Will Hagle Interview
Will Hagle is a freelance music writer. His new book is an entry in the 33 1/3 series on Madvillain’s Madvillainy. He’s also the co-host of the fascinating podcast Connecting the Classics, in which two classic albums are tied together “using tangential music references, Kevin Bacon style.”
*How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I’m one of the many people on earth that “always wanted to be a writer” since I was a little kid. Back then, and also maybe now, I didn’t quite believe that writing could be an actual profession. But I was delusional enough to at least try to make it happen.
In 2009 I moved from Champaign, IL, where I grew up (& often read & wrote about music, just for fun) to attend college at USC in LA. I started writing for the lifestyle section of The Daily Trojan. My first profile was an interview with Art Alexakis, the singer of Everclear, on his tour bus parked outside The Roxy in West Hollywood. At some point I wrote an article about Coachella that caught the attention of Joey Flores, then the CEO of an online radio startup called Eartbits. He reached out to me on Facebook and asked me to run his company’s blog. It was a great time because I got paid what seemed like a fortune for a college student to write about whatever I wanted. And I learned a thing or two about the boring stuff: SEO, business, blah blah blah.