While Adam Paddock may now call Nashville home, his spirit lies in his true domain of Columbus, Ohio. It was there that he harnessed a resilience, a concrete knack for leadership, and an unflinching love for music that has allowed him to repeatedly overcome the odds and succeed in the cutthroat world of music and entertainment. The release of his debut album, ‘SWEET OHIO LIGHT,’ is, to this point, the apotheosis of his journey.
Stream: ‘SWEET OHIO LIGHT’ – Adam Paddock
Adam Paddock, a Columbus, Ohio-based singer/songwriter now living in Nashville, has been engulfed in his DIY SWEET OHIO LIGHT Tour, on and off, since the middle of March.
A working-class musician, Paddock, due to logistics, financials, bandmate participation, and personal engagements, was tasked with splitting the tour into multiple mini legs, with emphasis on the northeast, the Midwest, and the West Coast. In what he considered an “avant-garde approach,” the tour, in support of the album of the same name, commenced before the record was released in full.
The first half of his debut studio album SWEET OHIO LIGHT debuted in April, with the second half unveiled just a few weeks ago. It is out now, in full.
A wildly energetic and academically trained vocalist and performer, Paddock’s live show is an all-in, at points inescapably immersive, affair. He is based in hype, in grit, in the renewal and transference of energy. Off the stage, he hopes to counteract the connection-over-music aspect of the industry, bringing the focus back to artists, their songs, and their stories.
On the business end, Paddock is the robust leader of his operation. He is analytical, data-centric, and a guru of market research and current industry trends. When asked what ROI benefits he has seen, if any, as the result of this tour, he was ready with the kind of off-the-dome recount to be expected from an artist of his candor.
“In terms of ROI, the first metric I think of is how many tickets I expected to sell versus how many tickets I did sell,” he says. “When I think of the music business growth, I think of that metric as, ‘Ok, this is how many people came to this city… that means I can bring this up to a promotor or agent and say, ‘Let us open, I know we can bring half of this.’ And on the audio side of things, I have seen a migration. Monthly listeners, concentrated listeners, went up 5-6000, but those are all real people actively listening a lot more. On Spotify, I used to average 1-1.1 streams per day, now I average over 2.5 streams, per day, per listener.”
Entirely produced by trusted bandmate Max Lew, SWEET OHIO LIGHT is a dynamic, musically cohesive debut full-length.
On this project, Paddock, whose past ventures into more experimental territory have not consistently, or faultlessly, reflected his skillset, sticks to a pure indie/adult-contemporary pop-rock sound. Each of the 10 tracks, even those containing lower emotional stakes, such as “LIGHTSPEED” and “TRAFFIC,” contribute to the overall flow and sonic direction of the record.
“WHEN THE SUN DIES” feeds off the energy of the industrial pop/’90s grunge sound Paddock attributes to his father’s influence on his music taste, contrasting with his mother’s love for both CCM and queer folk. Well-versed in hair metal, it was a perfect producing scenario for Lew to take Paddock’s words, an omission of unflinching commitment, to this particular sonic place. Lyrically, it is the opposite of low stakes, but is presented in a more rudimentary fashion:
I feel it, I feel it, I feel a great weight on my chest
To make something lasting of all of this mess
If love is a construct, how could you ration this?
If you knew… what I’d lose if the sun blew up
Then I’d tell you, if I had you
I wouldn’t lose that much
In comparison, he references a fan favorite, “Tattoos,” released in 2020, from a similar vein of fundamental, yet endearing, songwriting. “I remember writing that chorus… ‘When the sun dies… if you knew, what I had to lose,’ and thinking, ‘Is this… dumb?,’” he poses. “Then I thought about ‘Tattoos.’ It’s this corny, on-the-nose song that I love, but only because of the reaction of the OG’s back in Ohio. I had a moment’s hesitation with, ‘WHEN THE SUN DIES,’ but, the way it is packaged with the verses using rhythmically minded melodies, and interesting lyrics, a simpler chorus was due.”
Elsewhere on the project, he pulls complex harmonic compositions out of thin air on “COUNT ON IT,” whereafter chooses to maintain a rather bare canvas on “COMETS.” The latter’s exquisite piano tone, played by a credible collaborator of one Mr. Post Malone, highlights Paddock’s lead vocal accompanied by the singular closest, warmest lower harmony he could procure.
