Gigi Perez will never forget the first self-produced song that she wanted to share with the world. \u201cPlease Be Rude,\u201d which she finished last year, was far from her first bedroom demo, but the strummed, slightly lilting meditation on intimate relationship moments felt different to Perez \u2014 \u201clike I had cracked the code on my taste,\u201d as she puts it.<\/p>\n
In just five short years, the New Jersey-born, Florida-raised singer-songwriter had already experienced the highs and lows of the music industry: A viral moment in early 2021, when the grief-stricken \u201cCelene,\u201d about her older sister who had died the year before, landed Perez an Interscope Records deal. Yet her 2023 debut EP arrived to little fanfare, and Interscope released her from her deal later that year. When Perez sent \u201cPlease Be Rude\u201d to her friends for feedback in 2024, she knew they were worried about her: \u201cThey hoped that I would be OK, and rightfully so,\u201d the 25-year-old says.<\/p>\n
More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n While at Interscope, Perez worked with outside producers, but she felt disconnected from her songs during the studio sessions; newly independent, however, she decided to once again stay hands-on, setting up her roommate\u2019s TV as a makeshift monitor, learning production tips from YouTube and Reddit and ultimately reigniting her creative spark. \u201cIt became my motivation every single day to get up and to get on Ableton,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I found this obsession that I hadn\u2019t felt since I started writing music.\u201d<\/p>\n Perez credits that experience with solidifying her sonic identity \u2014 and it yielded a commercial breakthrough. After self-releasing \u201cPlease Be Rude\u201d in May 2024, \u201cSailor Song,\u201d an ode to queer longing that Perez had teased on TikTok, followed in July and became a top\u00a040 pop smash, peaking at No.\u00a022 and spending 39 weeks on the Billboard Hot\u00a0100<\/a>. \u201cSailor Song\u201d landed Perez a new label deal with Island Records and appeared on her debut album, At the Beach, in Every Life, which Island released in April; Perez is a credited producer on all 12 tracks and produced three songs, including \u201cPlease Be Rude,\u201d by herself.<\/p>\n At a time when organic TikTok hits remain a fast track to major-label clout, countless unknown artists with access to production software and how-to videos are now using Perez\u2019s blueprint. While plenty of pop acts discovered on TikTok are paired with professional producers once they join label rosters, others have stuck with the DIY approach that got them that far \u2014 and have scored crossover hits with self-made singles. Meanwhile, pop superstars from Taylor Swift to Gracie Abrams to Charli\u00a0xcx have increasingly been credited as co-producers on their songs, scoring hits with their fingerprints on every part of their track.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s authentic, straight from me,\u201d says sombr, the 20-year-old alt-pop dynamo whose self-produced singles \u201cBack to Friends\u201d and \u201cUndressed\u201d have been concurrent top\u00a040 Hot\u00a0100 hits for multiple months this year. Born Shane Boose, sombr was introduced to GarageBand at the end of elementary school, and figuring out how to layer tracks and harmonies quickly dominated his free time. As he moved on to YouTube tutorials and Logic Pro\u00a0X in middle school and started thinking about music as a professional path in high school, he says he never considered relying upon another producer for his work.<\/p>\n \u201cMy songs will never be chasing something or come from a \u2018hit-making factory,\u2019\u00a0\u201d sombr adds. \u201cIt\u2019s just me in my room, making stuff that I want to hear and based off what I feel. And that\u2019s why it works in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Bedroom producers, sombr<\/p>\n For his upcoming Warner Records debut album, sombr says he will write and produce each song at home, finish \u201c50 to 70%\u201d of the track and then bring them to Sound City Studios in Los Angeles for \u201cfinishing touches\u201d with his co-producer, Tony Berg. For sombr, beginning a production in a bedroom and then taking it to a professional studio provides an expanded tool kit to accentuate his original idea. \u201cWhen I first got into a real studio, I suddenly had access to so many different instruments, microphones, pedals,\u201d sombr says. \u201cI learned a lot about the more traditional way of recording music, and my whole world opened up.\u201d<\/p>\n For artists to understand how to use that wider palette, it helps to have the right professional support, as sombr does with Berg. During her Interscope days, Perez says she felt compelled to help produce her songs but didn\u2019t yet have the studio know-how to assist her collaborators. For At the Beach, in Every Life, however, she worked with two main co-producers, Noah Weinman (aka indie-rock artist Runnner) and Aidan Hobbs, as well as a mixer, Matt Emonson, who all encouraged her to ask questions in the studio and helped draw out her vision for the album.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really grateful that I have a team that\u2019s been able to teach me \u2014 that builds your confidence,\u201d Perez says. \u201cI could be vulnerable enough to be like, \u2018I don\u2019t know what that is.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, artificial intelligence is fast becoming a trusted studio collaborator, too. As modern music-making increasingly integrates AI, more artists will turn to tools that streamline their solo productions \u2014 from stem separators and vocal changers that can tweak existing tracks to sample creators and full-song generators that replicate the entire creative process.<\/p>\n Perez says she\u2019s open to learning more about the assistive ways in which AI can be used, but she\u2019s skeptical that production or songwriting can be one of them. \u201cWe already struggle with connection,\u201d she says, \u201cand I think the deeper that technology inserts itself into a part of human existence, it\u2019s going to be harder and harder for us to connect to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know that I am considered to be a young person, but I think I am old-fashioned in the way I like to make music,\u201d sombr says. \u201cI like real instruments, real voices and a song with a bridge. I agonize over lyrics. I really have no interest in AI and how it relates to music.\u201d<\/p>\n And even if shrugging off AI tools makes a production process more painstaking, Perez says the journey is just as important as the finished product. She looks back on her time between major labels and as a production novice as essential to her becoming the artist she is today. \u201cIt was an experiment and an adventure,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel grateful that I could commit to waking up every day and seeing it through.\u201d<\/p>\n This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gigi Perez will never forget the first self-produced song that she wanted to share with the world. \u201cPlease Be Rude,\u201d which she finished last year, was far from her first bedroom demo, but the strummed, slightly lilting meditation on intimate relationship moments felt different to Perez \u2014 \u201clike I had cracked the code on my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1960461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[314415,345029,344779,22437],"class_list":["post-1960460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-billboard-hot-100","tag-gigi-perez","tag-interscope-records","tag-music-industry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/For-Artists-Like-Sombr-and-Gigi-Perez-Self-Producing-Is-\u2018An.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1960460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1960460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1960461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1960460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1960460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1960460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n