Skylar Grey Discusses ‘Open-Ended’ Album & Returns To Her Genre-Bending, ‘Eclectic Musical Upbringing’

Skylar Grey is known for writing some of hip-hops biggest hits, but she revealed to HL that she’s returning to her roots with her latest project.

Skylar Grey has found the freedom to speak her truth and release a project she is deeply excited and proud of — one that has brought her back to the multiple styles and genres of music she was exposed to as a child. Angel With Tattoos, she explained in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife, will be an open-ended concept album, that she will continue to add to as she creates music in the same sound. “I’m just a chameleon, basically. I want to write in every genre and go where the universe takes me. I follow the energy,” she detailed. “Who knows? It could end up with a hundred songs, it could stop at five.”

Skylar started her project with the song “Shame On You,” and added to it Sept. 27 with the title track, “Angel With Tattoos.” “It’s a very ‘story telling song,’ then there’s other songs, ‘Shame On You,’ which is more of a universal love song,” she said of her new single. “I’ve been known for a lot of my darker music because I always write songs that are very personal and I wasn’t necessarily happy and I wasn’t in love. Now that I’m happy and in love, the inspiration is totally different.” Skylar got engaged to businessman and fellow singer/songwriter Elliott Taylor, and the two have become each other’s muses, and co-creators. “He’s just my world, so I just started writing everything about him,” she gushed, adding that, for the most part, “the songs for this project are very happy love songs.”

Skylar, whose big break came with her Eminem hit “Love The Way You Lie,” also added that her reinvented sound is a blend of her “eclectic musical upbringing.” “Because I did musical theater, I did folk music with my mom, kid songs. My dad was in a barbershop quartet. It was pretty much all over the place!” she explained. “I just loved all music and doing hooks for rap songs has been awesome, but it doesn’t show the full spectrum of what I want to do.”

She continued, “I’m just revisiting my roots now after going on all these different adventures, and it’s very throwback to me.” Be sure to stream Skylar Grey’s new project Angel With Tattoos, now!