Inside the Music with award-winning songwriter Toby Gad

Toby Gad is an award-winning German born, LA-based producer and songwriter whose songs have amassed over 15 billion streams. His songs include huge hits like John Legend's "All of Me,” Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry," and Beyoncé's "If I Were A Boy." This year Toby released his album Piano Diaries where his best-known songs are reimagined into emotive piano-vocal masterpieces, featuring today's top artists and vocalists. We caught up with Toby to discuss his musical upbringing, his magic songwriting formula, the dawn of AI in songwriting, and more!

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Interview with Toby Gad

Sheet Music Direct ("S"): Firstly, can you tell us your very first experience of music growing up as a child?

Toby ("T"): 4 or 5 years old would be my first experience. My parents had a Dixieland jazz band called the Jazz Kids, and my brother and I were always curious and took over their instruments after their rehearsals and pretended we were them just for the fun of it, like banging on the things and being loud! My mom was the piano player in the jazz band and my brother soon became the occasional drummer in the band. At age six or so he was playing in my dad's jazz band, and he was incredible. He was the sensation of the town! And then my brother and I started writing songs and they were crappy little rock 'n' roll songs, but we played them in the intermissions of my parents' jazz gigs. So that's how we started making pocket money. And I remember from the first 100 Marks I earned, I bought a whole Smurf village! Then from doing those gigs with my brother, the band got better when I was maybe 10 years old we were on German radio and played some of our songs. I remember the radio host was asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I said, "I want to be an ice cream salesman, so I can eat ice cream all the time." So that tells you the intellectual level we were at at 10 years old! Like, I have a 15 year old daughter now, and at 10 she was reading all the books there were to read and she was so educated. But back then, we were pretty stupid!

Then I think our first record, I must have been 15. We had some records with a producer called Tony Moran, who was a big producer at the time in Germany. He let us use his studio when he wasn't using it. There was this guy, Peter Schilling, who had a hit with "Major Tom" which you might know. And on one of his follow up singles, we had the B side, which was the first time our music was on a record. Then our first big record was Milli Vanilli. I was 18 or 19 years old, and we landed three songs on the Milli Vanilli debut album, which was massive and kind of paved the way for us to be songwriters.

S: So that was you and your brother together as a songwriting team?

T: Yes, and then we stopped working together. We kind of did our own things. But ever since then I wanted to be a songwriter because writing songs and then hearing them on the radio was an incredible experience.

S: And can you remember the first song you ever wrote?

T: Yeah, I was on a bicycle and riding through the fog. I must have been seven or eight years old. It was like a one mile ride between school and home. And we always rode our bicycles through the countryside. And my hands were really cold, and I thought if I write a song now singing to the sun, maybe the sun will come out and warm my hands. So I did that and did a little chant. And then the sun came out and it warmed my hands and I thought, "Wow, there's magic in songwriting!"

S: Incredible! And can you tell us about your songwriting process? If it follows the same pattern?

T: Yeah, well fast-forward to 2000 or 2001 when I moved to New York City, I started taking it really seriously and wanted to write songs that would make it in America and aoround the world. It was very lyric driven. I would get with artists and talk about their lives and see what they feel at the moment, what resonates with them, what they're worried about, if they're in love, if they're angry. I would always draw from a very real, authentic experience that the artist has at the moment that I work with and then turn that into a song. And that's worked really well for me. Like "Big Girls Don't Cry"—that was a snapshot of Fergie's feelings towards a breakup of a long distance relationship that didn't work out. Or "If I Were a Boy"—that was Beyoncé just being angry at a boy who neglected her. Or "All of Me"—that was a moment where John Legend was just madly in love, and I was madly in love with my wife, and we just poured our hearts out. So I think the songs I've written that have resonated have pretty much all drawn from very real, authentic, personal experiences of the artist.

I think the songs I've written that have resonated have pretty much all drawn from very real, authentic, personal experiences of the artist."

S: That's fascinating. So "All of Me" as you just mentioned is incidentally one of the best-selling songs of all time on Sheet Music Direct. And it's obviously a huge song generally. When you're writing a song like that, or the other two you just mentioned, do you know instinctively that you're sitting on something really special?

