Daily Pulse

Music & Therapy: How Teddy Swims Found His Voice & Conquered The World

012725cv
Photo by Bryce Hall

A week and a half before the release of his Warner Records sophomore album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2), (due out Jan. 24) the charismatic, face-tattooed, multi–genre phenom with a rich baritone gracing soul, R&B, country and pop, known as Teddy Swims, says rather counterintuitively that he’s actually in therapy.

“I’m in love, I’m having a kid, I’m Grammy nominated, I’m in therapy – there’s a lot of unlearning and healing that I’ve done,” the 32-year-old tells Pollstar. “I’ve learned that vulnerability and honesty and openness and not living in fear all the time has saved my life and is such a blessing and it’s only brought blessings forward. Being open to blessings, they fall right in. I’m truly in charge of my happiness and my outlook – the way that you look at things is the way most of the time it’s going to be. And so my attitude toward life is completely shifted.”

We could all use that attitude shift, but Swims’ has taken him to the highest echelons of the music industry with a Best New Artist Grammy nom, his song “Lose Control” still in the Top 10 74 weeks after being released and an upcoming world tour that kicks off Feb. 11 in Dusseldorf, Germany, with arena stops that include two nights at the 12,500-capacity OVO Arena Wembley in London and closes out at Manchester’s Co-Op Live on March 16. Six days later he’ll make his South America debut at Lollapalooza Brazil, Chile and Argentina and Colombia’s Festival Estéreo Picnic. In May, he’ll start a 49-date North American run at mostly amphitheaters that also includes two Radio City plays, a Red Rocks show and a double at L.A’s. Greek Theatre.

teddyone
SOMETHIN’ ‘BOUT TEDDY: Teddy Swims performs at Dillon Amphitheater in Dillon, Colorado, on Sept. 8, 2024. Photo by Bryce Hall

Swims has steadily built his career on a foundation of being vulnerable and authentic while melding genres with a powerful, soulful voice that has a raspy quality that you wish you could pull out at karaoke. Born Jaten Collin Dimsdale in Conyers, Georgia (pop. 19,505), Swims’ Southern roots are evident in his vocals, warm personality and calling this journalist “ma’am” throughout our interview.

Swims’ winding and unique path took him from playing high school football to theater nerd, performing in productions of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Rent” after a teacher encouraged him to give musical theatre a try. It makes sense listening to his ability to emote, hit high notes or just belt it out. One has to wonder if he’s channeling his prior experiences, someone who feels things deeply or just reliving his theater glory days?

“Yeah, I think it is all the above, and just growing up on damn good music, man,” he says. “I was coming up singing when YouTube was really starting to be a thing. You could watch a live Marvin Gaye video or watch Al Green [perform] and be like, ‘Man, he’s really in that thing.’ Being able to watch live videos when I was coming up on YouTube [I’d examine] ‘What are they doing with their jaw? What is their face doing?’ I was able to really soak [that in] … and that helped me a lot too.”

Swims learned to play multiple instruments in high school including guitar, piano and ukulele and went on to perform in multiple Atlanta-based bands covering a range of genres, including alternative rock, soul, country, R&B and as the lead screamer in a metal band.

The Teddy Swims project (which takes its name from Swims’ childhood nickname and the internet acronym “Someone Who Isn’t Me Sometimes”) began in 2019 as a Soundcloud hip-hop project with Swims rapping over some beats that his friend Addy Maxwell had made.

“But it started to work,” manager Luke Conway says of Swims’ foray into pursuing a solo career. “It was the first time [Swims] wasn’t being the rock guy in a rock band, the country guy in a country band … he was being himself. He wasn’t conforming to a genre. It started working and it was very clear. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is the thing. It’s you – it’s not another version of a band that’s gonna work.”

Swims started posting covers on YouTube and that’s when things really kicked off, starting with his rendition of Michael Jackson’s 1979 smash “Rock with You” posted five years ago. Conway explains that Swims’ version exploded and went viral. “It did 10,000 views in the first few days or the first week,” he says. Swims’ team decided to focus on consistency with a cover posted on YouTube every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m, which fans coined “Teddy Tuesday.”

