ON her eagerly anticipated Atlantic debut, “DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS,” Leslie Mills fully justifies the buzz that began circulating long before the album’s completion. The 12-song collection reveals a striking, one-of-a-kind voice and a fresh, distinctive songwriting talent, as well as an unmistakably charismatic presence that marks Leslie as a star in the making.
“DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS” reflects the remarkable range of Mills’s talents, merging melodic sophistication, emotional insight, and pure pop bliss. Her persuasively soulful vocals and magnetic songcraft are given state-of-the-art production on tracks which range from the assertiveness of “Making My Way” and “Walk Along,” to the celebratory abandon of “Radiowave” and the title track, to the poignant intimacy of “Violet” and “Far from All the Tears.”
“I’m really excited to be able to get these songs out,” says Leslie, “because I think they’re talking about things that people can relate to. I’m always on some kind of search and trying to figure things out, and I think that there’s hope in these songs. But there are also some loose, fun songs on the record that are purely about having a good time, because that’s an important part of life too.”
“DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS” is the product of a lengthy creative gestation that incorporated the talents of a variety of musicians and producers, and which found the album evolving into a deeply personal statement whose introspective observations resonate as strongly as its melodic hooks.
“This project has gone through a lot of changes, and it’s ended up being a very different album than it started out to be,” Leslie explains. “I’m definitely not the same artist—or the same person—that I was when I started it. It was kind of an experimental process, figuring out what I really cared about, musically and in life. I went through a lot of internal struggles making the album, and those experiences come through in the songs. Through learning more about myself, my writing started to change. I changed a lot, and the world changed, and what’s gone on in the world has filtered down into how I look at my own life and my own relationships. I think it’s been that way for a lot of people, and I think that that’s reflected in the songs. It’s been an intense process, but I’m really grateful for having gone through it.”
Leslie’s talents have already been widely recognized by her peers and throughout the music industry, as evidenced by her recent worldwide publishing deal with Paul McCartney’s MPL Tunes, Inc.—the company’s first-ever signing of a contemporary artist. To have Paul McCartney say ‘You’re a wonderful writer and you’ve got a great voice’ is kind of surreal,” Leslie notes. “It didn’t really hit me until much later what an intense thing that is.” Mills is in good company on the MPL roster, which in addition to McCartney includes such classic tunesmiths as Harold Arlen, John Barry, Sammy C Cahn, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Cash, Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Roy Orbison, Mel Torme, and Carl Perkins.
Her songwriting and performing abilities have also been employed in a variety of extracurricular projects. She recently wrote Peter Cetera’s single, “Just Like Love,” and recorded the song “Good Life” for the film White Oleander, which was also used in the opening credits and featured on the soundtrack of What A Girl Wants. Her track, “On My Own,” was nominated for a Daytime Emmy award for Best Original Song, after being featured in the long-running daytime drama Guiding Light.
Songs have always played a major role in Leslie’s life. Raised in a musical family in her hometown of Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, she began performing at the age of three, spending her formative years studying piano and dance, acting in community and school theatre, and honing her writing skills. After high school, the free-spirited young woman moved west in pursuit of independence. “I landed in California with no money, no place to stay, and a smile from ear to ear, because I was so excited to start my life on my own,” she says.
After a stint working odd jobs and studying theatre, Leslie satisfied an urge to travel. She packed a few bags and drove around the country, eventually taking a job in Yellowstone National Park. It was there that she met a pair of young musicians, Brent Morgan and Brad Nagle, and had a personal revelation. “Sitting around one night in Wyoming with a couple of guitars, we wrote a great song,” she recalls. “I had always been singing, but that night I realized the strength and power of my voice.”
The three budding musicians left Yellowstone together and started a band, To The Moon Alice, which recorded a demo and almost immediately won a deal with A&M Records. The new combo hit the road, touring extensively on the festival and college circuits and landing a slot on the HORDE tour. As Mills remembers, “Something just went off in me, like, ‘Okay, this is what I’m meant to be doing.’ It was really like a fairy tale, just getting in the van and traveling around the country playing music. I really learned a lot in that band and got a lot of experience playing live, going from playing to 50 people to thousands of people, in every kind of venue imaginable.”
But when A&M was folded into the Universal Music Group, the band lost its record deal before it could release an album. By that point, Leslie’s musical aspirations had grown to the point where she knew that she wanted to launch a solo career and perform her own music.
The ambitious artist’s new material quickly reached receptive ears. She built an impressive catalogue of original compositions and began showcasing for major record labels, motion picture companies, talent agencies, and music publishers in New York and Los Angeles, leading to her current deals with Atlantic and MPL, and with the booking agency CAA.
At the suggestion of her manager, Janice Roeg, Leslie took a trip to Nashville to try out some songwriting collaborations. She found a warm welcome in that town’s songwriting community, working with several different writers and developing a durable rapport with Chris Pelcer. The Australian songsmith became a long-term collaborator and co-wrote all of the songs on “DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS.” Leslie now makes Nashville her home.
In the evolution of “DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS,” Mills worked with such noted producers as Jimmy Bralower, David Kahne, Kevin Kadish, Shane Keister, and John Shanks, in various locales including New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, and London. She earned co-producer credits on many of the album’s tracks, and in the process, learned some valuable lessons about her own talents and goals.
“It’s been thrilling watching this whole thing unfold,” says Leslie. “It was really intense, and sometimes it could get scary. But I’m grateful for it, because I learned so much about myself and connected with my own instincts and became stronger. When I started out, I didn’t really trust my instincts, and maybe looked to other people for answers more often than I should have. But I learned to go with my gut and speak up for myself, because it’s my album and I want to be able to stand behind it.”
With the arduous but rewarding process that produced “DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS” having yielded such compelling results, Leslie is eager to bring the fruits of her labor to the public, who seem certain to recognize their own lives in the songs’ messages of positivity and perseverance.
“Music’s always been my expression and my therapy,” Leslie states. “I’m actually a pretty private person, but when I’m writing songs I can speak about what’s really going on deep within myself. I’m kind of a dreamer, but I’m also a believer with a lot of hope that things can get better, and that’s something that I’d like to communicate.
“I feel so blessed and fortunate that I’ve been given all this time to develop and to discover who I really am, and I’m a stronger person and a better artist for that. I know more about myself and what I want to do, and now I’m ready to express that to the world. I’ve never felt more ready.”
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