Composer Matthew Tishler On Olivia Rodrigo, BTS, and His New Disney Show ‘Hailey’s On It!’

Matthew Tishler is a composer and music producer who has been deemed Disney’s secret weapon. He has worked on several Disney Channel shows, animated and live action, including the new Disney Channel show Hailey’s On It! Besides his work with Disney, Tishler has worked with multiple hit singers and bands across several genres. Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, he talks about all of those different experiences. He also shares how this career seemed pre-ordained from birth.

Awards Daily: What sparked your interest in music?

Matthew Tishler: It’s in my blood. I don’t know if I had a choice in the matter. I grew up in a very musical household. My dad was actually a music teacher In the public school system in Canada where we are from. My mom is a huge music and musical theater fan, so I grew up in a house where the vinyl record player was always on with The Beatles, James Taylor, musical theater, classical music, jazz. I was exposed to a lot of different music at an early age so, as many kids do, I started learning an instrument. I started learning the piano at five years old and the music just became a part of me that I couldn’t shake. Then I remember thinking oh, maybe learning piano scales is a bit too stodgy and cheesy for me. I remember giving it up when I was ten but then coming right back around when I was, like, twelve or thirteen. I found a different teacher who is teaching me pop music and how to listen to the radio and figure out what it is that you’re hearing. I was put into different bands to learn how to arrange music for bands. It was just in me.

Awards Daily: You have done a lot of music with Disney and children’s shows in general. What is it about those kinds of projects that speaks to you as an artist?

Matthew Tishler: You know I never consciously set out to work in the kids space. But it was posed to me recently that I work so well in this space because I love energy, I love high energy, I love fun. I have a theatrical sensibility about me that I can’t shake. When I play the piano that’s what happens; I can’t control it. So, early in my career writing pop music and trying to make opportunities for myself, it kind of organically happened that Disney was reacting to my material. Then when I started to meet with these people and work with them I realized I do love this, this is in my bones. I did grow up watching Disney and watching musical theater and that’s what it is, it’s musical theater on screen! Either animated or live action, if it’s a Disney Channel original movie. So I do think I am perfectly suited to make these musicals, though I was unconscious about it the whole time.

Awards Daily: You just touched on something I wanted to ask. With these Disney Channel shows, do you find working in the cartoons versus the live action brings out something different in you?

Matthew Tishler: Sure. I mean I am so grateful to participate in both sides because they offer something different, and hopefully you have stuff going on concurrently so you can bounce back and forth. I was talking about this recently that to me animation has fewer limits. I feel like you can be wackier and crazier and you can create circumstances that are impossible in real life with your music. You can be a little bit more theatrical and big and tap into your sense of humor. Live action is a little bit more real. Not in all cases–I’ve worked on projects that have magic involved, which defies the laws of reality too. But the live action is often for a slightly older demographic, maybe we’re trying to sound a little bit more like music on the radio. Which is another itch I like to scratch because I love pop music and I grew up listening to all kinds of pop music. So I think there is a balance between a couple different things–humor and heart, big and small, intimate and theatrical. It’s fun to play both sides.

Awards Daily: Speaking of your pop work, I am also a huge fan of pop music including Olivia Rodrigo who you have worked with. So as a fan I have to ask, what was it like working with her?

Matthew Tishler: First of all, she’s one of the most talented humans I have ever encountered and I was grateful to meet her. I worked with her first on her Disney Channel show Bizaardvark, this offbeat comedy show where we were writing these really silly comedy songs. I worked with her many times on that show and I was thinking, wow, this girl is actually quite a talent. I feel like these songs are maybe not the end of what she’s going to do. Then of course I was reacquainted with her several years later on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. I was tasked with producing a song that she wrote completely by herself called All I Want, and they needed a producer to help record it. I remember the song was sent to me and they said, ‘Hey, here’s a work tape of something Olivia wrote herself in her hotel room: go produce it.’ So they sent me this song and I was not prepared for what I was about to hear. She was 16 years old at the time, and it was just a one take of her setting down her phone in front of her keyboard, and she’s just playing and singing the song from start to finish and it floored me! Like wise beyond her years, experience beyond her years. The music has so much soul, so much heart. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This is the same Olivia that I worked with on those Bizaardvark songs, this is outstanding! We have worked together a couple times more on High School Musical since, and now, of course, look at her–“drivers license,” her new song “vampire” premiered at number one–it is just astonishing. I am very proud of my collaborations with her, thrilled to say I knew her when I did, and that it is so well deserved. She is the sweetest, nicest, most caring collaborator you can encounter. So happy she’s getting her due in the world.