With the success of subsequent covers, including Shania Twain’s “You’re Still The One” and Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” Warner Records signed Swims at the end of 2019.

“It’s so cool to see that there’s kids out there now who are YouTubing Teddy Swims and learning exactly what I learned from my heroes that way,” Swims says. “And I get to meet those kids all the time who are just so pumped to see Teddy Swims … They’re so nervous to meet me and you’re just like, ‘Aw buddy, come here, man.’ It’s the sweetest thing ever.”

teddytwo
WITH CONTROL: Teddy Swims performs at Piedmont Hall in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Oct. 2, 2024.
Photo by Bryce Hall

After Swims accumulated hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, Conway explains that they didn’t want Swims to “be the cover guy” and so they focused on the strategy of Swims writing original music over and over and over. “He did three years of two, three sessions a day until he was at a place where his chops were figured out.”

Swims released several EPs between 2021 and 2022, during which time he collaborated with a number of artists including Thomas Rhett, Meghan Trainor and Illenium.

He signed with WME during COVID and once the world reopened “we’ve been full steam ahead on a global scale,” says his agent Stephen Schulcz. In addition to his own headline dates, Teddy Swims also built up his live presence with support slots including 2021 gigs with Zac Brown and a run of 2023 shows with Greta Van Fleet.

Later in 2023 he released his debut studio album, I’ve Tried Everything but Therapy (Part 1), which includes breakout hit “Lose Control.”

“The original mission of the [Teddy Swims] project was to bring all these different genres that Teddy was exploring in all these different bands he was in into one project. And I think ultimately we achieved that with ‘Lose Control,’” Conway says. “You know, ‘Lose Control’ is a pop song, it’s a rock song, it’s a country song, it’s an R&B song. There’s all of these elements to it.”

“Lose Control” has charted in multiple formats and on charts across the world, including Lebanon, Czech Republic, New Zealand and South Africa.

But Conway emphasizes that when “Lose Control” came out, it was not a viral sensation. The song’s success is proof of the team’s strategy when it comes to trusting their gut, being consistent and staying visible.

“It was not a song that really anyone in the world besides the core people on our team were paying attention to,” Conway says. “It wasn’t charting anywhere. But it was something that we were like ‘We’re going to work this until we’re told to stop.’ Every week we saw 1% growth, 2% growth. We’re talking 100,000 streams a day, 102,000 streams a day, 105. It was three months [of] waking up and doing radio interviews every morning, touring non-stop. I mean, we have not been off the road for more than four weeks in two years. We’ve just been consistently touring, being visible, and doing all the press and promo. … And that’s probably why it’s the longest climb from entering the charts to going No. 1 consecutively in Hot 100 history [at 32 weeks]. … We knew that song was a hit. We just had to force it to be.”

Warner Records Marketing Director Alexandra Chandler adds, “A big part of ‘Lose Control’ and its steady climb to the top of the charts was finding ways to authentically connect Teddy and this record with various audiences around the world, whether it was through stripped back social content, international busking moments, or through his robust global touring. We always say his fans are ages 8 to 80 as you will find his audience spanning multiple generations. We continue to keep that in mind in our overall marketing strategy to ensure we connect with each of these demographics.”

Chandler explains that when it came to the marketing strategy for I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1), Warner Records wanted to “showcase what Teddy does best, which is performing live.” To do that, Warner decided to release live performance videos for each track on the record.

She adds, “Teddy was inspired by themes of retrofuturism and movies like ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ We made it a point to build out the overall creative for the live performance set as well as album artwork within these themes/frameworks which became our throughline for Part 1 and Part 2. From a marketing and overall company perspective, this has been an intentional approach from the start.”

DSC01355
HIS KIND OF CRAZY: Teddy Swims performs at Soundside Music Festival in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Sept. 29, 2024.
Photo by Bryce Hall

Asked to describe Swims’ live show, Schulcz says he can sum it up in one word: captivating.

