Taylor Felt on the Rise
Cover Story | written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER
ONE THOUSAND PERCENT. You’ll hear it regularly from 24-year-old pop singer/songwriter Taylor Felt. A Darien native who now lives in LA, she peppers her conversation with it, exudes it too. And it’s actually very fitting. She’s so all in, with everything. But then, she always has been, starting at 2 years old when she first sang along to the karaoke machine her aunt gave her and continuing now with her nearly 3 million Tik Tok followers, 311,000 Instagram followers, 97k more on her YouTube channel, multiple releases, a collab with Jaden Smith (yes, that’s her with him on the original soundtrack of the movie “Life in a Year”), regular live performances and ongoing requests for her songwriting talents.
“That’s the way she was born, to be a singer,” recalled Chris, Taylor’s mom.
“It was woven into my DNA,” agreed Taylor matter-of-factly of her dream to sing, though no one in the family before her was particularly musical. (“I can’t even tap my foot,” joked Chris.)
Oblivious to convention in honoring that dream, Chris is VP in charge of her daughter’s back and she is as fierce, forthright and fearless in watching it as she is in assisting Taylor with whatever she needs to make her way—including purple hair at 12 years old, home schooling from 8th grade on to fit in all the auditions and, instead of college, moving to Los Angeles at 19 years old to sing.
“We had to figure it out. There was no other choice for her,” said Chris of the non-traditional path she and her husband Ken, a Darien native himself, had to craft to help Taylor pursue her dream, balancing it with raising Taylor’s three younger brothers, giving them the space, freedom and what they needed to dream as big and authentically as their sister—all while running the irrigation company they own.
KC, at 22, is the oldest of the Felt brothers. He is a videographer and VFX specialist who moved to LA with Taylor after graduating from high school. A “self-taught startup junkie,” as Taylor calls him, he masters a skill then quickly moves on. He does her videos and her Twitch livestreams (the girl’s a gamer too) and teases her back to center when her world slides off key. He recently launched a video game company with two friends from Darien. His brother Hunter, 21, a rising senior at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, is studying digital animation and works with him on some of their projects. He dreams of a career in video game development and handles his sister’s animation and artwork as well. The youngest brother, Ryan, former star of KC’s first videos and Taylor’s dance partner on the nursing home circuit when he was 5 years old, is 18. He played lacrosse and football at Darien High School and just transferred to Elon University to study sports management and communication. He and Hunter, with KC, hold down the fort of no filter for their sister, a place where goofy reigns and the seriousness of “making it in the music industry” takes a break.
“My family is my safe space, my backbone, my anchor to myself,” said Taylor.
Taylor and her brothers in Darien. clockwise from left: KC, Hunter, Ryan, Taylor / photo by Chris Felt
Chris wants her kids’ dreams because they want them. For Taylor, that meant going to every studio session and audition with her when she was growing up, staging video shoots, hiring producers, overseeing managers, running lines and reviewing contracts with the lawyer they hired when Taylor was 14 years old.
Chris still flies regularly to LA for meetings, to troubleshoot and give Taylor the support she has always counted on. She manages her schedule remotely from Connecticut and helped her put together the creative team she’s been making songs with for over four years (which is nearly unheard of in the normally very transactional music industry).
Still, Chris would walk away from the dream in less than a heartbeat if Taylor ever changed her mind about it. And Taylor knows it.
“She was never living vicariously through me in any way,” said Taylor of her mom. “She’s just always spoken so much greatness into me beginning at such a young age. She also made me feel like even if I didn’t do music tomorrow, I would still suffice as a person. That is so woven into my identity,” continued Taylor. “There is no ‘I’ll be proud when you do that.’ It’s ‘I’m proud of you right now. You are enough right now,’” said Taylor of her parents. “You don’t have to be like everyone else to be enough, to be cool. You are enough as whatever you are. If you like something that isn’t normal, you are not not normal,” she continued of the self-certainty she learned from her parents.
For Taylor and her parents, it was never about “winning,” at least not in the way we usually think about it. It still isn’t. Her parents taught her that winning comes from trying, from the courage to try.
“Every time I went on audition, it was a win,” said Taylor.
“Just putting out music and posting something online is a win,” added Chris. “It doesn’t matter if you get a thousand views or one view. You put yourself out there. You are brave. Just doing it is a win.”
It is about gratitude, and living in the moment.
Taylor’s Creative Family, the crew she’s been with for more than four years. from left: ALXi, André “Dré” Pinckney, Taylor Felt, Ben Suarez, Deion Gill / photo by Sylvain L’Amo
“Sometimes we’re just trying to improve and be better and we’re not celebrating the now,” said Taylor. “I think that’s something we always need to be doing, celebrating the now,” she continued. It’s what she and her mom did after every audition, finding a new restaurant to try, some way to keep it fun.
“I can sometimes be hard on myself and put a lot of pressure on myself to excel at a high level,” said Taylor, “but my dad always reminds me that having fun is the whole point. Seeing someone have fun is infectious. He reminds me to not take life too seriously and always enjoy the moment,” she added, describing the messages he sends her before any big performance.
