nobody likes you pat Talks Midwest Blues, His Upcoming Album, and Creating Accessible Music
The Indie-Pop singer and songwriter has worked on multiple projects before embarking on his latest venture, nobody likes you pat. Growing up playing in Pop-Punk and Metal bands when he was a teenager, Pat Kiloran navigated the music industry at an early age as he interlaced his many musical influences into his project in hopes of making “impactful and accessible” music to listeners. Transparent, fuzzy, and hopeful, nobody likes you pat aims to have his listeners feel like they’re uncovering his diary. Listeners can easily take a deep dive through his honest songwriting and intimate life experiences.
With his brilliantly executed and organic instrumentals, “midwest blues” is an introspective, fuzzy story-driven effort detailing moments that led Kiloran to become the artist he is now. The music video for “midwest blues” is a scenic voyage that provides tranquility in a world that’s becoming more tumultuous and perplexing by the day.
“midwest blues” follows previous 2022 singles “one day before I die,” “maybe money” and “things i wish you said.” All four tracks will be on nobody likes you pat’s debut album imago out November 18th.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. Can you tell us about the type of music you make and how you first got started in the industry?
[PAT:] I grew up playing in Pop-Punk and Metal bands back when I was a teenager. I moved to LA after school and thought I was gonna get more involved in sound design and onset audio for film and TV, which I did for a little bit. The music thing kept calling back, and so I ended up moving to Nashville. In 2021, I dipped my toes in the music industry and started working in Country for other artists. That led me to write a lot more, producing for more people and it was around 2017 when I started a band called MILKK with a friend and we went pretty hard with it. We toured, put out a couple of albums, charted, and then COVID hit. So during the pandemic, I started this project which turned out to be the real project and it just happened naturally.
It was a long road to get where I am now. Definitely, a winding path doing all sorts of different things in the industry. As far as the music I'm making right now, I'd say it falls somewhere in the Pop singer-songwriter space. I try to blend a lot of my different influences into my own vibe. I write songs that are hopefully impactful to people and accessible. I try to treat it like a diary that people can dive into and hopefully pull something for their own lives.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What artists inspire you either lyrically or instrumentally?
[PAT:] I don't listen to a lot of music that sounds like mine. A lot of the music that I am inspired by and listen to is not reflective necessarily fully in the music I make. It inspires my ethos behind making music. For example, my favorite artist of all time is Kanye, but I don't make music like his. It's more of the ethos of just putting the art first mentality and being unabashedly transparent in your music. One artist I've loved for the last couple of years is Porter Robinson. He's an electronic artist, but I just love the feelings that evoke from the melodies. I just listen to a lot of ambient types of music, or music that's not necessarily in the Pop space like Japanese Environmental music. I get inspired by the feelings that music evokes, by the rise and fall of emotions that it creates, and then I can take my message and try to put it to those feelings and create in my own way.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How does your usual songwriting or creative process look like for you? Does it change depending on the song you write or the different emotions you experience?
[PAT:] It's changed over the years. I would say at this point with this project [nobody likes you pat], it usually starts by just having an idea in my head or a feeling. Then I'll just sit down with a piano or a guitar and write it out. I'll wait for the idea to come. I'll flesh it out. I feel like it's for me, at least it's more like it's a timestamp in my life. It's like a diary. I would say I sit down, I flesh it out with a guitar and then I sit down and produce it. I self-produce most of my stuff.
[UNPUBLISHED:] If you could describe your music in three words, which three would you choose?
[PAT:] Transparent, fuzzy and hopeful. I feel passionate about talking about the negativity within the music realm and how it’s considered edgy to write overtly depressing songs. It’s not that songs shouldn’t be about those things, but it leaves things in a dark place when you leave them at that. So it's like, why aren't we more prone to looking towards solutions and towards hope for the future?
[UNPUBLISHED:] Your latest single, “midwest blues,” details some moments in your life that led you to become who you are as an artist. Can you elaborate more on this and the inspiration behind this single for you?
