In the early 2010s, you could hardly turn on the radio without hearing one of the countless hits penned by Skylar Grey – among them are Zedd’s “Clarity,” Diddy’s “Coming Home,” and Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie.” During a recent sitdown with Variety, though, the 36-year-old revealed that she had to sell her entire music catalog in order to pay for her divorce fees.
The singer-songwriter opened up about her retreat from the public eye following the arrival of her 2016 album, Natural Causes, revealing that she hit “rock bottom” over the last five years while working through an overwhelming divorce from another songwriter, Elliott Taylor.
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“This past year, 2021, we finally resolved [our divorce and] settled, I had to sell my catalog in order to afford the settlement, which was very sad in a way,” Grey told the outlet. “Those songs like ‘Love The Way You Lie’ and ‘Coming Home,’ those are my babies.”
Though she no longer owns the rights to them, the Wisconsin native recognizes that “nobody can tell [her she] didn’t write those songs.”
“I wanted to keep building it and growing it,” Grey said of her catalog. “But, I have such a weight off of me now with the case being over, I’m not on the phone with lawyers every day, and I’m not having to pay all these legal bills anymore.”
From now on, the “Wear Me Out” singer is putting her energy into building new money and new opportunities through new music.
Elsewhere in the interview, she compared a rocky relationship with her past manager to a portion of Kanye West’s jeen-yuhs documentary, when he was having a hard time being taken seriously as an artist because people couldn’t get past his producer work. “I feel like that’s kind of how I’m seen in the music industry, but as a songwriter,” Grey told Variety.
“So I think with a lot of managers, they see me that way too. So they focus on wanting me to write songs for other people, that’s where I’ve made most of my money, so it makes sense. But, at the same time, I want a manager who believes in me as an artist, because being an artist is my real dream.”
Another artist to join the ranks of those who have sold their catalogs recently is Justin Timberlake, who took home a $100M for his deal – read more about that here, and tap back in with HNHH later for more music news updates.