Jonas Brothers Talk 'Songland,' Recording Material That Has Longevity

Another round of NBC's Songland hit TV screens on Tuesday night (June 18), where hopeful contestants competed for the opportunity to workshop their demo alongside the star-studded panel. For the latest episode, the Jonas Brothers took to the set looking for that song that they'd record as their latest release. After the episode, the comeback kids took to the Songland Podcast, a counterpart to the new competition, and spoke about this week's winning contestant, Abel Heart, as well as his track, "Greenlight."

"I think for us something that's been really important is that we think about the longevity of a song. We wanna have the kind of career where we can be singing these songs to fans 10, 20 years in the future," Nick explained during the 25-minute episode. "It's gotta be something that feels immediate in the sense that you wanna hear it on the radio right away. You wanna perform it live right away."

Elsewhere in the episode, the 26-year-old JoBro revealed that the world is now in the hands of artists and creators, especially with the dominance of the streaming platform. "It's not driven by gatekeepers anymore and them saying, 'This is what you're gonna listen to.' It gives us, as artists and as creators, the ability to say, 'I can do anything I want today and the skies the limit. I'm just gonna explore and see what happens,'" he explained. "Because you know when the right song really hits, it's because the fans and people that wanna hear it have chosen it. We have said in this new chapter that we're trying to bottle happiness and give it to the world. You know we're happy in our lives and there's too much negativity out there in general."

Despite an interest in getting into Olympic snowboarding, Abel Heart's time out of the competing realm led him to music, particularly after visiting the now-defunct club, Pacha, in New York City. Heart said that he had no patience, so he took in all aspects of the music process — the vocal, production, writing — into his hands in his early years. "I made that when I was just transitioning. That was one of the first few records that I made learning to sing. Actually, I think I was still living on my sister's kitchen floor funny enough," he admitted of the song, adding that he wrote the the track as part of a batch of demo records."

"The most insane thing for me was the validation," Heart said of the reaction from the judges. "Everything they said from me walking out on stage really for so many seconds and performing and then the things that they said, I would have never expected that."

Joe went on to describe Abel as a contestant with "a lot of heart." "The song is so dope," he said, before Nick chimed in on why the backstory of the mid-tempo track means just as much as the actual track. "We're so excited about this song because it feels like exactly what we were hoping to accomplish — a song that hit us between the eyes [and] that spoke to us. Abel's story is a major factor in this."

To hear more about "Greenlight," scroll on below to take a listen to the accompanying episode of the Songland Podcast and stay tuned for new episodes of Songland every Tuesday night at 10 PM ET on NBC!

Photo: NBC


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