At the start of the 2015 fall semester, senior Taylor DeBlock started a YouTube series titled #MusicMondays to help establish a fan base for his up and coming music career. Despite his last post being over two months old, his page still attracts fans. Deblock’s cover of Adele's “Hello,” featuring sophomore Rosemary Joaquin, raked in over 12,000 views. 

But he decided to take a hiatus from YouTube to focus on his own music and to try and stay on track to release his first EP in late April.

“It’s a lot harder [to produce your own music] — with YouTube it’s already written, all you have to do is recreate it,” DeBlock said. “With original stuff you have to write it, process how it’s going to go, imagine what you want — it takes a lot longer. But it’s definitely rewarding to do your own stuff.”

DeBlock’s first single, “Change My Mind,” was released March 16 on SoundCloud. It will be one of four to six songs on his EP, entitled “Losing You.” The song is about the indecisiveness that often times comes along with a new relationship and how people will search for problems that are not there.

“The whole song is basically, 'don’t let me do that!'” he said.

He describes the song as slow, atmospheric R&B, yet says that the EP as a whole will be a combination of pop and R&B and compares it to The Weeknd circa 2012.

DeBlock worked with junior Gerard Paredes, who goes by his producer name “SOLBOI,” on the EP, which took over two months to finish. 

“I produced the beat/instrumental itself as well as influenced the artistic direction that the piece is going for,” said Paredes. “Taylor and I think creatively on similar wavelengths so we practically share the same vision.”

“Change My Mind” will be available on Spotify and iTunes within the next two weeks. DeBlock worked with the distribution service TuneCore, who artists pay $10 per song to have their work distributed on dozens of platforms.

Initially, DeBlock planned on releasing an entire album, but then decided to reduce it to an EP to ensure quality over quantity.

“I wanted an album, but then I realized that if I wanted it to be good it needed to be a smaller project,” he said.

Over spring break, DeBlock will travel to Los Angeles to reconnect with the people he met last summer while participating in the Elon in L.A. program, including producer Rodney Jerkins. He hopes to find a label sometime, but said the truth is that good labels will find you. 

“It’s funny because part of me feels like I cant really share [the EP] with my friends because a lot of what they listen to is mainstream, pop or rock and this is very much like old Weeknd and that’s a pretty niche style of music,” he said. “So, we will see how that goes, but I’m very excited.”