Why Don’t We’s Corbyn Besson has grown and matured, ditching the manufactured image he once knew in favor of a more authentic identity. No longer afraid of change, he embraces freedom and risk in his debut solo EP, ‘HEAD FIRST.’

Stream: ‘HEAD FIRST’ – Corbyn Besson

Corbyn Besson has always known his way around a stage, yet he finds himself navigating the industry with a fresh set of eyes.

As a member of the beloved boy band, Why Don’t We, he spent years performing sold out shows to a loyal fanbase. While the group had a successful run, they eventually disbanded, leaving fans and the members themselves asking one question: What comes next?

Why Don’t We’s disbandment wasn’t the end of Corbyn Besson’s journey; instead, it proved the beginning of his true musical exploration. Besson’s path felt clear: To make music for the fans. As he began this new step in his career, he realized his intentions and heart didn’t align. He felt responsible to keep up with the sound he was known for. It seemed like the best route to take, until the pop tunes he knew best didn’t feel how they used to. This creative dilemma caused him to throw everything out the window. It wasn’t easy, but the hardest steps are often the most rewarding. Surrendering fully to the process was freeing and allowed him to look at music in ways he hadn’t before. Every risk felt like a discovery until the direction seemed clear: A fuse of his two favorite genres, R&B and pop.

“In the last year I really felt the growing pains of trying to find my identity as an artist and create something up to par with my career to this point,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “For a long time I was trying to figure out what people wanted to hear from me, but towards the end of last year I started asking myself what I really wanted to put out into the world. It was the first time I’d seriously asked myself that question, and it felt like a revelation.”

“Tied Up” marked the beginning of this new era, the first of three singles the artist released off his debut solo EP, HEAD FIRST. The most recent and notable of the singles is “Blink” (feat. TZUYU), which immediately caught the public eye. From the surprising collab, danceability, and catchy hooks: fans couldn’t get enough. Besson’s creative vision and versatility were spotlighted in this groovy single that put him back on the map.

“It’s crazy to see the reaction to ‘Blink,’ because I knew the day we wrote it that it was special,” says Besson. “It’s one of those songs that came together so easily, almost like it already wanted to exist and we were just the vessel to make it happen.”

While half of the EP was released as singles, the other half is out now and ready for the world to hear. Dive in HEAD FIRST and channel your inner Corbyn while taking your first listen: Be open to change, ready to dance, and don’t be afraid to take risks.

Atwood Magazine recently caught up with Corbyn Besson about the transition from boy band to solo artist – the ups, the downs, and the discoveries he’s made along the way.

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:: stream/purchase HEAD FIRST here ::

:: connect with Corbyn Besson here ::

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Stream: ‘Blink’ – Corbyn Besson ft. TZUYU

A CONVERSATION WITH CORBYN BESSON

Corbyn Besson: This is a good question. I think the biggest difference between who I am now, there’s a couple big differences, but who I am now versus who I was in the group. Quite some time has passed, so I feel like I’ve just grown up and matured a lot. I feel like my music taste has evolved quite a bit. I think musically my stuff leans a little bit more R&B than I think some of the bands music did. And I think my fans can kind of continue to expect that from me. I love R&B music so much and so I’m kind of trying to lean into that with my own stuff. I also just think some of the topics of conversation are a bit more grown. I feel like I’ve really kind of come into my own over the past couple years. While like trying to figure out who I was, outside of being a part of something that was kind of bigger than I was by myself. So, yeah, I really found myself through this music. And I think my fans will be able to hear that when they listen to my project.

Corbyn Besson: I listen to a bunch of SZA, I love her so much. I listen to Daniel Caesar. Me and some of my best friends back home saw him live back in 2017. He was playing a show for like 250 people in D.C. And shortly after that, he dropped like, might’ve been before when he dropped like Japanese denim and some of those records from that project. He kind of exploded after that. But yeah, Daniel Caesar, Justin Timberlake is a huge influence of mine. Some of his older stuff I love a lot, like FutureSex/LoveSounds, is one of my favorite albums ever. I listen to a lot of Justin Bieber. I mean, he’s like the classic, you know, I grew up on Bieber and I’m assuming you might have too. Yeah, those are some of the big ones.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, so much. I learned so much being in that group. I learned so much about music, people, the world, and business. And also just learned so much about myself and what I was capable of as a person. I think all of those lessons have carried over and continue to evolve. I feel like every day I’m learning something new. I think that’s like one of the beauties of life itself is just like always soaking up everything. Also just like friendship, you know, learned so much about friendship.

