Losing "The Hunger Games" was tough, but with the release of his first single, Ian Nelson is winning the hearts of every girl all over again.
It’s the 21st century and finding love through a dating app is all too relatable, don’t even get me started on just 2020 alone! For actor and singer/songwriter, Ian Nelson, it was just the story he needed to inspire him to write his new single 21st Century Love.
With emotions running wild, Ian and Mystery Girl started talking. I’ll let your imagination take over for what happened from matching on an app to the song, but this redhead with freckles inspired Ian to start writing down lyric after lyric. “The first thing I wrote down was the lyric, ‘I fell in love with you on a screen’,” Ian shares. Like every single person on this earth, when you fall for someone, you catch yourself staying up all night thinking about this absurdly amazing human being, and if you tell me that’s not true, you are lying to yourself. Ian admits that he would be up at 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning writing down lines that turned into his new single.
“The experience is universal in the sense that I think everyone knows what it’s like to connect with someone having never met them and it just seemed like something I wanted to write about,” said Ian.
When asked about how Ian deals with writer’s block, he explains, “If you have writer’s block it tends to be that you're just in the wrong direction. Oftentimes when I have trouble with a lyric I’ll just switch the whole idea”. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you are telling your story, if as long as it is true to you then you will love what you have created.
“Writers block I find really is when there’s just not the right idea or when you’re not saying what you feel” Ian expresses. When you write about heartbreak, just say it. Ian states that there is no need to be poetic or try to romanticize it, write exactly how you feel about it and the words will just flow.
Music was such a natural transition from acting for Ian. With songs, he feels as if he is playing a character as well. In that moment of time, within that song, for example 21st Century Love, he is a man so magically in love with this woman, “the brooding romantic” as Ian liked to put it.
When writing or acting, Ian likes to tap into all parts of his personality to really bring to life the character he is portraying. “If I am playing an introverted nerd, I am going to highlight different attributes of myself. If I am playing a confident jock, I am highlighting other attributes in myself”, said Ian. He was able to take these skills and use them when writing his song, piecing together something really personable.
In the beginning, his creative process for this recently released song, and others, was mainly poetry as he wrote lyrics down. One reason being because he had to get more in tune with the guitar before he could really pick it up again to play the music behind the words. Once the guitar clicked, Ian was able to write the songs around cords he would play. The other side of it was to find his voice within his music, to express how he was feeling through the words first. Like most writers, Ian was also constantly writing down lines and ideas throughout the day that would inspire a lyric or be song at the end.
“Music is such a compliment to acting,” said Ian.
With all this commotion going around, Ian is still able to be invested both in his songwriting and acting lifestyles. When Covid hit, acting had to take the backburner, allowing Ian to pick up his guitar and start writing. This time away from the stage gave Ian the time to bring forth this song, and a couple others that we can all look forward to! Even being around music when Ian was younger, his mother enjoying to sing and his father being a genius at the piano, songwriting seemed like such a natural path to follow for him.
To close the interview off, I had asked Ian if he were in "The Hunger Games" again, would he win? His response: "No comment other than yes, absolutely", with utter confidence. Watch out Katniss, Ian Nelson is coming for you!
Ian is extremely an intelligent and charming gentleman, with all his talent expressed through his song 21st Century Love. To our lovely Mystery Redhead Girl, I hope you find a love that sweeps you off your feet. To my fellow "Teen Wolf" fans, talking to the young Derek Hale is just as nerve-racking and exciting as you can imagine. Sadly the new puppy will not be named after Derek, but we can all show our friend Ian some love by supporting his new single out on all platforms!