Interview: Joshua Radin Shares Love Letters with his New Album 'Onward and Sideways'

Joshua Radin is ready to share his love letters with the world.

Initially, 2014 and 2015 were going to be easy years for Radin. After releasing five albums in seven years and touring relentlessly, he was ready to take a break. But that was until inspiration - and love - struck. Shortly after embarking on this holiday, Radin met and fell in love with a woman in Stockholm, Sweden. Though, she was hesitant to begin a relationship so he decided to woo her the best way he knew how: by writing love songs.

The result of this surprising love and broken vacation is Radin's sixth studio album Onward and Sideways, which is out today (Jan. 6).

"I wrote this album not to be famous or to be rich or anything like that. I wrote this record just like I write all my music, to say something to someone that I'm too shy to say so I make songs," he said in an exclusive interview with Music Times.

Filled with songs exploring the ideas of falling in love -- from finding someone and being scared to being comfortable and happy to living in a long distance relationship - Onward and Sideways marks new territory and relatability in Radin's discography, creating one of his most personal albums to date.

You wrote Onward and Sideways in bed, is that right?

Yeah, in a hotel bed in Stockholm, Sweden.

Was that a conscious decision or did it just sort of happen?

Well, I called my manager and said that I wanted to take a year off from writing, touring, everything. I just wanted to decompress because I had been touring so much and writing and releasing music, and I just... You know what they say you have a well when you find inspiration when you write songs or write anything, and my well was dry. I needed to live life and have new experiences to fill up the well again.

So, immediately after I did that I met this girl from Stockholm and I followed her over there. I lived in a hotel there for a little while. I basically wrote this love letter to her, this album, trying to make her fall in love with me. So, she'd go to work every day and I'd just be lying in the hotel bed waiting for her to come home. I wanted to have a new song for her when she got home. That is like an old school kind of wooing method.

That's where this album came from. It's something where I thought I was going to take a year off, and instead I had this whole body of work ready to go so I figured, why not, let's do it.

How long after you got to Stockholm did it take for you to write this album? How long was your "year off?"

I don't know, maybe like a month.

And did it work? Did you win her over?

It did! It took a lot of songs.

How many did you end up writing?

I don't know. Maybe like 16 songs in a month. It seemed like every couple of days I had a new one for her. I was like, all right. I'm just wearing her down.

There's a female voice prevalent throughout Onward and Sideways in a lot of the backing vocals. Who is that woman?

I don't think there's one that's the same woman, they're all different women. And there are some that are male, there are some that are my vocals and some that are a man from Sweden doing a falsetto. They're all different.

It sounded really consistent. That's interesting.

I love a certain vocal when it comes to female singers, a breathier vocal like mine. I'm more attracted to that. I think it blends with my vocal better.

It seemed like the decision to include a female vocal on a lot of the album gave Onward and Sideways the added layer of two sides of love. Was that a conceptual decision or simply a musical one?

Both. Not only do I love vocal harmonies, but it is symbolic. A man and woman singing together, when two vocals sing together and blend together so well, it is symbolic of a relationship. And obviously this album is a love letter, so I figured, yeah, there should be a lot of female harmonies on it.

You tapped Sheryl Crow for "Beautiful Day." How did that collaboration happen?

Well, I had always just wanted to collaborate with her ever since touring with her years ago. It was always in the back of my mind that if I wrote a song that lent itself to being a duet that she'd be someone who I'd call and ask. So, I did. I figured, who better to sing on that song? Because not only is her voice so great but she's just such a professional.

She actually did her part from her home studio in Nashville. It was a big worry at first that I wasn't going to be there. But she sent it back and I didn't want to change a thing. She's just such a confident professional, knows exactly how to record herself and her voice. She didn't even run the harmony part by me, she just did it and I loved it.

I feel like that makes your job easy too, which is good.

It's so rare that that happens, you know? Where you don't have to be in the same room with someone and they just do exactly what you wanted.

An interesting thing about this album is that you recorded with Rami Yacoub. He worked with One Direction a lot recently and Britney Spears in the past. Why did you decide to collaborate with him?

Yeah, he's one of those pop guys, which Sweden is filled with. He's from that Max Martin camp. I'm actually just friends with him; we've been friends for a little while. I never thought about making music with him - our music that we create is pretty different.

After a while of just being friends I stopped by his studio one day, I had the guitar in my hand and we just started writing something. I realized just because the music that he generally becomes successful with is quite different from mine, his sense of melody and song structure is so strong. I love the two songs we ended up working on together.

I feel like they had a little more of a pop sensibility, especially "Angels."

Those are the two songs that he produced, as well. He played the instruments on them. And of course he has more of a pop sensibility than my folky sensibility, you know? But I love an album that's more diverse. I didn't want 12 or 13 songs on here that all sounded just the same.

You had a lot of success early on with "Winter" in Scrubs. Since then, your music has been in a ton of movies and TV shows. What about your music do you think fits so well to soundtracking moments on film?

I think it's twofold. I write visually; that comes from when I was a struggling screenwriter before I ever picked up a guitar. You're told to write visually and to show not tell. I think that was always in my mind when I started writing lyrics. That's one reason.

Also, my vocal is pretty hushed and breathy. I think a lot of times when a director is scoring a scene, they don't want something that's going to take over the scene, they want something that's going to compliment it. So, it's a combination of the two.

Also, I think my lyrics and my songs are very emotional. I think a lot of them have to do with falling in and out of love. I think once a lot of directors think, I need a song that's going to compliment this visual medium and it's got to be visual and romantic, maybe there's a shortlist of people that they think of first.

Is that a way you look to promote yourself now too?

Yeah, in a sense. I try to use social media; I try to use any vehicle I can to get my songs out to people all over the world. When I had written "Winter," it was the first song I had ever written. I had just picked up a guitar six months beforehand. I had never intended on being a professional musician, it's just something I fell into. My newfound hobby became a career luckily right off the bad. And it was because of music licensing to movies and TV.

It's not that I write songs for TV shows and movies - well, I've done that a couple times. But generally, I just write and put my music out and hopefully people call about their movies or TV shows. I hope that it will not detour from the song.

It's collaborative. It's nice being a solo artist and then all of a sudden, your music is a collaboration with someone. It's nice meeting people down the road and they're like, you wrote a song for a movie I was in years ago.

To find out more about Joshua Radin and his new album Onward and Sideways, visit his official website and Twitter. Also, check out a charity close to Radin's heart, Little Kids Rock and our profile of the organization here.