Introducing… Skylar Grey

By Greg Cochrane
Newsbeat music reporter 25-year-old singer Skylar Grey

February 2010: Holly Brook is living and writing music in a wood cabin in rural Oregon, US.

She's sent a the bare bones of a track via producer Alex Da Kid and asked to come up with a hook for the chorus.

Fifteen minutes later she sends it back - ten months later the track, Eminem's Love The Way You Lie featuring Rihanna, officially becomes the biggest selling track of the year in the UK. An international smash.

By February 2011 25-year-old Skylar is taking her parents to the Granmys in Los Angeles where her songwriting has bagged two nominations.

Musical past

That in itself is an impressive story - but there's lots more to explain about Grey's chequered climb to where we find her now.

Back home in Wisconsin she began singing aged 6, by fourteen she was writing her first "pop songs". At seventeen she packed her bags, withdrew her college fund from the bank and moved to LA in search of her break.

Signed by Linkin Park's Warner Record's funded label she made an album, under her real name Holly Brook, but it flopped.

What followed was a couple of years of contractual disagreement where she was blocked from releasing new music.

Her disgust and frustration saw her flee to the forest - a rural cabin where she sought to heal her writer's block and find solace.

"Everything kind of crumbled," she says today, removing a pair of sunglasses. "Not being able to make music made everything in my life go array."

Change of fortune

But then, in her own words "everything changed".

The beat arrived for Love the Way You Lie arrived via her label and Alex Da Kid.

"After I wrote Love The Way You Lie everybody was coming to try and get a Skylar Grey hook," she says. "So Diddy came to me, T.I, Lupe Fiasco…"

Skylar Grey helped write Eminem's track Love The Way You Lie

And the hits kept coming - next up Diddy Dirty Money's Coming Home.

"Diddy wanted a song which would resurrect his music career - in short," says Grey. "I wrote a song about coming back into your own."

Then Eminem got back in touch and invited Grey and Alex Da Kid to Detroit to work on Dr Dre's continually-delayed Detox album.

Grey repeated her trick by writing and singing the chorus on Dre's recent single I Need A Doctor.

"On the way to the studio in Detroit I basically had to Wikipedia Dr Dre," she laughs.

"I don't have knowledge of the hip-hop world. I mean, I knew who Dr Dre was but I didn't want to get caught out with a reference which would go over my head.

Her time in the studio was an emotional experience.

"I heard Eminem's verses on the song and I just burst into tears.

"The best part about it was Alex said, 'Maybe we should get Lady Gaga on this?' and Eminem said 'No, we're not taking Skylar's voice off the song'.

"He stuck up for me and it felt good."

"Making some of these tough guys vulnerable occasionally is a good thing. Everyone in hip hop is so tough but nobody is really like that."

Solo work

But now, after making a bunch of famous pals, it's time for Grey to go out on her own - she'll release a single Invisible and an album Invinsible later this year.

The album - not the one she recorded in the woods, that one is looked in a safe deposit box - tells the story of her extraordinary journey.

"I'm in this for the long-haul," she says signing off. "I'm the type of person who will take an opportunity when it comes."