Logan Lynn

With releases bridging alternative dance music, synth pop, dance-pop, melodic techno hybrids, theatrical piano songs, and more, Logan Lynn is a producer and songwriter based in Portland, Oregon. After emerging in the late '90s, he released his first official album, GLEE, in 2000. He navigated lo-fi synth pop, clubby dance-pop, and excursions into grittier indie electronica throughout the rest of the decade on a series of albums, EPs, and singles that included 2006's Logan Lynn and 2009's more experimental From Pillar to Post, which sometimes evoked acts like Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors. The more dance-oriented I Killed Tomorrow Yesterday appeared in 2010, and he released a piano-based, autobiographical double album, My Movie Star -- co-produced and co-released by comedian/actor/podcaster Jay Mohr -- in 2018. In a return to songwriter-oriented alternative dance music, he made his first appearances on the Kill Rock Stars label with singles in 2021 leading up to the release of the album New Money the next year. His tenth album, SOFTCORE, followed on the label in 2024. Outside of and adjacent to his music, Lynn is also known as a TV personality and an advocate for mental-health awareness and LGBTQ rights.The son of a Christian minister and his wife, Logan Dennis Lynn was raised in rural Nebraska before moving with his family to suburban Kansas City, Missouri. He attended Olathe South High School in the mid-'90s, where he became friends with Ryan Pope, Rob Pope, and Jim Suptic of the newly formed the Get Up Kids. Lynn meanwhile began working as a DJ, then relocated to Portland in 1996. It was at that point that he began to write songs.Lynn's early music career included support from the likes of Elliott Smith and the Dandy Warhols, both of whom were just starting to hit the mainstream at the time. (Less than a decade later, the Dandy Warhols would sign him to their label, Beat the World Records.) In the meantime, Lynn released the 14-track Pull the Plug, dubbing it a mixtape, in March 1998. Recorded between late 1996 and early 1998, it reflected a still teenaged Lynn. Some of its songs were from an earlier, rare cassette mixtape, This Is Folk Techno, and were reworked by Lynn and co-producer PFog for his official debut album, October 2000's self-released GLEE. It merged a confessional songwriting sensibility with a lo-fi sound and playful beats. He recycled some material again for 2006's Logan Lynn, a 19-track set released in September 2006 that was otherwise self-produced. In 2007, he issued a pair of EPs (Clean & Stupid and Feed Me to the Wolves) and drew the interest of MTV's newly launched Logo network with his appearance at that year's New York City Gay Pride celebration. A year later, he made his debut as host of the music-video countdown series NewNowNext. In 2008, his music and television careers were interrupted by a stay in rehab following an overdose and related transient ischemic attack (TIA). He nonetheless prepared the album From Pillar to Post for release on the Dandy Warhols' Beat the World Records in September of 2009. It found him exploring a more playful experimental pop sound while remaining tethered to alternative dance. He delivered a non-album song called "The Last High" in early 2010. In September of 2010, Lynn released the more dancefloor-focused but still self-examining I Killed Tomorrow Yesterday, following it with the remix LP Blood in the Water in mid-2011. He teamed up with indie singer/songwriter Noah Daniel Wood to write the songs for the December 2011 acoustic EP Everything You Touch Turns to Gold. He turned to a whimsical, sex-themed mix of fully arranged electro-pop and alternative dance songs for his sixth album, Tramp Stamps and Birthmarks. Released in late 2012, it found him working with producer Gino Mari and included the participation of numerous collaborators, including Wood, electro-pop outfit Father Tiger, and the Gentry. Tramp Stamps and Birthmarks also made its way onto some streaming charts, and Lynn held a public remix contest for the song "Hologram" that resulted in May 2013's Dance Alone EP. That June, he headlined the Queer Music Summer Tour, a benefit for LGBTQ mental-health services and suicide prevention, and in September, his Mari-produced cover of Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" made a big enough impression on Cyrus that she performed Lynn and Mari's arrangement of the song on an Saturday Night Live appearance in October. Tinged with emo pop, Lynn's next album, September 2016's Adieu, represented the closest thing to a straightforward indie rock album he had released to date. Perhaps surprisingly, it was also co-produced by Mari, and it made a fan of actor/comedian Jay Mohr, who had Lynn as a guest on his podcast Mohr Stories in March 2017, where they discussed childhood trauma, addiction recovery, and mental health in addition to music. Mohr went on to co-produce Logan Lynn's next album, which represented another diversion, this time into theatrical, piano-based songs. The resulting self-released double LP My Movie Star arrived in October 2018 (with the second half consisting of covers and remixes). Meanwhile, Lynn toured with Portugal. The Man to promote mental-health awareness and appeared in the six-episode web series Last Meal, which he followed by co-creating and starring in the 2020 web series DotGay Presents: The Library. That year, Lynn also released his first live EP, Unpeeled.Lynn made his Kill Rock Stars label debut in August 2021 with the single "Rich and Beautiful," which got a remix treatment by Xiu Xiu month later. His full-length debut on the label came with the cheekily titled, synth pop-oriented New Money in January 2022. It included a cover of Elliott Smith's "Baby Britain." The remix EP Other People's Money followed in June with entries by MAN ON MAN and J.D. Samson (Le Tigre, MEN), among others. Kill Rock Stars issued the collaborative EP Distracted, by Lynn and Yellow Trash Can, in mid-2023 before delivering Lynn's tenth album, SOFTCORE, in June 2024. It opened with a cover of Smog's "To Be of Use" that put an electronic spin on the nakedly spare original.
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