CHORD OVERSTREET'S 'WASTED TIME' GETS HIM 'CARRIED AWAY'...
So many of us discovered Chord Overstreet as ‘gleeks’ aka fans of the hugely successful show Glee! We’ve followed his career since & have enjoyed ongoing acting and huge solo music hits (His 2017 single "Hold On" is presently at 68 MILLION streams on Spotify alone). Now we’re seeing that Chord has dropped his first name and adopted what seems to be a primary music moniker solely know as “Overstreet”! Chord fills us in on name changes and new horizons with some quick 26 Q+A!
What can you tell us about 'Overstreet' Chord?
I realized one day that I wanted to have a band versus just being a solo artist. The music I love to play, write and listen to is very much a band thing and I wanted to kind of separate the solo singer songwriter that I still love and continue to be, with this. ‘Overstreet’ is the band and I just thought it was a really cool way to diversify creatively.
Back tracking, we knew you grew up in Nashville and you were born, raised and spent most of your life there. How did you get from Nashville all the way to Hollywood?
I would have to say that my parents were big influences, my Dad is a country music songwriter, so I grew up around music and listening to a lot of different stuff. He pretty much raised me on Elvis and The Beatles, Tom Petty, Paul Simon and other singer-songwriters. So I had that ‘story teller’ stuff ingrained from an early age. My mom would also encourage me on the acting stuff which was great because I loved it, I did school plays growing up and she eventually encouraged me to go out to LA after graduating school. So I just moved out there just trying to figure it out like everybody else and happened to really stumble onto something!
That's amazing!
What advice would you give to any young singer/songwriter/actors looking to forge a path like yours?
Well I grew up involved in a lot of sports, so I guess I can use that as an analogy; I did a bunch of different sports growing up and was good at them, but I was never really GREAT at any ONE of them because I'd put my focus into maybe too many of them. So I would say find out what you’re passionate about and what you love then put all your heart and time into that and just be as persistent as you can. Also, diversify the group of people you hang out with. Find new people that you’ve never interacted with and just try to kind of see what new opportunities present themselves to you!
So let’s get into Overstreet’s first official single “Wasted Time”. Tell us everything How the song idea came about? What does it mean to you? Give us the scoop.
Ah, So, I took a trip with buddies down to the desert and we sort of just aimlessly went out there to chill, hang out, kill time and when I got back I was in a session telling stories about the trip and the song really just kind of ‘happened’ out of that. So the great stories that came out of what some would consider "wasting time" was the inspiration!