Meet our KIIS Next Up Artist of the Week: Hailey Knox ! A New York native, Hailey first picked up a guitar at 7 and was professionally performing by the age of 12. Fast forward to now, she's fresh off of dropping her soulful 'Hardwired' mix-tape. Knox dropped by the KIIS FM studio to chat with EJ about life on the road, writing music and more!
One thing that we love about Hailey is her natural inclination towards embracing her so called 'awkwardness.'
I think there's honestly for me - it's like, just how I am. I don't even know if it's like purposefully...I guess yeah I do embrace it, but that's just how I am. I don't know. I have a quirkiness I guess people say.
On the topic of releasing her new mix-tape, Hailey revealed that the process is quite scary. She's a fan of a lot of different genres and has so many ideas that getting into a room of producers can be a bit overwhelming. Her writing process is different for every song - sometimes she gets a melody at 3 AM and other times it's more of a collaborative process with a group of other artists. However when she does get a song idea, Hailey always makes sure to put it in her cell phone voice memos due to forgetting an important song in her past. Calling this project a 'mixtape' rather than an album is freeing for Knox, because according to her it provides license to explore sounds and vibes that aren't uniform.
Check out her acoustic performance of 'Hardwired' & 'Traumatized' below!