But most importantly, learned so much about music, and the music business, and about creating music. I feel like with this project, writing music for myself was the first time I really got to kind of take everything that I had watched while being in the group. And some of the involvement I had in especially our last album as a group, taking that and applying all of that to just myself was really interesting. It was a very eye opening and liberating experience because the process was quite different. It was a lot more personal for my own stuff, so I had to learn how to kind of break my walls down a little bit.  I also really had to learn how to trust my gut and know that, if I like something or if I love something, then that’s good enough, you know? But it can be hard. It’s easier said than done sometimes.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, for me personally, I think where I’ve grown the most in my songwriting ability is just my ability to write melodies and make great creative decisions quicker. And some of that I think, evolves with taste, you know. You have to like evolve your taste and you also have to trust your taste.

In the group, we were a very democratic group. If three people liked something and two didn’t, then it was like, we’re going with the thing that three people like. I feel like there’s a lot less of that now because I’m kind of in the driver’s seat. So I’ve had to learn to trust myself a lot more. Which has been scary at times, but has also kind of like I said, been super liberating. I will say it’s a lot more fun to hear something come to life that I had so much more to do with.

All of the music feels really like an extension and like a representation of myself, which I think the music in the group never really felt that way. And I think it’s because the stories you’re writing about are not necessarily from personal experience, and you’re playing a certain role in the industry, and you’re a boy band. So, you know, you’re writing love songs for girls and not necessarily all the stories are true.

And I won’t say all the stories on my EP are necessarily true, but they’re all derived from either something I experienced and then expanding off of that. Or something someone close to me experienced or a writer that I’m writing with that day. Like if they come into the room and have a crazy situation that just went down in their life, and I can relate to it in some way, then maybe we pull from that story and write something that feels like everybody in the room can kind of relate to it. I think that part of the process is very different than it was when we were writing music for the group.

Corbyn Besson: So when I started writing this EP, I started writing it in like September or October of 2024. And when we started writing it, I had dropped like three or four singles. There was this moment where there was like a shift in my intention. I had dropped some songs that I felt like were with the intention of what people wanted to hear from me, and not necessarily what I wanted to make. And I love those songs, they’re great songs. But I think there was a shift in my mentality when I wrote, with a couple other people, my song “Tied Up.”

We got into the studio that day and the producer I was working with, his name’s Tenroc, he’s incredible. We just had a conversation, and we were just talking about pushing the boundary, and being uncomfortable, and experimenting, and trying certain things. I remember we got in the studio that day, and I played “My Love,” Justin Timberlake, which is one of my favorite songs ever. And I was like, I love this song and I really want to do what I feel like might be my version of something like this. But I don’t know if I could pull it off. And he was like, let’s try, let’s see what we come up with. And so we wrote that song that day, and for a lot of the day, I wasn’t sure about whether it was me or not, or whether I could pull it off. When I cut the vocals and heard like the first kind of demo bounce back, I had this kind of like eureka moment where I was like, oh shit, maybe I could do this all along and I just didn’t believe in myself enough to pull it off.

Hearing that song back, I was like, okay, I think I know what we have to do now. And that was the first song that we wrote for the EP, and after that, the intention just became so much clearer. I feel like I was more comfortable taking some risks, musically, than I wouldn’t have been  comfortable with, without kind of having that moment. And it really, it changed everything for me. It changed the whole process and it kind of like opened up my mind and my heart a little bit to like be okay with trying new things. The EP kind of feels like the most me thing that I’ve done in my career so far, which is really tight and exciting.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, it’s kind of just about really just like diving in head first into this chapter of my career. And really just diving head first into my career in general. This is my first actual body of work, and I’m really proud of it. This just felt like a moment for me where I have to just commit fully to it. These songs, as I was making them, kind of spoke for themselves and I felt like I was really comfortable diving in head first on all of this. I feel like these songs were really accurate representation of who I am as an artist and where I am in my life. And also, there’s a little bit of a double entendre because some of the songs are kind of about like thinking with your head first and not your heart. And so there’s like some through lines there, but it’s mainly just about diving in and committing fully to this and to myself.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I did a couple DJ collabs in the past couple years, which has been super fun. I became a huge fan of EDM music in like 2022 or 2023. I went to EDC in Las Vegas with a couple of my roommates and a couple of my best friends. Just to like see what it was about, and just check it out. We went to Coachella earlier that year, and we wanted to go to another festival. Did not know what we were getting into, and we went to EDC and had literally the best time ever. And I fell in love with EDM music.

