Michael J. Woodard
Musician
Michael J Woodard is ready to reintroduce himself. “This is the first thing people will hear from me in terms of a body of work,” he says of his debut EP, MJW1, which comes out January 12 on Katy Perry’s label Unsub Records. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter and producer has performed on national TV and the country’s grandest stages, and now he fully presents his artistic vision of what he calls “the journey and the battle of love” on tracks like the plush single “Ruined.” Woodard flips the idea of pop inside out in thrilling ways, even as he’s grappling with complex emotions—and the seven tracks on MJW1 show those who might know him from his past time in the spotlight how his voice has evolved.
MJW1 is full of moments that display Woodard’s talent and widescreen view of what pop can be. The surrealistic “Face,” which he says is about “the emotions that we see on our face and how troubled it can be putting feelings into words,” matches its fragmented lyrics with an unconventional structure that veers from acoustic folk to soul. The glittery “24 Hours” is Woodard’s love letter to the breezily danceable pop of the early 2010s, a time crucial to his development as a songwriter and music fan.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Woodard realized that music was his future at age five. “My mom heard me singing when she was giving me a bath,” he recalls, “and she was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Michael can sing.’” He joined his church choir, where he began cultivating his keen sense for harmonic theory; soon he and his mother were spending their weekends road-tripping to New York City for auditions and opportunities.
That perseverance paid off: By the time he was 13, he’d sung at a rally for President Barack Obama in Philadelphia and at the U.S. Open in New York, while winning talent competitions at Harlem’s storied Apollo Theater. The teenage Woodard plunged deeper into music, honing his voice and producing at his home studio. After moving to Los Angeles to study at the Musicians Institute, he attended an audition that wound up being for the rebooted American Idol.
Woodard was not only beloved by Idol’s fanbase during his run on the show’s 16th season; he caught the ear of judge and pop megastar Katy Perry, who was clearly captivated by his talent. “People watching the show would say, ‘Did you see the way Katy was looking at you? When you sang that song, did you see the way she cried?’” he recalls. Woodard finished in that season’s top five—and once the show wrapped, Perry quickly acted on her instincts and signed him to her label, Unsub Records.
Woodard headed into the studio right after landing his record deal. “I went in there and I just felt it out, and then I started collaborating,” he says. “I would do writing days with producers and songwriters—I was really finding what the Michael J sound was going to be, and what I wanted the world to hear.” When the pandemic hit, Woodard kept working, developing his craft and writing songs that ended up on MJW1 and using the time to further figure out who he was as an artist.
Take the tension-filled “Hems,” co-written with production trio Suburban Plaza (Joji, Jackson Wang), which sounds like it’s about to fall apart as Woodard rues a relationship where “we fell in love / Now we’re just stuck in mess” with stunning vocal harmonies that add to the song’s agitation. “We had the melody and we had the lyric after writing it,” he recalls. Then he went to work, incorporating the lessons he’d learned in church and his home-recording years while crafting a massive stacked vocal. “I was in there maybe for an hour and a half or two hours, and it was just me, singing everything that was on my mind when it comes to all the different harmonies and layers,” he says. “It was literally just me exploding.”
Working with Suburban Plaza as well as Social House (Ariana Grande), Phinisey, and Goldspace, Woodard shows off his vocal and stylistic range on tracks that experiment with form and play with sonic details, bringing his raw talent and innate knowledge of music’s workings to the fore. “Putting together this body of work is a testament to who I’ve become in the last years,” he says. “This is what I’m giving to people so they can see where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and who I am. That’s what drove me to call it MJW1—really, it’s an introduction to me as an artist and who I am.”