Besides, they learned the misses only made her stronger.
“You want the rejection because that makes you strong,” said Chris. “The music industry is really hard. You have to take your punches and bounce back. If you want to do it, you have to go for it. No matter what. People will compliment you then never call. People will reject you,” she continued. “You have to stay true to yourself, be resilient, believe in yourself. Be fearless, take risks, go for your dreams,” she added.
“…and you’ve got to know the rejection is not personal,” said Taylor. “You have to just surrender to it and be like you know what? I tried my best. If I don’t hear back, it’s all good. You show up, and you do your best. That’s all that matters,” she continued.
That, and hard, focused work.
Taylor has been performing live nearly her entire life / photo by Niko Mani
At 4, Taylor was putting her own words to those songs on her karaoke machine. By 7, she’d started acting classes because acting was a path to a singing career. She was also writing original songs. At 8, she began piano lessons with local instructor Matt Areson, agreeing to learn classical music only if it would help her with her pop songwriting and singing. That was the same year Beverly Lambert took her on though she had been adamant in her refusal to work with a student as young as Taylor when Taylor’s acting teacher called to plead her case.
Beverly is among the top vocal coaches in the country, arriving at teaching by way of career marked by leading roles in musicals and operas worldwide including Carnegie Hall, Broadway and the New York City Opera where she was handpicked by Beverly Sills for the role of Fiona in “Brigadoon” and starred in a production of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” which was broadcast on “Live from Lincoln Center” by PBS. Her students have gone on to starring roles in a range of plays locally and beyond.
The acting teacher persisted. Beverly relented, though continuing to insist she would not teach Taylor until her vocal chords had matured, which happens typically in the teen years.
“And then she comes in all dressed up and professional, talking like an adult, telling me how committed she is to pursuing a career in music and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to take this girl because I don’t want her to end up with anybody else who’s going to ruin her voice,’” recalled Beverly laughing fondly at the memory of that very young, very earnest Taylor. “I just knew that this was somebody really special,” she added.
Beverly also saw Taylor had the drive it would take to get where she was aiming. “That’s the thing that singles her out from a lot of the people I teach,” she said.
Taylor filmed her first YouTube video at 9 years old and has posted regularly since—a mix of covers and original songs. At 11, she won a spot in the Darien Young Composers competition with a song she wrote and performed solo, accompanying herself on the piano in front of a full auditorium. (Nearly every other contestant had someone else on stage with them.) At 12, she recorded in a studio for the first time.
Chris’s sister Marina Spau, Taylor and Chris on one of their countless trips to LA while Taylor was growing up
By middle school, Taylor was traveling regularly to New York City for auditions on Broadway, in student productions, at Disney and also Nickelodeon. Every other month, she flew with her mom and aunt to LA for other tryouts. Though an eager student, she left the Darien School System and was home schooled starting in 8th grade and through high school to fit it all in. She didn’t love separating from her peers, she just loved the music more.
At 14, she had her own two-hour show at the Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport. At 15, she won Darien’s Got Talent. Through it all she kept training, improving, writing, posting, auditioning, entering every competition that came her way, performing every chance she got, grinding toward her dream.
“I knew that there was nothing to stop Taylor from developing into a really good singer, and, not only did she do that, but she surpassed my expectations,” said Beverly who still works with Taylor once a week via Zoom from her Fairfield, CT studio. “She just kept growing and growing and growing. She also has that ability to deliver a song. Some singers have a good voice but they can’t deliver. (With Taylor), the package is amazing. She knows how to dress and how to put everything together,” she continued.
Taylor and Chris credit Beverly, and the other musicians who taught Taylor, for her success.
“I was brought up by really talented musicians,” said Taylor.
“They all pushed her,” added Chris. People tend to push people who are good.
Vocal coach Beverly Lambert (left) with Taylor in her Fairfield, CT studio
“There’s nobody out there that sings as well as she does. She can do anything with her voice,” said Beverly. “I really think that once she gets out there and people start hearing her, there’s going be a lot of that kind of talk about her.”
But it’s not just her voice, her look or her ability to deliver a song: This young woman has something to say. A lot actually. Mining her life, she writes songs that are confident, assertive and hopeful, willing her listeners to learn what she’s learned, to appreciate the light that comes through the cracks when things fracture. She learns from her mistakes, from the bad stuff and moves forward, better for it. She knows to do that.
In her recent song “i hope u heal,” written for Chris as she struggled with two bouts of cancer and major complications from knee replacement surgery, you can hear her vulnerability and her hope for her mom (who has since recovered).
“I’m so grateful to have been raised by such a strong, relentless woman, but I wanted to let her know that she doesn’t have to hurt in silence,” said Taylor.
It’s a beautiful song born of the power Taylor finds in honesty with self – the kind that allows her to break free of destructive relationships and self-doubt (not that she has much of that), to turn pain into wisdom, joy and ultimately some damn good songs. That’s what you feel in her music. That’s what you get from being as self-aware and as certain of self as Taylor is with the kind of family she has beneath her wings.
Is Taylor Felt poised to lift off? You could easily say she already has. But will she fill stadiums? One thousand percent.
