A decade ago, Andy Grammer first caught lightning a bottle with his eponymous debut album, which featured the hit singles “Keep Your Head Up” and “Fine by Me.” A few years later, three million copies of his 2014 feel-good anthem “Honey I’m Good” flew off the shelves.
Grammer has released several top-charting singles since, including 2016’s “Fresh Eyes” and 2019’s “Don’t Give Up on Me,” and he credits his success to the lessons he learned busking on the streets of Santa Monica, California.
Talking to the Sprout podcast recently, the 37-year-old opened up about the impact those formative years had on his career.
“The whole game is can you get over putting yourself out there and having no one care,” posed Grammer, stressing that success comes after one masters the art of “putting yourself out there, failing, and getting back up.”
While Grammer no longer has to sing for his supper, he isn’t opposed to the idea of busking on the city streets and going completely unrecognized. In fact, he has a playlist ready to go, starting with “85,” a song he released in 2017.
He said he also would play “Don’t Give Up on Me,” because it “seems to have this effect where it makes people not want to give up on themselves, and I really love that.”
Lastly, he’d play “Damn It Feels Good to Be Me,” since it goes back to his earlier point about self reliance.
“Life gets better when you are genuinely able to stop caring how you’re perceived. We waste so much time worrying about how others are perceiving us,” Grammer remarked, noting that once he accepted his own “quirks and my uniqueness,” it took him “down a very certain path that is probably made for me.”
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