Zayde Wolf is a songwriter, producer, and exceptional artist by his own doing.The solo project of Dustin Burnett, Nashville-based maker and performer, Zayde Wolf has authorized many tunes – from film trailers, TV programs and computer games, to significant homegrown and global promotions on the web with Fox, NBC, ABC, ESPN, MTV, CBS and TLC organizations. His tune “Relentless” was the spring 2019 signature melody for the Chicago Cubs and utilized by Dude Perfect, one of the top YouTube Sports channels with north of 40 million endorsers and seven billion perspectives, with whom he proceeds with a creative association. Zayde Wolf’s music is all over the place.
Zayde Wolf – Music Career
This Spring he will unveil a new powerhouse collection of tracks: the third full-length installment in the dynamic Zayde Wolf catalog, follows his 2018 Modern Alchemy LP, which charted on iTunes in over 25 countries within hours of its release. The album is 40 minutes of pure energy: within the grooves of its 12 tracks, he acknowledges the heartbreak of 2020, reflecting on what was and what could have been. It’s about remembering and drawing inspiration from good times past and exploring our reasons to keep pushing ahead. It’s about taking stock of where we are, and realizing there’s more work to be done, dreaming of brighter days ahead. Ultimately, it’s about hope.
From the primary clench hand siphoning notes of opener “The Reason,” where Burnett entreats us to ascend and survive, hard-hitting support hymns like “Back At It” and “Never Fade,” to the personal “Check out At Me Now” and “As yet Fighting For It,” the message is clear: dread is unavoidable – we can either permit it to hold us back from chasing after our fantasies or use it to stir up the coals of the fire consuming inside all of us to become who we’re truly intended to be.
Attempting to become more noteworthy, rising above the past, and not permitting it to characterize who you will be – these are ideas epitomized by Burnett himself. Brought up in Metropolis, a modest community in Illinois most popular for its imaginary most loved child, Clark Kent, the degree of progress Burnett has accomplished, both by and by and expertly, is past anything he at any point envisioned or that was required from him growing up. Each of Burnett’s awards might appear to be the makings of an undeniable independent achievement, yet the Zayde Wolf project came to some degree coincidentally.
“Towards the end of 2015, I was producing some new music as a concept. I had these new ideas, but when a couple of singers fell through, I just decided to sing on it myself,” Burnett says. “I finished the songs, and rather than use my name, I listed, ‘Zayde Wolf,’ as the artist and sent it to a licensing company in Los Angeles called Lyric House. Pretty much immediately, one of the songs was licensed. Jessica Cole, Lyric House’s President responded, ‘So who’s Zayde Wolf, anyway? We need more songs.’ That’s literally the accidental story of how I became Zayde Wolf.” That one song released three years ago has led to two full-length albums, an EP, dozens of singles, and a dedicated following that includes over 1.2 million Spotify monthly listeners, 235K YouTube subscribers, 81 million views, and his music has been streamed over 200 million times across streaming services. Burnett describes Jessica Cole as, the “ghost member” of his band and his most trusted collaborator.
Thirteen years, a leap of faith, a move to Nashville, and two kids later, Wolf has found a new sense of bravery in this project, which has led him to open up in his songwriting in ways he never has before.
“The creative process when I’m sitting working on a Zayde Wolf song is painfully slow sometimes,” he explains. “Sitting here by myself, I’ll make a beat and then I’ll sing a few lines and then I’ll sit back down, and put a guitar part in, or a synth, and loop back around. It’s almost chaotic the way I’m working around in my room. ‘Rule the World,’ is a song about the dreams you have as a kid that you’re going to be able to go out and do something really big. It’s me reimagining myself in my youth with my friends, overcoming what we need to overcome.”
There’s a common thread in Zayde Wolf’s music: push through and overcome life’s challenges, trust that broken hearts eventually heal, and remember that music is one of our most powerful tools for connection to one another. Burnett has experienced the power of music firsthand, and he’s made it his mission to share it with the rest of the world.
“The general message of Zayde Wolf is encouraging people,” he says. “These songs are helping me in all these different ways. For a song to start in one place and then move all over the world to people who speak very little English is wild. These people reach out to me daily and say they are impacted by these songs in ways that turn their week around for better, or that the songs lead them to rethink a hard situation… and that’s powerful and humbling to me.”
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