Singer and songwriter Greg Holden has earned recognition as an independent artist for the past several years, though he is perhaps best known for writing the massive hit “Home” — the debut single for American Idol winner Phillip Phillips that sold five million tracks in the U.S. and earned Holden an ASCAP Pop Award. He’s also found success with “The Lost Boy” — a poetic rumination inspired by a Dave Eggers’ novel about a Sudanese refugee that hit No. 1 on iTunes in Holland and raised over $50,000 for the Red Cross. Within two weeks of being featured on FX’s Sons of Anarchy, “The Lost Boy” sold 30,000 downloads in the U.S. and debuted at No. 36 on Billboard’s Rock chart. Soon Holden will also be known for the passionate, purpose-driven rock songs on his major-label debut album, like the anthemic “Hold On Tight” and “Save Yourself.” Those songs, plus Holden’s powerful voice led Warner Bros. Records to sign the Scottish-born, England-bred, New York-based artist earlier this year.But Holden’s career almost didn’t happen. He nearly gave up on the music business altogether a few times over the course of the past few years. The first was after he spent a significant amount of his own money (in addition to $30,000 crowd-funded through Kickstarter) to make his Tony Berg-produced 2011 album I Don’t Believe You, watched his label go bust, and was left unable to promote it. The second was when he went into debt after “The Lost Boy” charted overseas and he set out on a sold-out tour of Holland. “I borrowed petrol money from my drummer so we could drive around Europe in his car,” Holden recalls. “That’s how bad it was. I was driving to my sold-out shows thinking, ‘I’m coming off this tour and I’m giving this up. How can I afford to keep doing it?’ I was ready to call it a day.’”Fortunately, “Home” became a success and Holden embarked on a life-changing, seven-week trip to India and Nepal in February 2013 that renewed his drive to be an artist. “The trip gave me a new perspective on how lucky I was, and the fact that I can make music for a living is a miracle,” Holden says. “I came home from India and wrote most of my new album almost immediately.” The chorus of the album’s first single “Hold On Tight” is as such: “I don’t take my life for granted /I’m gonna hold on tight to what I’ve been handed.”
“My last album was brutally honest, but I was very much pointing the finger in the wrong direction,” Holden says. “I was projecting my problems onto everybody else. I guess I just realized that was not a good way to be…‘I’m lucky. We’re all lucky and we don’t know it and we should.’ I really want to make people think with my songs. I’d love for people to take on a more compassionate way of thinking and start considering others besides themselves, myself included.”“I want people to listen to this album and think, ‘Where the hell did this come from?’” Holden says. “I would love them to really pay attention to the words in these songs. I’m hoping that if they do, they will have some kind of meaningful reaction. That’s what I would love.”Greg Holden is now playing on TMN Radio.