Brianna Musco decided during the pandemic that she wasn’t going to sit back and let her career resume when it ended. Instead, she looked at ways to keep her audience engaged and during that process has created some of her best work to date.
I then asked her a question that would lead to something else. I asked if she could hit a jump shot in a video, a 6.24 mile, or a 13:04 in a two-mile run. She laughed and said, “Those mile times were from a few years ago (2014). Honest to god, I have a better chance of running that mile than hitting a jump shot.”
I was on to something. Her video “Nobody Needs to Know” tells a great story, but it leaves out one thing. Musco has good cross-over dribbling skills, but there was no way her shot was falling. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a hunch and did some digging.
“You know how you pay a photographer by the hour? As we were filming that, I asked if I could pay for the day when I tried to get the one shot in,” she admitted. “When I tell you there was a magnet, and not in the rim. Life is a game of chance. There’s no way I miss that many shots in a row, right? Good shooters keep shooting, and even worse shooters think they should keep shooting.”
She then talked about the song,” Instrumentally the way that he used the guitar samples and everything, I was like Let’s Go! I wrote the song in one day, which never happens. Sitting on the couch in Newcastle (England), I needed a few hours on the couch, and this is arguably one of my favorite songs on the new EP. It deals with anxieties and using different coping mechanisms like grounding and a sense of touch.”
Musco then talked about her producer.
“Newcastle is where my producer lives. We record right out of his house. We record in a studio room, and he has a bed. It’s the safest I’ve ever felt. I’m at peace, and no idea is a bad idea. Sometimes as a female musician it’s difficult to speak up and offer ideas. And Nick Mavromatis makes me feel like an equal.”
Mavromatis lives with a metal band so maybe, just maybe, Musco will write a metal song one day with them. That would be cool.
When you run your own business, her in music, me in my writing career, everything falls on you. All the costs, all the time management, all of the execution, and it’s your reputation. She has been shouldering that load with the help of her team.
Musco has a great love for music and Fantasy Football. We talked about that for a while. I gave her a bit of advice last season that was good.
“I don’t know who my quarterback is going to be yet,” Musco sighed. “I might call you during the draft. I gave her my sleeper pick but won’t place it here, or else someone in her family might steal it since they make up her league. Every year tight end is a black hole for me. I gave my suggestion there as well.”
She loves sports but also loves laughing at the New York Jets. She’s not alone, but she explained her position.
“My dad has been a Jets fan since the beginning. Football season is the best time of the year. We’re Italian, and we have Sunday dinners,” Musco said painting a picture. “Sunday is football. We all gather around the television in the living room to watch my dad yell at the Jets. It’s very comedic. He yells at stupid stuff they do that no other NFL team does.
“We’re always laughing our assess off, and it’s never mean spirited. He’s a football guy. Frank was named “The Best Quarterback of the Century” from my old high school, Pascack Hills (in New Jersey). We were in the living room during the Curtis Martin years, Vinny Testaverde and all of it. I’m personally a Cowboys fan. My brother had Madden, I would never play it with him, and when he wasn’t around, I would play it and do a quick start, and it started as the Cowboys, and I didn’t know how to switch the team, so that’s why.”
Her new EP will be out soon.
“The way I wrote the songs were stripped down. In January or February, I will release a stripped version, probably live in Lakehouse Studio at Asbury Park.”
She has gotten into piano and started playing a riff for me. It’s a new sound for her, and it’s working. I have a good feeling about the new EP already.
