Anything But Ordinary: Joshua Radin is Keeping it Simple
March 02, 2009

Allow me to introduce to you the new love of your musical life. A Cleveland, Ohio native and a former painter and Hollywood screen-writer, Joshua Radin is much more than just another passing voice in your ears. In fact, he's got some real character behind that voice.

To give you some backgound: Joshua started his career after a rough break-up inspired him to write the song "Winter". The song immediately grabbed the attention of Radin's close friend Zach Braff, who used the song on his hit show Scrubs, and the rest is history. Joshua followed up the popular song with a 6-track debut Indie album titled First Between 3rd and 4th. An interesting side-note about that album is that Joshua painted the portrait of himself that appears on the cover.

His first full-length album, We Were Here, was released in 2006 under Sony's Columbia label. After the successful debut album paved the way for recording his second album, Joshua was faced with an impossible ultimatum: to write a Top 40 hit or face not having a sophomore album released "I had recorded the album myself and presented it as-is to Columbia," he explains, "and they said, 'you've got to take one of the songs, re-produce it with our producer and make a Top 40 hit and then we'll release the rest of the songs'. So I bought myself out of the contract and released the record the way I wanted it."

Released in late 2008 on Mom & Pop Records, Simple Times is something that Joshua describes as "a loss of innocence...like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye," he says, "I was always fascinated with characters like that." The cover of the album, which is a photo of Joshua in a sandbox with a small pail and shovel next to him, captures this innocence. "The cover was designed that way because I always felt like a child in a grownup's world." He explains, "When I wrote the first record, I wasn't thinking about Top 40 singles, and this record was about getting back to that."

The video for the album's first single, "I'd Rather Be With You" recently made VH1's Top 20 Countdown and also has that beautiful simplicity that Joshua is famous for. "It's the second video that I've ever done. Zach [Braff] directed both of them. We shot in Malibu for about a half a day. It was cheap - we shot the whole thing on Super 8 film and just had fun with it," Joshua says, "there's nothing better...it was like making a home movie with friends."

With two videos now under his belt, Joshua continues to progress musically while he's on tour by writing all the time. Working through label issues have certainly helped him grow as well. Now that he's been the ups and downs of the music business, would he ever go back to a big time label? "It's hard to say -- never say never -- I never expected to leave Columbia [laughs]. I'm just taking it one day at a time. If I were to get a contract that said I could write what I wanted and they would guarantee that they'd release it, then maybe I would."

Maybe it's better if we look at the art of making music as just that -- an art and a craft. Maybe we should all take a lesson from Joshua and just keep it simple and take life a day at a time.

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I was unable to transcribe this interview.

For more information about Joshua Radin, head on over to his official website and then check out his MySpace and Facebook pages! Thanks so much for reading!

Check out Joshua's video for "I'd Rather Be With You" and then head over to VH1.com and vote for it!: