Hayes is setting the tone as an upcoming artist and changing the game as a rising pop artist as a New York City native. Just like in her native city, she brings the hustle and energy that fans love about her. Hayes has edgy yet relatable and lyrical eye candy like her inspiration like P!nk, Joan Jett, Ke$ha, and Avril Lavigne. Her passion for music rose at the young age of fourteen and was recorded at the age of sixteen. While a college student at Northwestern University as a Business major, she wrote and recorded songs during her free time. Warner is a Tiktok influencer, and she has grown over 40K followers organically and has been able to reach one million views in 2022. Her first recorded songs, “Like You’re In Mine” and Messy, had hundreds of thousands of streams and views, which led to her being notably featured on playlists such as Spotify. Because of her talents, she’s been able to be the opening act for Fetty Wap during his tour. Along with performing at Jonas Entertainment’s showcase in Las Vegas intertwined with the iHeartRadio Music Festival. Her dream performing location is Madison Square Garden. Knowingly she’s been there for many concerts and games and manifested being a performer while attending events.
Although Hayes has an edgy pop vocal that is very energetic for the crowd to bop to, she wants her fans to have the message as an artist that life is messy and loves to be honest with what she writes because there is a chance someone is going through that situation and that allows connections to make with them. “The more specific the details are, the more authentic the story feels, and somehow, the more I can relate. I want to focus on creating this same type of dynamic in my own music.” She was inspired by her music idols, which allowed her to have no-nonsense attitude to their music and their identity as artists. Although they are edgy, their lyrics have brought meaningful meanings to their audience. Her most recent inspirations are UPSAHL and Fletcher, which ranges different sides of emotions, which is what she wants to emulate.
The inspiration for SHUT UP came from a situation she had experienced a few days before she wrote about where she saw one of her best friends flirting at the bar with her crush, and one moment she said shut up as she was eavesdropping on their conversation which led her to want to write about it as a song so she can have a song that speaks on the beginning stages of flirting and being giddy. And her song Airport was about an experience that happened to her after a long-distance breakup. She realizes at the moment being at the airport, he wasn’t picking her up as their usual routine, and being at the airport brought emotions that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel and had suppressed. Her reality was she had a grieving moment at the airport.
The beginning of the journey of touring with Fetty WAP led her booking agent to call her as she was graduating from college as it was graduation day for her, and she was late to the ceremony and was upset about it. She ran across campus to get on time but stopped in the middle of campus to read, “You booked Fetty.” Opening for Fetty was a huge pinch-me moment for her. She’s been the biggest fan, and it was a dream getting to sing along to his songs backstage during his set which led to learning a lot from the performance. The energy he provided everything was contagious. Being around Fetty was fun to watch him interact with the crowd. Even with his well know famous lyrics, he always added an extra layer of passion to his performance that would have the crowd jumping. The tips he had given her were to follow her gut about the songs she believes in and stay true to her sound because when he played trap queen for people, the feedback was mediocre when it led to being a successful song in his career. After learning everything about Fetty’s journey, audience, and music, she hopes to collaborate with P!NK, a creative inspiration for her since she was as young as she can remember. Based on the impression given to her, she has an amazing ability to grow as a person and artist together. She seems like an amazing mother. As a fan, working with her in the studio would be an incredible learning experience due to her ability to put new elements of her life into her music.
Life and classroom experience from college enhanced her songwriting abilities. It gave her more life context for songwriting, along with learning the business side of the music industry and how it goes from the recording studio to the distributor and onto streaming platforms. In college, she took any experience opportunity to expose her learning and talents. She ran a student-led record label, worked at the bar at a jazz club, interned at SONY Music, and stayed updated with music news.
Her advice for college students who want to pursue music but don’t know how to take that is to collaborate with the network of talented student producers, artists, and musicians on campus and collaborate. The space allows those with a common goal to collaborate and produce work. Performing at college was a huge part of helping to form a fanbase of other students who supported her music. She performed at every acapella concert, student improv, or fundraiser, and her support systems were her classmates and friends because the college offered live performance opportunities with built-in audiences.
She just performed a headline show at Mercury Lounge on April 26th and her full unreleased EP. She’ll be opening for Lewis Capaldi’s show in Dubai. Then she will be opening for a few other of his following dates and is grateful for the opportunity being she is a huge fan of Lewis Capaldi.
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Meet Your New Favorite Pop Star, Hayes Warner. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hayes Warner.
