, okay. - We put the bowl on— It's bigger than a cereal bowl because my head is very large.
26:32
Speaker A
It's abnormally sized, so— - Right. - I have a pretty big head to begin with.
26:36
Speaker A
- Like just enough for chili. - Yeah, basically we use a chili bowl and we put it on and the back side is obviously not— This is the "bullet," the bowl-cut mullet.
26:44
Speaker A
- "Bullet." - You know, party 360. - Is that— - Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
Topics:Oliver TreeSmosh Alikemusic interviewartist personacreative processvulnerabilitymental healthBetterHelpmusic careerartistic expression

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Oliver Tree use a character in his music career?

Oliver uses a character as an exaggerated, authentic reflection of himself to stand out and create a visual contrast to his vulnerable music, serving as a social mirror.

How does Oliver Tree describe the relationship between his music and his persona?

He explains that his music reveals the real, vulnerable side of himself, while his persona is an over-the-top, ridiculous version designed to create juxtaposition and attract attention.

What is the 'quantum leap' concept Oliver mentions in relation to his career?

The quantum leap concept refers to finding new ways or entrances to achieve success rather than repeating the same failed attempts, reflecting his eclectic and persistent approach to breaking into the industry.

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