My favorite thing about EDM music, I think, is there’s two things: One, the music is for the most part, very happy and makes you want to dance, and I love dancing. I also just love the community. Like people that go to EDM shows or festivals it’s a very open and loving community, and everybody has a place there. And so quickly fell in love with that aspect of it. Some people had reached out over the course of the past couple years and wanted my vocals on their songs, and I was more than happy to do it. So I love those records. And I think it showcases kind of this other side to my artistry that’s a little bit different than the stuff that I normally do, but it’s like an extension of myself a little bit.

Corbyn Besson: For sure, EDC is awesome. Yeah, it’s so awesome. It’s super hectic, I mean it’s like from Friday to Sunday, it’s nocturnal. So you get to the festival at like 10 p.m. and you leave at 5:30 a.m. so you go back to the hotel and sleep for the whole day. So it’s pretty crazy, but it is so fun. And if you go with a good group of people that really love to dance and, and just love music, it’s the best time ever. I like Coachella, but Coachella’s a little bougie for me. People are a little bit standoffish at Coachella.

Corbyn Besson: Oh, it’s been so cool. So many more people made their own dances than I thought would. I started the dance thing, kind of I guess hoping maybe it would catch as a trend, but also just because I love dancing. I wanted to do something that would kind of bring that song into that world because I feel like it’s a very upbeat track, and the drums are very thumpy, and they kind of make you want to move your body. So it felt right to do some sort of choreo for it.

But watching people teach it in their dance classes and watching people from literally all over the world make their own dances to it has been super sick. There’s some really good dancers that made some really tight routines to it. I was like, “Oh, that’s sick.” And I’ve never really had that for one of my songs before. So to like watch that happen was really cool.

Corbyn Besson: I think so, yeah. There’s a couple songs on the EP that kind of call for it. There’s also a couple songs on the EP that aren’t really that dancey, but we’ll see. You never know if someone decides to make something that’s really cool, and maybe someone makes a sick routine and I recreate it or I hop on the trend or whatever. But yeah, I’m figuring out which ones feel the most dancey right now so that I can dance to them on tour. I don’t know what they are yet, but maybe they’ll show themselves once the EP comes out.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, for sure. She was so cool in person, and her team was so nice and so welcoming. I guess the long story short is that me and a couple of my friends, who are amazing creatives flew to Korea. No manager, no label rep, no nothing, just four dudes and a dream, and shot this video with her.

What made the experience really unique and special was that we just kind of shot most of the video like, very guerrilla style, in the streets of Seoul. And I think for most of the videos that either I’ve done, or I think most of the videos that she’s been a part of, either for herself or for her group. They do most of them in like sound stages with pre-built sets and, you know, it’s a very controlled environment. I think this experience of like running around the streets of Seoul, and having to be a little sneaky, and having to hide in convenience stores and make sure that people didn’t see that we were out on the streets, so we didn’t give anything away. I think that made the experience just really fun, and it felt like an adventure. A little hectic and chaotic at times, because there was a point where some people saw us. Within like 10 minutes, there were like 150 people surrounding all the cameras and everything. And we were like, we got to get out of here. But being out in public and just in the streets of Seoul was something that I have never done before and I don’t know when the last time she got to do that was. So it made the whole shoot really fun.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, I love this question. I’ll start by saying it was fucking awesome, excuse my language. It’s kind of piggybacking off of that breakthrough moment that I was talking about earlier. As soon as the intention in my head changed, the music became so much more fun to create. I think I took the pressure off a little bit and just decided, every time I get in the studio and I still do this to this day, I’m going to try to write my next favorite song. And that like very much became the process for the rest of the tracks on this EP. I think we also paid a lot of attention to making sure that none of the songs really sounded too similar. And so I think there’s a lot of diversity on this EP that’s really cool.