“COMETS,” a dissection of how family dynamics have affected his mindset regarding success, as well as how that mindset assisted in the creation of his brand of pure maximalism, is a highlight of the project. He expressed that those family dynamics, some of which are common and others more sporadic, were not particularly negative, though he does acknowledge their impact.
“I have excellent parents,” he says. “Excellency was something I grew up with, and that I would not be the same person without. That absolutely played a huge role in my maximalist brand. Growing up, there was a bit of a lack of control at home. Sports, I could control my success. Music, as a first chair in band, I could control my success. The music making experience, I had to ask myself, ‘How EXCELLENT can you be?’”
“SPACE TO GROW” and “WHEN THE SUN DIES” represent equal levels of steady, measured beginnings leading to latter half musical extremism, though, in terms of scale, fail to reach the pure musical elation displayed throughout the title track. Correctly placed as the culmination of the record, Paddock utilizes an orchestral, big band-leaning arrangement, a phlegmatic delivery of each stanza, and repeated dopamine-laden musical transitions for maximum effect.
You can probably tell where I’m from
Mid-American joy and then some
Tell the kid who he’ll be, and he won’t believe
There’s a push and a pull to become
More than notable high school alum
You could never have asked too much of me
“I think the push and pull to feel like I belonged in school was always a factor that I struggled with,” he says. “I was being recruited for sports, I was a nerd, I was really good at school, I was a closeted band kid playing first chair trumpet… excelling in all of it. I was doing a lot of ‘good things,’ but I wondered, ‘Which one am I? What category do I fall into?’ I felt ‘liked,’ but I was never the favorite. I needed to take a step back and realize that my value was not in my accomplishments.”
An acquaintance… someone who, at that time, knew very little of him, but seemed to truly understand him, provided that sense of value. “Her name is Olivia Resnick,” he continued. “She said, ‘You have this sweet Ohio light about you. I can tell that you ARE from this place, that you ARE… lovely, warm, a wonderful person to be around.’ I don’t think anyone, up to that point, had explicitly told me how valuable I am without naming a single thing that I had done. That was a big piece in writing that song. It was never an ‘F-you’ to the people behind me, in my past. It is more of me giving myself space to move forward from accomplishments, and inward towards recognizing my value.”
At six minutes and 12 seconds, “THE EGO OF HUMAN HANDS” secures its spot as the most thought-provoking, inward look into Paddock’s obsession with the idea of more traditional forms of recognition of art. His mother, an English teacher with a master’s degree in poetry, instilled pro-education, pro-creativity values in him from an early age, requiring some form of artistic output, such as the writing of a haiku, for the reward of traditional media indulgence, or “screen time”:
I’d… pour my heart out in a song
Make it blossom from the air
Change the seasons with a verse
Spill my passion just to share it
With someone… who looks just… like me
He’d do it better if given the chance
Or maybe that’s the ego of human hands
“That song, I think, means the most to me of any song on the album, because it came from a place of a very raw, and real, experience,” he says. “It is very much about that kind of scenario. I only feel privileged enough to write that song because I know the difference. Like when we’re in Columbus playing to over 1,000 people and I look around and see that even the folks who came for the opener are still so dialed-in, verses being at a show with someone who was more concerned with the girl in the room with 300,000 Instagram followers rather than with supporting his friend who was onstage.”
A third, and final, piece of the SWEET OHIO LIGHT record will be released next year. In the meantime, he will be opening for Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler at the Marquette, MI stop of their upcoming brent forever tour, and will focus heavily on the next presentation of his now annual #COLUMBUSAGAINSTTHEWORLD show, held at his beloved Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH.
These developments, as well as the release of SWEET OHIO LIGHT and the completion of his tour, reflect Paddock’s pitbull-like mentality. He is relentless in his quest to reach a status at which he can comfortably create, perform, and participate in the ever-changing game of the music industry at every possible moment. For now, he must continue to balance a budding career with real-life, largely financially motivated, obligations, but is fearless enough to do so proudly, because he knows that excellency is not built, nor is it recognized, overnight.
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:: stream/purchase SWEET OHIO LIGHT here ::
:: connect with Adam Paddock here ::
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“SWEET OHIO LIGHT” – Adam Paddock
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© Nick Jackson
© Nick JacksonSWEET OHIO LIGHT
an album by Adam Paddock
