Photo by Sylvain
As an artist, there are so many different roles you can play in the creation of a song. For the multi-talented ALDAE, co-writer of Miley Cyrus’ chart-conquering 2023 hit “Flowers,” as well as numerous other songs by some of the biggest names in pop music today, songwriter is the one he gravitates toward most.
“I’m in the service industry as a writer—my job is to just give my best, to make the artist look the best they can,” ALDAE tells Genius. “There’s beauty in that purpose of putting others before you that can make you actually have a more enjoyable life, rather than putting yourself at the foreground.”
Born Gregory Hein in Texas, ALDAE didn’t always know he wanted to be a songwriter. He originally got his start uploading his own music to YouTube before moving to L.A. with the hopes of becoming “one of the biggest artists ever.” He thought he was living the dream when he signed a solo deal with Columbia Records soon after in 2016—that is, until it came time to actually perform the songs that he recorded. He’s always considered himself pretty reserved, so getting up on stage was more anxiety-inducing than exhilarating.
“I would do all these showcases and shows at hotel cafés and I would black out,” ALDAE recalls. “People would be like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome.’ But the whole time I felt super uncomfortable.”
Fortunately, during that time, ALDAE had also been cutting demos to shop around to other artists, and one of them caught the attention of Maria Egan, PULSE Music Group’s then-head of A&R and creative. Egan believed in the song so much that she sent the track to producer and DJ Marshmello, who enlisted Demi Lovato to record it with him. That song, 2020’s “OK Not To Be OK,” which has amassed over 242 million Spotify streams to date, was the first time ALDAE saw “proof of concept” for a career that operates mostly behind the scenes.
Since shifting his focus to songwriting, ALDAE has found plenty of success. He’s written tracks for huge stars across multiple genres, including Selena Gomez, Surfaces, Skrillex, and YUNGBLUD. In 2021, he linked up with Justin Bieber, and the pair worked so well together that ALDAE earned an impressive five credits on the pop star’s Justice album. And this past January, ALDAE achieved a major career milestone when he scored his first-ever No. 1 record as a co-writer on Miley Cyrus’ smash “Flowers.” The song overtook Adele’s record for most streamed track on Spotify in one week with 96,032,624 plays, and as of today, it’s spent eight non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.
Some of the success of “Flowers” is due to factors that ALDAE, Cyrus, and co-writer Michael Pollack didn’t anticipate and couldn’t have predicted—like the internet’s quest for Easter eggs about Cyrus’ highly scrutinized divorce from actor Liam Hemsworth and comparisons to Bruno Mars’ 2012 ballad “When I Was Your Man.” But ALDAE also gives some credit to the magic he felt in the studio with Cyrus since day one of her Endless Summer Vacation sessions.
“There was just this unspoken language,” ALDAE says. “It was being in a sandbox as a kid, and you’re like, ‘You like dogs? I like dogs. Let’s be friends.’"
As proof of that instant connection, ALDAE cites “Flowers” as one of those songs that “kind of wrote itself.” After having a long discussion with Miley about life, he and Pollack began shaping the story she wanted to tell around an idea about flowers that Pollack had been toying with earlier. Once they reunited with Cyrus to discuss chords and melody, everything else fell into place pretty quickly.
“Within an hour, everything glued together,” ALDAE recalls. “It was just seamless and the transitions were great, and Miley really inserted herself, her story.”
ALDAE wound up contributing to two other tracks on Endless Summer Vacation, the Sia-assisted “Muddy Feet” and the piano ballad “Wonder Woman,” the latter of which was initially inspired by Cyrus’ mom, Tish, who was in the midst of her divorce at the time. In the middle of writing that idea, Cyrus’ grandmother also died, and the lyrics evolved into an intimate ode to her female lineage. While some songwriters might think it’s important to take a step back when an artist wants to write something so personal, ALDAE says those are the tracks he feels the biggest responsibility to be more attentive to.
“I approach it delicately and as if it’s an infant,” he says. “And I treat it like a house that’s going to be well rooted for years and live and stand the test of time. So every lyric is combed over and thought about.”
For ALDAE, who considers himself a “vessel” for artists, songs like “Wonder Woman” always wind up being his favorite to help write, too. “I wish every song was that personal,” he says. “So we can just write what they’re feeling. It’s crazy how many things are just contrived. It’s almost like you’re writing in third person or something. But this was … we just wrote what it was supposed to be.”
Now that he has a good deal of experience under his belt, ALDAE’s come to a few conclusions about what does and doesn’t work in the business of songwriting. For one, there’s really no formula for how long it takes to finish a song—let alone see it get released. Sometimes, you need to step away from it entirely to figure out what’s missing. For instance, ALDAE sat on two of his Justice collaborations, “As I Am” and “Unstable,” for over a year before pitching them out to Bieber.
“There’s this ingredient of time to let things marinate,” ALDAE explains. “Even if you’re not working on the song, that’s probably attributed to the hours spent on the song—just not even listening to it, living. And then you go back and you’re like, ‘Oh, this part’s terrible. This part’s kind of good.’”
Another lesson ALDAE’s learned is that there’s one key ingredient of a good pop song that really can’t be forced or manufactured. And even if you’ve perfected the other major elements— like structure and melody—you won’t get very far without it.
“You have to throw the paint on the wall before you can start to sculpt,” ALDAE says. “And a lot of times people are trying to sculpt too soon, and then you lose the feeling. I think a lot of writers think that they have more control over that than they do, but it comes from somewhere else for sure.”
Alongside his work with Miley, ALDAE’s got a few exciting things lined up in 2023 that are sure to make this one of the biggest years of his career so far, one of which he calls a “bucket list” collaboration. He’s determined to have more of those in the future, too, citing A-listers like Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Drake, and Shakira as artists he hopes to work with someday.
ALDAE won’t discount making more solo music, either, and he even hints at having some in the works. But he knows he’ll never be a natural performer like Justin Bieber, and that’s OK. There are other areas where a guy like him excels.
“I think some of the best writers in the world are the most quiet,” he says.