I really just want to bring people back to the dance floor. I think there’s not enough people dancing right now. There’s not a lot of at least like male pop artists that are making music that makes you want to dance, you know? That’s kind of my goal with all of this, so we kept that in mind when making these songs. I wanted to make sure that the drums are always very thumpy and I want to make sure the chord progressions are great, but also that the topics of conversation are just cool and relatable, but simple. I truly do think there’s something for everybody on this project and I think it showcases my ability as an artist and as a vocalist in a lot of cool ways, and there’s a lot of different flavors on the project and yeah, I’m super proud of it.

Corbyn Besson: My favorite song on the EP is probably, I don’t know if I could pick one. From the EP, it’s probably “Blink” or “Ruin Me” or “Hypnotized,” but maybe it’s “Tied Up.” I don’t know, I love all of those songs a lot. Lowkey right now, I think my favorite song is “Man I Need” by Olivia Dean. So good, I listen to it like four times every day.

Corbyn Besson: I actually have a meeting today. I don’t know when this is gonna air, but I have a meeting today with my agency to go over tour routing, which is very exciting. So I’ll be touring probably in April. In terms of choreo, yeah, I’ll definitely be dancing on tour. Which I also think is something new and exciting that my fans haven’t really seen from me. We danced a little bit in Why Don’t We, but it was never anything impressive. To be honest, I don’t know how we got as far as we did without being able to bust a move. But it worked, and I’m not going to question it.

But dance, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a couple amazing choreographers the past year, year and a half. I’ve really fallen in love with just dance as an art form, and the dance community, and just everything that dance has to offer in connection to music and the creation of music. There will be some really sick choreo moments on the tour. I’m probably going to have a couple dancers with me as well. There’ll be a live band and I really just want to give people a show that they’re not expecting from me. I want people to leave the show just thinking that was their favorite two hours that they’ve had in the last year. So that’s my goal, going into the show and the choreo is going to be fun. I’ve never really danced like that on tour, so I’m pretty much rehearsing right now for it and it’s going to be really sick.

Corbyn Besson: I don’t have too much of a dance background, to be completely honest. I first started kind of getting into dancing when I was in Why don’t We. I think out of all the guys, I probably had the most natural ability to kind of move my body. I kind of started to get a little interested in the group, and then while I’ve been writing music. Especially with the creation of this EP, and wanting to dance on tour and wanting to elevate my skills in that area. I just got in contact with a couple of really great people and I was like, hey, can you show me the ropes? Can you teach me? I really want to do this for my project and for my show. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but just haven’t had a reason to like take it seriously. Finally, after creating this EP and during creating this EP, getting in with some amazing people that have kind of taught me what it is to be a dancer as a performer, has opened my eyes a lot. It influences the way I create music a lot because if I’m writing a song and I don’t feel like I can dance to the song, I don’t know if it’s for me. So it’s been a major touch point and kind of through line. So I’m just rehearsing and learning and going to keep getting better and by the time my tour comes around, I think we’re going to be super locked in. I think my fans can probably expect to keep seeing that from me too.

Corbyn Besson: Yeah, and it’s funny because I feel like there’s not too many male pop artists like doing that right now, which kind of surprises me. So I kind of feel like someone’s gotta do it. And I plan to be the one that does it.

Corbyn Besson: I would say my sound is to put it super generically, it’s a blend of pop and R&B. And I think this lane of pop R&B with a sprinkle of EDM. And there’s a song on this EP that has kind of an 80’s flair to it, which is cool. But okay, yeah, it’s pop R&B. And I think my fans can kind of expect me to keep doing that for a while. I think it’s where my heart is, it’s where my head is, and R&B and pop are my two favorite genres of music. I grew up on pop music and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to really appreciate R&B music more. So a blend of the two, smooth vocals, thumpy drums, cool chord progressions, some uptempo stuff. I’m working on some mid-tempo and slower stuff right now that’s really cool. But yeah, Pop R&B. Long answer short.

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:: connect with Corbyn Besson here ::

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HEAD FIRST

an EP by Corbyn Besson