T: With "If I Were a Boy" with Beyoncé, I had the feeling that it was going to be very special. With "Big Girls Don't Cry," it was just a very personal song. And I didn't feel it was one of my best songs at the time when we wrote it. And it took five or six years until it got actually released, because Fergie then joined the Black Eyed Peas and did many albums with them before she could do her solo album. And then it was the fourth single of Fergie's album, so this song almost didn't make it—we were really lucky that it ever saw the light of day. And then it became her biggest song. It was Song of the Year in America for a year, and almost the second year too. So it was like the biggest song on the radio for a long time. "All of Me" just felt like a very honest love song. But this was also a time when people wouldn't release ballads and didn't think ballads would be first singles or singles at all. Labels were so focused on songs having to be uptempo, and having to have a rhythm and a beat. Initially we wrote it on the piano, but on the first demo I did actually add a beat to it because I was listening to the labels at the time, which I should never do! But then it ended up being just a ballad again, which was great.

S: And putting commercial success to one side, is there a song you've written that you're particularly proud of?

T: Yeah, I think "Untouched" with The Veronicas. That was a double platinum record in America, and it was a massive record in Australia, where they're from. And for my Piano Diaries project, I spent a long time figuring out the most simplistic, most effective, and most emotional piano accompaniments for these songs. And on "Untouched" I probably spent three weeks trying to figure out how I could play piano to this song and make it work. Some of them went faster, but some of them it took me forever to figure out how I can just play the least amount of notes and make it effective, and let the voice live and give it an intense emotion that pays the song tribute. So "Untouched" I would say I like the most. And also in its original version where it has a punk rock feel.

S: Talking about your Piano Diaries project, where did that idea stem from?

T: There's several things. Some of these songs have been on the radio for a long time. "Big Girls Don't Cry" is still on the radio, and it's 20 years old now. "All of Me" has its 10th anniversary, and I felt it's time to pass the torch of these songs to a new generation of singers. I also wanted to compile all my songs onto one record and turn it into my body of work. I wanted to take ownership of what I've done in my career, because these songs live with the artists and are part of their lives. But I wanted these songs to be part of my life too. And so this idea came to fruition, and it started with Victoria Justice and "Big Girls Don't Cry." And that got a really good response. Kelly Clarkson invited us on her TV show. We performed it there and then we just went song by song. Then we did "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato, with Camylio, who is a Universal Republic artist, and that's how we started working with Universal Republic. They also let me have two more of their artists for my project, which I'm really happy about. That's also one of the dreams I've had that I can self-release songs I believe in, even with artists who are on major record labels.

S: That's brilliant. And are there any artists that you haven't worked with yet that you'd love to work with?

T: It's funny, because before this whole journey with Piano Diaries, my dream was always to work with whoever is big on the radio. But that has totally switched now. I'm very appreciative of independent artists who have a big audience, but independently, and they've done it themselves. Like Laufey is a very good example. She's on AWAL, independent, and she's accumulated a massive audience, and there are many like her that don't sign to major labels. They do it themselves. And nowadays with social media, you can reach a massive audience and then start touring and do the whole thing. But it's in your control. I have so much respect for that now. So to answer your question, it's those artists that independently gain success who I look up to, and those are the ones I want to work with. I've tuned out a little bit out of the likes of Taylor Swift and P!nk or whoever. They used to be the ones I wanted to work with, but I've done this for so long now I have a real love and appreciation for independent artists lately.

S: Well said. So I imagine from your years writing songs and being in the studio, you must have some good stories. What's a good studio story that you can share?

T: Well, I spent five weeks in the studio with Madonna, which was quite turbulent at times. There's a lot I cannot share, but there were some moments! I mean, I can tell you this one story. I was on German Idol two years ago. We did 18 TV shows and the Germans always liked to hear the Madonna story. There was this one confrontation where we had just written our first few songs together, and I began recording her on those songs, and I just felt as much as she's an incredible performer, I felt vocally she could really improve a little bit. So I pushed her and pushed her and said, "Sing it again and put more emotion into it." I always try to get the best performance possible out of an artist. But she at some point said, "F**k you, Toby, I'm not doing this anymore." And I said, "F**k you, Madonna, you are doing this now!" And then there was silence in the room, and I was kind of waiting for someone to hand me my ticket home. But then after a little while, that kind of melted the ice, and suddenly we were looking eye to eye. I think she realized that I'm in it for getting something greater out of her. And then we bonded. Then I had another four weeks in the studio with her. So it was one of these make or break moments where you don't know what's going to happen.

S: I guess she probably respected you for the fact that you wanted the best out of her, right?