Swims’ time spent acting in high school musical theatre has stuck with him and serves him well as he commands a stage on tour. Swims says, “One thing theater’s really taught me about singing and about performing, I would say singing is, in my opinion, 80% acting. It’s about really feeling those notes and really feeling those words. You have to kind of put yourself back into the same place you were even if you’re singing a song about some girl that broke your heart four years ago that you completely moved on from. Sometimes it can hurt, but it’s so good to sometimes go back into that spot and really truly feel the whole feeling of it. And it can sometimes be a reminder [of] how much better on the other side of that heartbreak it is now.”

Another key component of what makes a Teddy Swims show so compelling is the connection between the singer/songwriter and his backing band, Freak Freely. The group features Jairus Hardge on piano, Jesse Hampton on guitar, Addy Maxwell on guitar, Christian Griswold on bass and DeAndre Hemby on drums – a few of whom he’s known since childhood.

“I’ve been really close to those guys for a really long time,” Swims says. “And I think they’re truly the best band in the world. They’re a bunch of Georgia boys and church boys, too. And, some of the best musicians in the world … And so I think it’s us who are Teddy Swims, not [just] me.”

Swims’ first tour coming out of COVID was in North American venues around 1,000 capacity. That was followed by 2- to 3,000-capacity rooms in 2023. Schulcz explains that the team has made a concerted effort to play major markets as well as secondary markets, which developed his presence around the nation and established hard ticket value in markets that some artists may never visit.

Globally, Australia and New Zealand have always been a strong territory for Swims, which just might be traced back to the early days when Swims and Conway were working day jobs and would then get on Facebook late at night as admins on the Teddy Swims page to interact with fans who were engaging with his videos – including fans Down Under who were chatting during the daytime on their side of the globe.

In July 2024 Swims headed to Australia and New Zealand to play the biggest headline dates of his career including a July 6 show at Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand that sold 10,337 tickets and grossed $584,759 ($NZ $952,842).

“We have been investing in all of these markets from day one,” Conway says. “I think there’s a lot of artists who are like, ‘Let’s not go to these territories until we can afford to go to these territories.’ Fortunately for us, we built business models and forms of business that we really invested in that were highly profitable so that we could invest and lose money (laughs) to go to Europe and lose money to go to Australia and lose money to go to Asia.”

Conway adds, “So, the U.K. is a great example of how we invest in a market. We went to the U.K. nearly 10 times last year and just kept going back, doing promo and playing shows. … To be as a soul artist and the kind of music that he makes we’ve always wanted it to be global and to be influenced by all different cultures around the world and it’s really amazing to see how quickly just the wildest places in the world have picked up and loved Teddy.”

When Conway spoke to Pollstar he and Swims were rehearsing in Pennsylvania in preparation for Swims’ first major arena tour in Europe. The trek starts Feb. 11 in Dusseldorf, Germany, at Mitsubishi Electric HALLE. In addition to two nights at OVO Arena Wembley, Swims is playing doubles at Utilita Arena Birmingham, Co-Op Live in Manchester and 3Arena in Dublin, along with stops in Paris, Amsterdam, Zürich and more.

“It’s really real proof that taking the right steps and building a touring career works,” Schulcz says. “South America in March, Teddy will be going down as part of the Lollapalooza run, which will be the first time that he’ll be in South America, and we expect those performances to be a great catalyst to continue the growth in that region.”

Swims returns to North America in May for a stretch of dates that runs through September. Schulcz points out that the North American dates could have also been in arenas but the team didn’t want to skip places like New York’s Radio City Music Hall in New York and Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre. Another significant double is two hometown shows in Atlanta at Cadence Bank Amphitheatre At Chastain Park Aug. 12-13.

The 2025 tour will feature a brand new stage design with upgraded production, along with backing vocalists. As Swims puts it: “It’s going to be just a whole new elevation and wonderful time.”

Schulcz adds, “I think what Teddy and the rest of the team have done thus far is create a show that keeps people coming back and wanting more. And in doing so, there’s going to be additional elements to both the stage production and the people on stage that will just further that narrative of what will Teddy Swims do next?”

FREE Daily Pulse Subscribe