Jake Scott — one of indie music’s hottest artists — is set to take the stage on March 12 inside Rediger Chapel.
Scott, who’s based in Los Angeles, recently finished his first major tour as the headliner. From mid-January until early February, Scott crisscrossed the country performing in major cities like New York, Houston, Chicago and LA.
His YouTube channel currently has over 94,000 subscribers, and he has almost four million monthly listeners on Spotify.
How on earth does a musician from La-La Land (population: 3,899,000) end up performing in Upland (population: 3,700)?
According to the president of Mainstage, juniot Kat Sezonov, it all started with fanmail from junior Austin Layton.
“(Layton) knew that around the middle of the fall semester we (would) start looking for performers for the spring,” Sezonov said. “He was like, ‘Hey, last year I sent this fanmail email to Jake Scott and he actually answered it, so maybe he’d answer me again.’”
Sezonov and Layton then teamed up to write Scott another email, asking him if performing at Taylor would be a gig that appealed to him.
It did.
“We were like, ‘Hey, you have a lot of fans on Taylor’s campus. What are the odds that you would come do a concert for us?” Sezonov said. “And (Scott and his team) answered really quickly … and they were like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like such a great idea!’”
On Feb. 14, Scott posted on Instagram — yes, he’s pretty popular there too — announcing the March 12 show at Taylor.
Scott’s pit stop in Upland will come after playing rescheduled shows in Boston, Philadelphia and Ann Arbor, Michigan. According to Sezonov, it’s like Scott has extended part of the tour, and now his performance at Taylor will serve as the cherry on top.
“Now (Taylor) is like essentially the last official stop on his tour, which is really cool,” Sezonov said.
Scott started gaining traction on streaming platforms like Spotify thanks to a unique objective: he released new music every month from the start of 2018 through the end of 2020. While most musicians’ plans were squashed during the pandemic, Scott continued to churn out new music in order to give his fans what they wanted.
“I don’t ever want to lose the mentality of wanting to very frequently release music,” Scott told Billboard in October 2021. “Even if I become some superstar, I don’t want to make people wait two or three years for my album. I want to be like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great song that I wrote last week. I’m going to put it out in a month because I think you need to hear this.’”
He also used the break provided by the pandemic to buff up his YouTube channel, adding several videos, including a music video for his hit single “Like No One Does.” The two-minute and 47-second clip has over 363,600 views and features Scott and his wife dancing around their sun-drenched California home in comfy clothes.
After not being able to film the music video in a studio due to the pandemic, Scott ended up using a smartphone instead. Like so much of what he does, it aims to be authentic.
That same authenticity has catapulted Scott into indie pop’s stratosphere. And it’s that authenticity that helped make him junior Kenley Blake’s top artist on Spotify.
“I just feel like he puts into words so beautifully what so many people are feeling,” Blake said.
While she may not listen to Scott on Spotify as much as Blake, Sezonov has become a fan as well.
“He’s just got a really fun energy,” Sezonov said. “He’s young, he’s in his 20s, but none of his music is crude in any way. We didn’t have to worry about running it past administration in terms of language use or anything like that.”
Taylor students and faculty can purchase tickets on eventbrite for $14.36 ($12 + $2.36 fee). General admission is $17.55. Scott takes the stage at 8 p.m.
“I will be camping out in line for as long as I possibly can,” Blake said.
Upland, get ready to jam with Jake.