T: Yeah, I was ready to walk out if she wouldn't sing it again! But on the flip side, I worked with Donna Summer before she passed, and she was one of these one take artists who comes from a whole different era. I was at her beach house with her and we were writing songs for her last album that got release. I was recording her on my little laptop setup, and she sang it once and I said, "Could you sing it again?" And she's like, "Okay." And then she sang it one more time and I said, "Can you sing it again?" Usually I record like, 10, 20, 30, or more takes of the same bit because sometimes it gets better and better. And she said, "I've sang it two times for you. I don't sing it anymore. It's perfect." And it was perfect. She was one of these one take artists who just knew her voice so well that it was perfection. She was an incredible vocalist and performer. We really miss her. She was amazing.

S: Yeah, she was incredible. Are there any other songwriters in the industry whose work you're enjoying at the moment or you have respect for?

T: I have a lot of respect for anyone who's making it these days. Justin Tranter is a friend. He's incredible. He's killing it these days. And I mean, Ed Sheeran is able to write, for the most part, really timeless songs that will become, or are already classics. I always have a lot of respect for people who write songs that aren't trendy and that aren't like today and gone tomorrow. For me, it's always the big goal to create music that is going to be there in 20 years from now for the next generation. I was never the cool producer, so I was always just doing stuff that I wanted to be timeless, for all ages, for all genres. I don't want to be locked into what's hot at the moment, and might just not be hot anymore next year.

I always have a lot of respect for people who write songs that aren't trendy and that aren't here today and gone tomorrow. For me, it's always the big goal to create music that is going to be there in 20 years from now for the next generation."

If it's a good composition, a song could be a ballad, it could be a classical interpretation, it could be a hard dance remix. So with my album I've attempted to also do a lot of remixes of those songs in all kinds of directions. We have drum and bass remixes. We have one bachata remix of "Big Girls Don't Cry" that got 24 million views on Victoria's TikTok. It really blew up. For some reason the Mexican community embraced that one and kept doing their dances to it. So I love just going across all genres. If you have a good lyric, a good story to tell, I feel the song could live in any genre.

S: And a good melody, right?

T: Yeah, absolutely.

S: And lastly, do you have any advice for aspiring songwriters who are maybe just just getting started?

T: Well, it's a whole new world out there nowadays. You have all the tools you need at your fingertips. I'm speaking to major record labels these days. How do you promote your songs? They promote them 100% the same way as any artist can promote it themselves. They do a lot of social media posts. Everyone now at this point has all the means of self-promoting their records. There's no magic bullet anymore. You can't buy your song into radio anymore. All those days are gone and it's in the hands of every artist to find what is unique about them and what is something that feels urgent in a sense that the world needs to hear that song. And it's about community building. You need to find out who you are and put that into your songs. Release as much as possible, really learn from the feedback, and find out what people like about you. Start building a community. But also performing live. These days I think AI will eventually take over the writing part and the creating part. But performing live on stage is something that will always stick with humans, and I think it's going to become more valuable again.

These days I think AI will eventually take over the writing part and the creating part. But performing live on stage is something that will always stick with humans, and I think it's going to become more valuable again."

S: That's interesting. So you see AI completely replacing songwriters?

T: It's already writing pretty incredible songs by itself because it has studied all that's ever been on YouTube and all that's ever been released on whatever platforms, and it knows how humans react to this content. And then the funny thing is that AI doesn't write like we write. It just takes like Michelangelo would take a block of marble and then starts chiseling away and eventually gets to something that looks like the whole song. It's freakish, but I have no doubt that we're already at a point where AI writes very good songs, and eventually they're going to be great and they're going to just feel incredible to us. Because the truth is any phone will write you these songs and probably eventually write you those movies that you want to watch in real time. And it's going to be great. You're going to feel amazing about it.

S: I guess. So, yeah. Well, uh, I think those are all the questions I have. Unless there's anything else that you wanted to add.

T: Well, I would be happy if everybody would stream my new Piano Diaries album. It's on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and I'm very proud of it. These are eight of my biggest songs in piano and vocal versions. And at the end of the year I'll come out with probably a 14 song version of it. I've also performed these songs, and it's so much fun to perform them. I did a gig with Casey Abrams in the Jazz Cafe in London, and on "All of Me" he just started the first two words of the song, and the audience sang the entire song through, which was so cool.

S: That must be awesome just hearing your song sung back at you?

T: Yeah, it's special.

S: Well, thank you so much for your time today, Toby.

T: No worries at all. Have a wonderful rest of the day.

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