LOS ANGELES — It was only two years ago that Rence was strapped to a cinder block at the bottom of a swimming pool, all for the sake of a music video.
“That was crazy,” he says, remembering the shoot for “Sometimes Things Just Fall Apart," “It was so incredibly cold. I was freezing, kind of crying.”
That’s just one indication of his dedication. Born Jackson Hirsh, Rence spent his formative years at The Bush School in Seattle. He graduated from NYU a year early, where he became the subject of a student film called Blaring Through The Night.
In the film he says “What truly can make or break you is your commitment to something, and that means a literal commitment of time.”
Record labels came calling before graduation. Rence signed with Epic in the Summer of 2019.
“Epic, to be quite frank, provided me with the best path to a career as an artist, rather than a moment as an artist,” he says.
His duet with Noah Cyrus came out immediately. "Expensive" has more than 700-thousand YouTube views.
“That was certainly a big stepping-stone for me,” he says. “It's always been a process of keeping things moving. It's always been about momentum”
It wasn’t a radio hit, but Rence had started playing larger and larger venues until the pandemic sidelined his ability to play shows.
2020 was also the year TikTok began breaking artists and songs. Rence studied the platform.
“Watching, learning, trying to see what works for other people, emulate that, but put my own spin on it,” he says. “And it finally worked. Which is awesome!”
The TikTok video that worked shows an excited Rence driving his car at night.
“I literally made this song to blast while you're driving and I finally finished it,” he says and then lip syncs the opening lines to a song called “Endless”.
“The video that eventually did its thing on TikTok went to like 1.3 million views,” he says, “but what's more important is how people interacted with it.
“If one million people saw it and 40,000 people like it, it's pretty good business proposition for the label to put some dollars behind this song”.
Realeased this time last year, Spotify plays for "Endless" have now surpassed 6 million. “Endless” might be the song that broke Rence, but it won’t be the last we hear from him.
“I care about this more than anything,” he says. “I have put absolutely everything I have into it, and I like to think that comes across in the music.”
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