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Kat Graham may be best known for her role as Bonnie Bennett, the devilish witch on the CW’s Vampire Diaries, a role she’s inhabited since she was 19. But while her star was rising in Hollywood, Graham, now 22, was nurturing another talent. She was quietly perfecting her vocal chops. Now, after being signed to a major record deal earlier this year with A&M/Octone, and recently dropping her debut single, “Put Your Graffiti On Me”, the multi-talent is taking her music career full-steam ahead. Sometimes though, amid all the work, the reality that she’s fulfilling a lifelong dream is hard for Graham to even comprehend. “I have to force myself to stop and enjoy it,” Graham says. “It’s something that I consistently have to work on, that I make an effort to say ‘Oh my gosh, I’m making pop music that people are responding to. I’m doing everything that I wanted to,’” she tells Myspace. “I’m making great music and great videos and I get to perform!”
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“Put Your Graffiti On Me”, which Graham recorded in December of last year, is the singer’s mission statement as an artist: it’s sharp. edgy pop, driven by hard accents and slinky, scuzzed-out beats. The singer says it was essential that she instantly make her mark. “When an artist first comes out with a song, regardless of whether it charts or what kind of effect it has… [it] should be the song that defines you as an artist,” she explains. Graham cites Britney Spears‘ “…Baby One More Time” and Eminem’s “My Name Is” as prime examples of an artist outlining his or her vision from the get-go. “That really defined who they were,” she says, “what their sound was and what they were going for. They had a sound to them.” But while she also cites artists like Madonna and N.E.R.D. (“I was like ‘I’m gonna be the female Pharrell”) as influences, she says she’s not in the business of mimicry. “I’d rather make my own kind of music and appreciate them,” she says of her idols. “As an artist, I try to really stay away from [other's] image.”
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Graham estimates she has 40 songs recorded for her debut album — some date back to her earliest work as a singer, when she was only 15 –and will narrow them down to compose her major label debut, which she hopes to drop later this year. ” I feel like by August I’ll have the amount [of songs rcorded] that I feel like should give myself the most opportunity to have a really solid album,” she says. To that end, she’s been spending countless hours in the studio — which is just fine by her. “I love being in the studio,” she says. “They actually have to tell me to leave and they’re like ‘We’re done, Kat. You can go home now.’”
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While fans of her acting work may believe that Graham’s singing career is just getting underway, in actuality it’s been a work in progress for over half a decade. After initially making “crappy” rap demos at 15, Graham linked up with will.i.am only a year later, and he let the young talent jump on two of his tracks (“I Got It From My Mama” and “The Donque Song”) on his 2007 solo album, Songs About Girls. Graham subsequently joined the Black Eyed Peas on tour before focusing on her solo work. In 2010, Graham independently released a single, “Sassy”, and later that year, she also contributed a cover of Garbage’s “Happy When It Rains” for the Vampire Diaries soundtrack.
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Graham’s plans for the forthcoming months are simple: promote and record. “Promo and recording and promo and recording and shows and more shows,” she says of her upcoming schedule, with a laugh. “That’s kind of my life right now.” But she’s not complaining. “I do have to kind of kick myself and say ‘What are you stressed about? This is it,’” she says. “This is what I’ve been fighting for.”
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Check out Kat Graham’s hot new single “Put Your Graffiti On Me” below.
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