Prescription Songs is now celebrating the end of its first decade. The company has contributed hit songs, classic pop staples and a new crop of buzzing hitmakers. Smashes from the first 10 years include "Wrecking Ball," "Moves Like Jagger," "Lean On" and "New Rules" among others. Among the RX-co-penned songs currently charting at Top 40: Maroon 5's "Memories" (Jacob Kasher), Dua Lipa's "Don't Start Now" (Emily Warren) and Lauv's "Fuck, I'm Lonely" f/Anne Marie" (Lauv), along with streaming sensation Arizona Zervas' "Roxanne" (Lauren Larue). We asked for an appointment with Head of A&R West Coast Rhea Pasricha and Head of A&R Nashville Katie Fagan to answer a few of our annoying questions.
Emily Warren is one of your biggest successes this year, co-writing Dua Lipa’s latest single “Don’t Start Now.” What’s next for her?
Rhea: We are so proud of Emily. We signed her when she was still in college, and it’s been amazing to be a part of her journey along the way. It was such an exciting moment to follow the success of “New Rules” with “Don’t Start Now,” especially since Emily co-wrote both songs with the same team (Caroline Ailin and Ian Kirpatrick). What makes Emily so special is she doesn’t only aim for the blockbuster artist projects—she prefers to write with/for artists she truly loves and music that inspires her. For the next year, she’s definitely looking forward to work with some exciting new talent, and potentially even developing her own artists or writers/producers as well.
Lauren LaRue was a co-writer on “Roxanne” by Arizona Zervas, how did that session come together?
Katie: We have to shout out our A&R Hannah Montgomery for this one as she and Lauren have been grinding together for a couple years now. Lauren has been friends with Arizona and the two producers 94 skrt & Jae Green for a while and the song came together super organically because of that. Because they are all such good friends, it makes the fact that the song is now a hit even more special. Lauren was one of Hannah’s first signings when she joined our team—she had moved to LA from Nashville, and being that Lauren was Nashville based, Hannah knew a writer like Lauren could help bridge the gap between the two cities. Lauren has upcoming cuts with country artists like Jimmie Allen and Kelsea Ballerini, and now also has this massive hit with Arizona.
Your presence in Nashville is strong; are more songs being written/co-written lately there or in L.A., or both equally?
Katie: I can say confidently that the songs we are creating are being written in both cities equally. We constantly have our Nashville-based writers visit LA and vice versa. Having offices and writers in both cities has been exponential to our growth as a company because each place emphasizes value on different parts of the writing process; for example, LA is quite melody and production heavy while Nashville is all about the story and lyric. It makes for two great puzzle pieces coming together, and I think our writers are enlightened after every trip they go on. One of our proudest collaborations between the two cities this year was our release called “No Manners” with SM Entertainment’s super group SuperM—it was co-written and co-produced by three Prescription writers and producers: Shae Jacobs, DHMTyler (LA based) and Jon Santana (Nashville based). The album debuted at #1.
It has also been a joy to watch some of our pop artists release songs that were 100% written by Nashville-based writers because it is helping to change the narrative that this city only creates country music. A great example of that has been our writer/artist Quinn Lewis, who is also signed to Arista Records, but who has called Nashville home for the past five or so years. The majority of his releases, past and upcoming, have been with Nashville-based songwriters, including Erin McCarley, Nicolle Galyon, and Jimmy Robbins. There’s something special about receiving calls from colleagues who look at the writer credits and say “wait, this was written in Nashville?” I also think the fact that Hannah moved from Nashville to LA and I moved from LA to Nashville puts our company in a very unique position—we swapped cities and have passion for both genres but live in the opposite places. It has made our bridge rock-solid between the two offices.
Describe the roles of your key A&R players and who handles what, besides head of A&R West Coast Rhea in L.A. and Head of A&R Nashville Katie.
Rhea: We currently have twelve A&R team members, including Katie and I. Eight in Los Angeles and four in Nashville. Our A&R executives include Hannah Montgomery, Scott Yarmovsky, Siara Behar, as well as some talented young A&Rs. We are all super collaborative and share ideas and resources across the whole roster, but we definitely all have our strengths that we bring to the table. Hannah came from Nashville and has an in-depth knowledge of the country music market, Siara is bi-lingual and super plugged into the Latin scene, Scott is well versed in the alt world and has management experience too. That being said, we try not to pigeonhole anyone and work across all genres to make opportunities happen for our writers.
Katie: Our assistants, coordinators and managers all play an extremely crucial role as well and help us with day-to-day of sessions, pitching and calendars. We love to groom and promote from within—both Rhea and myself are examples of that—and we always hope to do the same for the newer members of our team. We feel our biggest selling point as a company is the hands-on approach we give to each writer. The company started as a small family (when I started in 2011, we had 12 writers under one roof) and we have really tried to keep that as a focal point of Prescription. Each hire is very selective and intentional. We all bring different strengths to the table and have different passions, but the glue that holds us all together is our desire to develop and help raise the new writers to the next tier of success.
Who are a few of your biggest artist priorities whose pub you look after?
Rhea: We’re lucky to be a part of some amazing established artist projects such as Lauv, Kim Petras, Doja Cat, Becky G, Lunchmoney Lewis, and more. We also have some exciting new music from our up-and-coming artists – DJ/producer DallasK, Australian singer/songwriter Ivy Adara , Nashville-based, Nigerian-born Joy Oladokun, North Carolina rapper Belis, British alt artist Minke, and more. We have also been developing some brand-new artists who will drop their first singles next year, like our 18-year-old badass Lourdiz who has collaborations coming with Lil Goit and Jon Z.
Katie: Some other exciting projects include Maggie Rose’s upcoming album (which was recorded at the infamous FAME Studios down in Muscle Shoals, with Alabama Shakes’ producer Ben Tanner), more singles from one of our newest signings named Caro (who has seen some incredible early days support from the DSPs on her recent mixtape songs from 3am), and who knows… you might be seeing some hip-hop releases as well that you’d never expect to come out of Nashville. You’ll have to stay tuned for that.
