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- February 22, 2023
Dean Lewis Paves “The Way of the Future” through Music and TikTok
Australian singer-songwriter Dean Lewis has been taking the global music charts by storm since the release of his 2016 hit single “Waves” and is only continuing to thrive with the release of his second album The Hardest Love this past November. The release of The Hardest Love follows an incredibly successful year for Dean, as his single “How Do I Say Goodbye” climbed international charts.
Throughout the whole period the world was holding still, waiting for life to return, Dean took to social media and became a catalyst and voice in the shift of social media and the music industry’s transition to their approach to marketing music. In this shift, his platform has grown as his talents have been showcased in a light that’s still fresh and new to the world we live in: The world of TikTok and short-form video.
In pumping out content to promote his music, rigorously, he found a surge of success; with a little luck, a lot of hard work, and, as he puts it “being relentless.”
I’m relentless. When things aren’t working out and people aren’t supporting you I go out and keep trying. And TikTok really changed the game for me. If you really think about it and really put your effort into it and are relentless, art will always find a way. There are still the gate-keepers, but the world online has helped us break through it with the right mindset…There is always a way if you’re relentless and never stop.
Since the surge to success, Dean Lewis has amassed over 20 million monthly streams on Spotify alone, with over 1.5 billion (yes, billion) on top single, “Be Alright.” Since then, he’s released a beautiful album, The Hardest Love. From hope to heartache and back again, The Hardest Love is “totally reflective of where I was in my life at that time,” Dean says. “It’s been a stressful few years… I don’t think I realized the pressure I was under because on the other side, man, I had nothing. I’d moved in with my grandma before I got a record deal. I had no money; on the verge of thinking that I had wasted all of the opportunities in my life.”
Dean spent much of 2022 on tour, selling out shows throughout the U.S., Europe, and the UK. He then returned home for the sold-out Australian leg of the Sad Boi Winter Summer global tour. Dean will be heading out on tour again this March, with the first show of The Future Is Bright Tour kicking off in Moore Park, Australia on March 10th! See the full tour dates below, and get your tickets here.
Discussing his favorite lyrics from the album, Dean Lewis commented:
It’d have to be from “How Do I Say Goodbye”:
So how do I say goodbye
To someone who’s been with me for my whole damn life?
You gave me my name and the color of your eyesThe lyrics and meaning are direct, about my father… and I feel right now that it will always be the best song I’ve written, for those reasons, and the story behind it…
When I write a song… it’s a selfish thing… It’s always about me and what I do and what I’m going through. It’s for me, really. And when it goes out, that’s when I release the meaning and give it out to you… You do it for you when you create the art but it’s only when you release and see it that you see the connections and gain the traction. When it becomes general, the song is nothing. It needs to be a selfish thing.
Listen to Dean Lewis’s newest album, The Hardest Love, now available on all streaming platforms:
