Isaiah Grass

Isaiah Grass sang on American Idol, and now spends his weeks listening to other people's songs and picking ten of them.

He and Brad Banyas had been talking for a couple of months before he sat down for the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast, and by then the conversation had turned into a partnership. Grass runs a new music discovery segment on radio and cable, and SALTYmf amplifies the artists he picks through Band Groupeez. Grass opened by thanking Banyas for the work on independent artists. The episode was sponsored by both sides.

He graduated from a performing arts high school and got scouted by modeling agencies in New York, which he credits for teaching him to be comfortable on camera. A talent manager found him online and flew him to Chicago to meet an artist developer. He had been singing since the church choir, where his favorite thing to perform was Josh Groban's You Raise Me Up, and people would tell him they had not expected that voice looking at him. He now hosts the Isaiah Grass Show on cable and on Roku, Apple and Amazon Fire TV. Each week he pulls ten songs out of the pile and features one artist, telling their life story on air. He has listened to something like 2,000 songs and has over 500 emails waiting. Heavy metal sits next to country, folk, a K pop record, a band out of London.

He says roughly ninety percent of what gets sent to him now is AI, and he is careful about how he puts it, because some of it is well written and well produced. What he cannot do is call an AI prompt and ask what the song did for the person who made it. His own road ran slower. He has had people promise him things and do absolutely nothing. He was hesitant about reality television, turned it over after The Voice and P. Diddy's show reached out too, and did Idol anyway. The season aired and then the world closed for two or three years. He wrote I Need You about depression, which he says he still gets, and Wherever You Are about hardship and not being alone. He is a brand ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. About a month before the episode a woman stopped him at the gym to say I Need You had pulled her out of a depression after a death in her family. Another woman told him she played Wherever You Are at her husband's grave.

He tells artists exactly what he checks before he picks them. A website, even a cheap template one, so he knows where they are in their career. A bio, or he will make one up on air. Some video, because video can go to television. He will feature an artist with one song to their name if the message lands. Over a hundred thousand songs go up on Spotify every day. He wore a shirt to the interview that says music is life.