Interview: On My Own With Harrison Lipton

Interview by Lindsey V. Britt

Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and producer Harrison Lipton recently released his song “On My Own” as part of his rebirth with being an artist.

First, tell us the story behind your new song “On My Own”?

I wrote it at the tail end of a relationship that was kind of a situationship, it was a little fraught but I felt like coming out of that; I was able to learn about some of my own patterns and some of my own things I was grappling with at the time. Now looking back it feels almost like a world ago. It’s a breakup song but it kind of pokes fun of itself, and that lightness was kind of what my wish for myself was at the time, I was wishing to view it through a lighter lens.

What was it like filming the “On My Own” music video all around New York City?

That was really fun, I worked with my friend Yishen and he has a vintage 16mm film camera, so we used real film. It was just me and him and I’m carrying this keytar all throughout New York City, it’s funny because nobody was paying attention to us as we were filming. So if you look at the video everyone’s just walking by like just another day in New York, here’s a random guy playing keytar in the middle of Central Park or Time Square. It was a really fun experience, and it was a fun sociology experiment, just kind of gauging people’s reactions, maybe someone would turn and look. But for the most part, people paid no attention.

How was it growing up in New York City?

It was great. I moved to Connecticut after 9/11, so I’m kind of half from New York, half from Connecticut. I love being a New Yorker, I’m a big Knicks fan, a big Liberty fan. I have a lot of New York pride, so being able to make an homage to my love for New York in a video like “On My Own” is a really rewarding thing.

Do you think living in New York impacted your experience with music?

Yeah, I think there’s a great community in New York when it comes to music. I really love working with other artists, so that’s something I was doing a lot this past year: writing and producing for their projects. I love being part of a community, and I think it’s so important because you can share ideas, share resources, and be inspired to be challenged by one another to make a better product so I think it’s a really valuable thing to have community, especially in this digital age that we’re in its great to have a tangible community of people.

I heard you’ve been going in a new direction and chapter recently, how has that been going?

It feels great, this feels like a rebirth for what it is to be an artist for me, especially taking the time away from releasing songs. I hadn’t released a song in a while before “Synchronized Swimming” which was the first song that I released recently, it came out in September, before that, it had been at least a year, so I wasn’t releasing a lot of music and I was mostly just writing and producing with other artists, so having that time away to really work on what my voice is as an artist to really allow myself to make the music that I wanted to make for me and music that I hope other people enjoy.

I read that you think being a listener is important, would you ever write a song about the importance of being a listener?

I think as a songwriter it’s important to keep your ear out for anything that you’re inspired by, it doesn’t have to be some big life event or anything, it can be writing from different places and writing from different spaces within yourself is so important. I was watching this YouTube Short of Benny Blanco talking about how Ed Sheeran wrote “Love Yourself” for Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran was like I don’t want to write a song about my life right now Benny Blanco was like okay let’s write a song about not wanting to write about your life, so inspiration can come in many forms it’s just finding what’s speaks to you and that unique angle that maybe yourself hasn’t even thought of.

Is there an artist you would love to go on tour or work with?

I mean there’s so many, there’s too many. Artists I would love to work with is Benny Sings, The Japanese House, Sam Evian, also Michael McDonald. I love Michael McDonald so much, he’s a little bit of a past-generation guy right now but he’s still crops up every once in a while like on a Thundercat song, I just think he’s a brilliant songwriter and keyboardist, and with one of the most unique singing voices of all time. I have a list of people that I would love to work with, not in a cringey motivational way, I was writing down a list of references for what I’ve been working on, and let’s see who I have on here, Ryan Beatty, Drugdealer, Mk.gee, Father John Misty, Still Woozy.

I know you have a vast range of music taste, what genre or era of music are you currently loving?

I’ve been listening to “Carnival Town” by Norah Jones. It’s so good, it’s just so beautiful. I’ve been listening to Lindsey Buckingham’s solo material; He has this amazing solo career that I don’t know if people talk about enough. I’ve been listening to the new Kendrick record; I think the Clairo record is really good, it was very well produced and well written. The new Father John Misty album, and Peel Dream Magazine - They put out a record called Rose Main Reading Room and I think it’s really good.

Spotify Wrapped just came out, do you mind sharing who your top artist and song was?

I have not done my Spotify Wrapped yet; I’m so scared to do it cause I’m worried that I will show up as my own top artist. I mean, Charli XCX had herself as one of her top artists so maybe I shouldn’t be so scared of it. But I’m like waiting to do it, cause I know that I’m going to be one of my top artists just from showing people my music. I will say I was really pleased yesterday that someone posted that “Synchronized Swimming” was their second most streamed song of the year, and it’s like how does it get to be number two? That song came out in September - That means she listened to that song more in two months, then every other song except for one in that entire year for her, which is crazy, I’m like holy shit. I was so stunned and like pleasantly surprised, I felt very touched by it. It really meant a lot to me and made my whole day.

You have a song called “Speedracer”, I have to ask are you a fan of the 1960’s Japanese cartoon Speed Racer?

Yeah. I definitely was inspired by that; I wrote that song during the pandemic. It feels like so long ago, to me it feels like a lifetime ago. I have a private SoundCloud link for that song and the working artwork that I threw up there was a screenshot of Speedracer, so that was definitely a part of the aesthetic direction of the song, I wanted it to sound, not necessary in a conscious way, but to me that song sounded similar to how Speedracer, the show looked in my mind.

Do you have any fun plans for the holidays?

Not really, my grandmother passed away this past year. I’m an only child so most of the time it would just be my parents and her at her house and did the feast of seven fishes, really it would end up being three or four out of seven, but it was enough for us. I think this holiday season, I’ll be thinking about that a lot, but I’m looking forward to spending time with family, friends, and my girlfriend. I want to take her to a nice holiday bar in Brooklyn called Leyenda. They do a great Christmas decoration every year so I’ll take her there. I’m just keeping it pretty lowkey, no big traveling or anything like that.

Do you have any career goals for 2025?

I would love to go on tour, I don’t have anything booked yet, I’m hoping with releasing this music that I’d be able to take my bandmates Ian Bakerman and Noah Ross. They’re two of my best friends, I would love to be able for us to tour because that’s been our dream since we started making music together. And it’s always been a goal of mine to be able to go on tour, promote the music, sleep on someone’s couch, hopefully not get a van broken into. That’s one of my biggest goals and try to break even. As long as people resonate with the music, I think it’s possible, I hope whoever is reading this interview I hope that they follow along for where this journey goes because I’d love to play for them. That’s a big thing for me is just I love to perform, and I love to play shows. Just the feeling of playing this music live now that it’s been released. And there’s more on the way but now that these songs have been released just the feeling of playing it live is something I look forward to.

Finally, do you have a recommendation? This can be anything from a film to a place to visit, advice, another artist to check out, anything.

I have two recommendations. One is that what’s been really helping me recently is that the opposite of anxiety is gratitude and trying to find ways to be grateful for my friends, my close relationships, my family, especially this time of year. Holidays are hard for a lot of people, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not true for everyone but sometimes it’s a reason to celebrate but just being grateful for all even the things that we have, it feels like a very Christmas time proverb, but still I think it’s true. My other recommendation is I love movies and I’ve been really into Dune. It’s really interesting if anyone is looking for something good to watch is to see Jodorowsky’s Dune. It’s a documentary from 2013 about Jodorowsky who directed El Topo. He did a lot of psychedelics and made cool movies. He tried to make Dune, but it failed, he ran out of money. It’s really cool and a very interesting story.

You can listen to “On My Own” now on your favorite music streaming platform.

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