NEWSLeighton Meester Shares "A Sense of Me Through My Music"
May 11 2010, Published 11:08 a.m. ET
Gossip Girl vixen Leighton Meester took some time to chat with PopEater about her upcoming films and debut album and how she balances her acting and music career!
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"It's the same thing with people who act; if you love it, you don't necessarily care about the commercial success of something, as long as it's quality," Leighton told Popeater. "That's how I also feel about music, I just want it to be good, I want people to get a sense of me through my music."
But Leighton has also worked with others a lot on her new album, which features her new single "Your Love's a Drug."
"I've worked very closely, pretty much on every song, with Shahine Ezell and the other producers that I've worked with — Kenna, Stuart Price, Mike Caren, Paul Oakenfold," Leighton explained. "I wrote two songs with Kara DioGuardi. I also wrote with Jupiter Rising, who's really awesome, a guy named K.O., who's an incredible producer and songwriter. I did a song with Toby Gad. I've done a couple of songs with the Writing Camp, and I've written a couple of songs with a girl named Bonnie McKee."
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The Gossip Girl personally loves songs that makes you want to dance.
"I really like that song by Young Joc, 'It's Going Down,'" the singer shared. "I like 'TiK ToK,' I like the Black Eyed Peas a lot, 'I Gotta Feeling,' stuff like that, about how you're popping bottles and you don't have to worry about tomorrow."
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But right now, Leighton's hard at work on her acting career.
"I'm filming this movie called The Oranges and it's been amazing so far. It's with Hugh Laurie, Catherine Keener, Allison Janney, Oliver Platt, Adam Brody and Alia Shawkat."
And the cast sure doesn't suck!
"Not at all, it's really great," Leighton laughed. "It's about two families that live across the street from each other and are super close friends and my character, Nina, she's pretty much absent from the whole family for a while. She comes back and starts to have a relationship with Hugh's character, David, and it really disrupts all their lives."
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And Leighton's latest film that's coming up, Love Don't Let Me Down, combines both her passions.
"The music for Love Don't Let Me Down, oh my god, it's so good," she gushed to PopEater. "It's country music, and Gwyneth Paltrow's material is more traditional country, really big music — it's amazing. She sounds beautiful. My music in the movie is a little bit more current, very pop. I have a couple of songs that I feel like are really good in there."
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For her country inspiration, Leighton looked to some country singers for help.
"I worked very closely with Nathan Chapman, he produced all the songs. He's a teenage girl trapped in a man's body, so we ended up doing a song together, a country song, which was a new experience, but it was really addictive and he's incredible — the music we made together is amazing, very beautiful," Leighton explained. "But there are a couple of more poppy songs that we did that could easily cross over, and he worked with Taylor Swift and Jewel. Somebody else that I really looked to for the movie, especially for performance, was Carrie Underwood."
Sounds like she got all the inspiration she needed!