Awards Daily: Definitely wise beyond her years. I can’t imagine the emotion she’s put into her songs and then thinking, you’re 18?

Matthew Tishler: Yeah, it is astounding, and the care that she put into the songs. The songs that I worked with her on High School Musical she had written for her character on the show. So it was a song writing gig for a character, which is different from writing for yourself as an artist. I was like wow, that’s like another layer of songwriting complexity, because you’re not just writing a song. A lot of people can sit down and write a song but some people might find it easier or harder to write from your own true emotions. While some people might find it easier or harder to put yourself in the mind of a character. But at 16 she was able to put herself in the mind of this character. Which I guess as an actress maybe that was helpful. An extension of her acting was the ability to create a song for her own character. Which is very cool.

Awards Daily: You also started working in K-pop in 2016. What got you interested in getting involved in that kind of music?

Matthew Tishler: Actually it was back in 2010. That was my first K-pop placement, and similar to how I got involved with Disney. It was a bit of an accident and I discovered retroactively why it happened and why it’s so well suited to me. I had a manager at the time who was talking to me about K-pop music and I was not very familiar. When I was in my early twenties living in Toronto, Canada, there was not quite a craze in the western world as there is now and has been for the last few years. But I said I was open to it, and let’s see if they like any of my songs. And sure enough, very quickly I got a couple bites on a few songs of mine and quickly realized we share a sensibility that I didn’t even realize; we shared a love of the versatility of music. I like to do a lot of different things and there are no rules in the K-pop market. They are interested in anything that is great, and also things that are fun, that are heartfelt. All these things that I like to make are popular there. I’m a big melody person first and foremost, melody is king to me. My lyric writing I have worked on and, I often have other lyricists in the room with me, but if you think about it K-pop music more often than not is translating your lyrics into another language. So it’s kind of the perfect market where I could express musicality and partner with other lyricists who would translate these songs into Korean, Japanese, and other languages. I like writing ballads, and I love ’90s pop music, ’90s R&B, and girl groups, which are the things that are popular! So it has been a very rewarding decade. Plus now, with working in the Korean market and getting to know my friends and collaborators out there who started at the small independent labels who have now exploded into world dominating powerhouses. It has been exciting to see and to be part of it.

Awards Daily: So, another fan question. My wife loves BTS so I told her I would ask, what was it like working with them?

Matthew Tishler: Listen, that has been one of the greatest surprises of my career. I had been aware of BTS for many years before our collaboration and I reached out to my publishers in Korea and I said this band is unbelievable. I’d love to throw my hat in the ring. Sure enough, a few months later (I am not certain how related my inquiry was) they responded to an early draft of a demo that I had written with a friend of mine and wanted to adapt it. RM from the band jumped on the track, he worked on the production with us and he rewrote all the lyrics. And wouldn’t you know it came out on one of their albums, and did very well. They put it out again on their greatest hits album and it also did very well. Then on the third release they put it out again on their career retrospective album. So the song has been on three of their records, which has been one of the luckiest experiences a songwriter can have. Creatively, I’m just so proud of that song and how it came together so organically, and getting to say you worked with RM is a fun little experience.

Awards Daily: Circling back to Disney, you have a new project with them on Disney Channel, Hailey’s On It! What can you tell us about that?

Matthew Tishler: This has been such a fun show. Obviously I’m one of the songwriters and composers on the show. I work with my partner Andrew Underberg, who lives in New York, and together we’re writing all the songs and the score for the show. It’s hilarious! It stars Auli’i Cravalho as Hailey, who in every episode is checking an item off her to-do list, and if she doesn’t complete every list the world is going to implode. The stakes are very high, so every episode is a big adventure. It’s comedic, there is heart, and, musically speaking, (because that’s where I come into play) the music is all over the map: all very contemporary styles of music, a little bit of classic orchestral underscore, but most of the time we’re pretty pop or contemporary. We are using loops, we sound like the radio, a lot of it sounds like instrumental tracks to pop songs with no singing. We are doing hip hop, K-pop, 90s R&B, girl group stuff, musical theater, and we are just having a blast with it. It is actually my first show ever doing underscore, so I think we’re bringing a bit of naivete to the process, which seems to be appreciated. I’m just having the best time and very proud about how it’s all coming out. And thrilled that the show has finally been released! We have been working on it for almost three years now, and animation takes an awfully long time. It’s nice that it’s finally out in the world, and it seems to be getting a pretty positive response.

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