[PAT:] I had been thinking a lot about the idea of how over my life, there have been many different versions of myself, except they're all the same person. Same with my wife, for example, we got married young. We've been married now for nine years, and I feel like we've both been married to at least five different versions of the other person. And so that’s why the chorus came to me first, “Seems like every couple years, I’m somebody brand new,” because there's so much in your life that can change and influence how you think and your empathy. I tied that idea to doing little picturesque windows of different sections of life. The first verse starts with, “I was born in ‘92.” I was talking about growing up, and then the second verse dives into when I was living in Canada, and I met my wife which was a big moment in my life. Then the bridge dives into the I can't go back and change anything concept. Nothing really lasts. It’s a love song too and it’s a two-fold love song towards my wife throughout these different versions of myself. It's kind of a dual meaning tied into my faith. I hold fast and hopeful to my Christian faith. I hold to God and that's the anchor of my life, so it's kind of a two-fold love song there. Then the last verse is looking ahead to when we're older and our kids move out and we're gonna be so different. It’s just a whole life story played out in a song and how much our personalities change over time. There are anchors in our lives that can hold us steady and keep us grounded if we let them.
[UNPUBLISHED:] The music video for "midwest blues" is very beautiful and it's set in nature. How was your experience filming that music video and did you direct it yourself?
[PAT:] I worked on that with Dawson Waters, a good friend of mine from Nashville that I met when I lived down there. I knew that in this album I wanted a lot of nature imagery. I wanted it to feel very holistic, natural, and human. With how much we're inundated with technology and internet culture and just modernity – which has its pros – I feel like we get so easily detached from what's meaningful about our humanity and I thought being in nature helps with that. We just kept it simple and focused on the natural beauty of the shots and the colors. We went down to Alabama and walked through these beautiful spots and shot whatever we found that looked great. There are a lot of scenes throughout the video of this television playing old home movies from my life and it's supposed to represent looking into the past. By the end of the video, you see this TV all worn over with vines and flowers and it's supposed to represent the ending of life and a grave; how modern things end up falling apart at the end. I think we need something deeper to hold us to who we are as people; like flowers and vines that are overgrowing.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When you're not making music and in the studio, what do you do to help inspire your creativity?
[PAT:] I feel like a lot of my inspiration and a lot of the songs I write just come from daily life. Every day I'm just living and trying to keep my kids alive, trying not to lose my mind. I watch a lot of anime and other types of shows that I find artistically pleasing, so I get inspired outside of the music realm with a lot of visual stuff. The big thing for me is lyrics; the crux of my thing is the message I'm trying to get across. I feel just giving myself time to experience more life, learn new things and feel new pain. Those things always end up kind of being my inspiration for whatever the next thing is.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Your album is set to release in the Fall. Can you tell me what listeners can expect from you and what was the inspiration behind the album?
[PAT:] It's very forward and honest. I think there are a lot of beautiful songs on it. There are some good, fun ones up front that people can just feel good vibes about before they dive into the melancholy of a lot of it. I've always said this project is meant to be like a bit of a journal or like a home movie experience, so listeners will be diving into a year of my life. They're going to be able to see and feel what I was feeling and going through. I don't write songs from other people's perspectives, so it's always my own direct experience. To summarize, I think listeners will feel a lot of purpose in it.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What was the biggest lesson or breakthrough you've had while working on the album?
[PAT:] I’m okay with working by myself because I've always done that but I have gotten into a mindset of collaboration. That “I should probably be writing this with other people” mindset. In the music industry, you write with other people, you write for their projects and they write for you.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What are some artists you're currently listening to?
[PAT:] He's a pretty small artist, but this artist called phritz does super cool textural, melodic, and beautiful stuff. I got into Sufjan Stevens last year, and I was listening to his one record Carrie & Lowell which is great. I’ve been listening to Japanese Environmental Ambient music, and it's just soundscapes with little melodies and stuff going on.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you have a favorite song to perform live, which one is it and why?
[PAT:] I've only done one tour with nobody likes you pat. I haven't played all the songs as much as I'd like to, but honestly at this point, probably my song, “boys (til i had you),” is a song for my kids and I just feel whenever I play it, the crowd usually goes dead silent. After shows when I’m talking to people, that one seems to be very affecting to a lot of people.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What is your wildest dream as an artist? If you can have one thing happen (a milestone or dream collaboration you hope to achieve in your career), what would that look like for you?
[PAT:] There's 100 bajillion things I could say, but I think I'm gonna flip it on its head and just say I think in a lot of ways I've kind of already accomplished what I hoped to do. Teenage me would be very grateful to be where he's at now because I have put out a lot of music and I’ve affected a lot of people. People have tattoos of my lyrics and I take care of my family just by doing music. So are there more things I want to do in my career? Sure. Do I have lofty aspirations? You bet, but in a lot of ways, I'm just grateful to be in a position where I get to do the one thing I'm good at every day and take care of the people around me with it. It's a nice place to be.
