How Famed Producer Mark Siegel Propels Pop Artists’ Careers: “Luckiest” By Jackie Castro | “Hold Me Down” By Jacob Whitesides
New-Jersey-born producer Mark Siegel is premiering two of his proteges’ new songs this month; “Luckiest” by Jackie Castro, and “Hold Me Down” by Jacob Whitesides. Siegel has rapidly become one of Nashville’s most popular genre-spanning songwriters and producers with his primary focus on artist development. It’s found him success both there and in Los Angeles, two cities where he has made a solid reputation.
Siegel was born and raised in Hackettstown, NJ just outside of NYC, before moving to Nashville in 2008 where he was launched into the world of touring as a multi-instrumentalist and music director for several different artists. Mark’s creative reach however goes beyond the stage and the recording studio. His company Static Flight Music Group has swiftly grown to help champion music careers that span across the entertainment industry.
Amidst the global pandemic, Mark found ways to keep the music flowing. Utilizing the opportunity of technology, Mark has been able to keep connected with his artists; writing, recording and finishing records remotely. Both “Luckiest” by Jackie Castro and “Hold Me Down” by Jacob Whitesides were recorded and finished in the midst of the nation-wide lockdown.
Siegel wrote “Luckiest” with Jackie Castro back in 2017 and it was the first song that they collaborated on together. Mark Siegel says: “It was a really special night the night that we wrote it. The lyrics just poured out of Jackie as if she had the song stuck in her head for years; it is still to this day, one of the quickest and most natural songs that I’ve ever written with an artist”.
“Luckiest” remained on Siegel’s hard drive in its demo form for 2 years before the pair came back to it at the beginning of quarantine, knowing that they wanted to wait for that perfect moment to release it to the world. “In fact, the vocal on this recording is still her “day 1” demo vocal take… it just had her genuine emotion from the night that we wrote it and we knew that we wouldn’t be able to truly re-create or manufacture that” tells Siegel.
Jacob Whitesides’s “Hold Me Down”was written by Jacob, David Spencer, and Ruslan Odnoralov. The award-winning artist is one of Nashville’s most prominent pop stars, thanks to his signature sound made of powerful melodies and profound lyrics.
This is what Mark Siegel says about this very special collaboration:
“I’ve had the privilege of touring and working with Jacob for many years now and I remember playing Hold Me Down live in concert back in 2017; we saw how incredibly the audience engaged with it. I truly have never worked with an artist that knows more about their fans than Jacob. He knows every little detail about what they like and who they are, and he brings that into the studio with him every time that he goes to create the magic that he does, and it’s a thrill to get to be a part of that”.
“Jacob decided that he wanted to “re-visit” the song at the beginning of the lockdown so that we could get it out to his fans as quickly as possible; So we began to pull it apart and reimagine some of the production. From there we were able to send the track back and forth remotely with David Spencer who co-produced it and worked the original demo.
“We’re continuing to learn day to day how to shift and work in the midst of this pandemic as creatives. The last thing that we want to do is pause the release of art into the world”.
Siegel has written and produced songs for artists across the globe and has composed music for National Geographic and HULU. Be on the lookout for more quarantine bound releases from Mark over the next month including songs from Tolan Shaw, Liddy Clark, Maggie Miles and MENNA just to name a few. To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has not succeeded in halting Mark from finishing records would be an understatement.
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