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Tips for Interviewing Famous Musicians, Singers, and Artists
Interviewing famous artists, musicians, and singers is a task you can’t take lightly, so if you get the chance, you should know what questions to ask to satisfy your audience. Anyone can interview people, but knowing the right questions can turn a decent interview into a great one.
Below are some sample interview questions that readers or the audience will find interesting to learn about during your interview.
What is your background?
Recording artist interviews have to start somewhere, and getting their background is the perfect opening question. While this may sound pretty bland, it’s a good starting point in the interview because people naturally feel more comfortable once they’ve introduced themselves, which is basically what the question asks the interviewee to do. Finding out about the artist’s family, education, and musical background will humanize him and make the audience feel closer to him before answering the rest of the questions.
Who are your musical influences?
All fans and aspiring musicians want to hear the answer to this question when they watch or listen to recording artist interviews. We not only want to hear if we have similar influences, we also want to know how they were inspired.
Many musicians will surprise you with the answers they give to this question. It’s great, for example, when a musician surprises us by saying that one of his influences was someone from a completely different genre.
Are you nervous when you go on stage?
It’s hard for most people to understand how musicians get on stage all the time without showing any kind of nervousness. Interviewing famous recording artists gives us a chance to hear how they deal with the butterflies we all have to deal with when speaking or performing in front of a crowd of people. There are some people who surprisingly don’t get butterflies, but you’ll likely get an answer that will help some of your audience deal with their own nerves.
What would you change about the music industry?
This question can be both controversial and informative, which is a great combination when interviewing famous artists. No matter what business people are in, there are always things that could be better.
When it comes to musicians, they are often very open about what they like and don’t like about the business, so this would be their chance to discover things no one else could. It’s an amazing opportunity that you just can’t pass up.
Do you have any advice for emerging artists?
Recording artist interviews should always include one or two questions that allow the artist to communicate directly if conducted with a live audience. Obviously, if you’re interviewing a musician, the audience is likely to be full of aspiring singers, songwriters, and musicians. These people want to know anything and everything professional musicians have to say, so try to get as much advice from them as they can.
Follow up questions
You’ll often find that these questions can lead to other potentially great questions. Don’t pass up the opportunity to ask follow-up questions if they can make the interview even better. You will probably only get one chance to interview this person, so make the most of it with good preparation before the interview and good instincts during the interview.
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