“It’s just been a crazy and honestly kind of unexpected journey. I never thought I would be an artist. I was always just trying to be the songwriter, and I guess I just kind of found myself in the right positions at the right times. And suddenly, I’m an artist now, playing here in L.A.”

So says rising singer-songwriter Knox Morris, mononymously known to his fans as Knox (“I’m like Seal. Just one name,” he jokes), as he chats with LPTV at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records. He’s just done a short acoustic set and vinyl signing for his first full-length album, Going, Going, Gone, before his big show headlining the El Rey that evening. And despite it being 1 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, he had an impressive turnout, with fans lining up and singing along to every lyric. And he feels “like the luckiest person in the world.”

Knox, now 27, didn’t pick up a guitar until college, when he started teaching himself through YouTube videos. But once he did an open-mic on a dare, music “went from a hobby to an obsession,” and by his sophomore year, “it was a lifestyle.” After an (unaired) American Idol audition didn’t work out —  Lionel Richie said yes, but Luke Bryan and Katy Perry said no — an unfazed and unflappable Knox was more determined than ever, listening to Perry’s constructive criticism and three months later dropping out of college to move from Ohio to Nashville. There, he eventually established himself as a professional songwriter. But when Knox’s publisher insisted that he put a few of his demos, intended for other artists, on TikTok, his music went viral, and the rest was history.

Since then, Knox has signed to Atlantic Records and released two EPs and one LP, and he’s gotten props from the 1975’s Matty Healy and even Ed Sheeran himself. And along with his own front-and-center pop career, he’s still writing  for others. His dream would be to get a cut on an Adele, Rihanna, or Bruno Mars album, but he also says with a sly grin, “My big goal, and it still kind of is my big goal, is I’m going to write a song that Katy Perry is going to record one day.”

Check out LPTV’s interview with Knox in the charming Licorice Pizza video above, or the Q&A below.

LPTV: One of the songs that you played today at Licorice Pizza was “Voicemail.” You actually said it’s a fan favorite, but not necessarily one of your favorites on the album. So, first of all, I want to know that why that is, but I also want to know if this is song is based on a true story. It sounded very specific.

KNOX: It’s growing on me as a song. It’s just one of those songs that, to be honest, when I put out, I was like, “Nobody’s going to like this.” I was like, “This is so dumb,” how the chorus is “this boyfriend’s going to beat me up.” But it was always a fun song to sing, so I’m glad it made it onto the album. But it actually is a true story — about a friend of mine. It’s actually not about me, thank goodness. I was never in any danger. But it is a very real story about one of my best friends that it did happen to. He went home to Ohio and yeah, it was bad. It was bad. But it made for a great song.

How did he or the girl, the voicemail-leaver in question, feel about the story being aired out in a song?

Well, I don’t know who the girl is at all. He thought it was very funny. When I showed it to him, it honestly made his day. It’s his favorite song pretty much ever.

I actually didn’t think people left voicemails anymore. Most people, if you don’t pick up, they just hang up and text you, “Hey, I just trying to call you.”

I’m a big voicemail-leaver, to be honest. My favorite thing is always, this is so stupid, but when I call my friends and they don’t answer, I leave a voicemail and I always say, “Hey, this is Knox Morris calling. Just seeing what you’re up to. You can get me back at…” And then I say my phone number, and then I leave an email address. I love doing that. None of my friends think it’s as funny as I do, but I love it.

Well, you’re a busy guy, so people need multiple ways to reach you when you’re on tour and doing all this stuff! You’ve been doing a lot with your career. It seems like you were kind of a latecomer to the music game, which is surprising.

Yeah, basically I got to college, and I took a guitar with me to college because I was never very cool. I’m still not very cool. I just wanted something new to do, I guess. And around that time, my senior year of high school, I was getting super into James Bay, and honestly, I loved One Direction and Ed Sheeran, and I just loved the singer-songwriter songs. And once I started to learn how to play guitar, I was watching videos of people like Ed Sheeran and I just pretty much told myself, “Man, I feel like if I tried to write songs, I could write songs like that.” Because Ed Sheeran was always just playing G-C-E-D, and I was like, “I know how to play those chords, so what’s to stop me from doing that?” And so, my freshman year I started writing songs. To be honest, my first-ever open-mic night, I actually only did it because my friends told me that I wouldn’t go do it. And I’m one of those that if somebody tells me that I can’t or won’t do something, I’m just like, “Watch this. I can go play in an open mic night. I’m not scared!”

This was in Athens, Ohio. I went to Ohio University. So yeah, I did my first open-mic night, and I just remember seeing all these people, I met all these people on night one, and they had been playing guitar and writing songs for 10 years. And I was like, “Man, I feel like I can hang.” You know what I’m saying? And so, it just went from a hobby to an obsession, to then by sophomore year, it was a lifestyle. I was playing in front of people every single night. I was going into Jimmy John’s and asking them if I could play, because I was in a college town. I did it every night.

And then after my sophomore year, I was like, “Man, I feel like if I tried to actually do this, I could figure it out somehow.” So, I dropped out of school and moved to Nashville and just kind of did the same thing: went to Nashville and played in front of as many people as I could. And eventually the songs just started to work. And then TikTok happened, and thankfully, my start was from that. And yeah, it’s just been a crazy and honestly kind of unexpected journey. I never thought I would be an artist. I was always just trying to be the songwriter, and I guess I just kind of found myself in the right positions at the right times. And suddenly, I’m an artist now playing here in L.A.

So, it was TikTok that got the ball rolling for you?

It got the ball rolling for me as an artist. Actually, I was writing a lot of songs for people in Nashville, and I got signed to a company called RiverHouse. I got hired as a staff writer. It’s a company that’s like a joint venture with Sony, so I’m technically a Sony writer, and I still am technically employed by them as a staff writer.

It’s amazing that you went from Athens, Ohio to Nashville, where everybody’s hustling and trying to be a writer or an artist, and you were young and relatively inexperienced, and you made all that happen in a short period of time.

Thank you. … I don’t think anybody is born with the talent of writing songs. I think it’s no different from anything else. It’s like, you have to put in your 10,000 hours. I always describe [writing] songs as going to the gym. You can’t lift 300 pounds until you can lift 200. You can’t lift 200 until you can do 150. So, you have to write a ton of songs — good, bad, ugly. You have to write a million songs and honestly, just put the time in. And so, I feel like when I moved, I just really dedicated myself to: “I’m going to learn how to do this.” And yeah, it paid off. And I feel like the luckiest person in the world, I really do.

I know you were on American Idol, but I do not remember your audition. I think it didn’t air?

No, it never aired, but I got to go in front of the judges.

Did they scout you on TikTok? The Idol casting agents are always looking at TikTok.

No, actually, this was way before maybe even TikTok was out. This would’ve been October of 2018. What’s so funny is I actually only did it because that was the summer that I had dropped out of school, and I was considering moving to Nashville. And at the time I worked at a concert venue. I was a runner at a concert venue in Huber Heights, Ohio, and the American Idol tour actually came through. So, it was like all the winners came, and these were kids that were my age, if not even a little bit younger, and I was getting their drinks and stuff. And I remember the whole night I was thinking… I was watching them up onstage, and I was like, “I can do that. I can do that if I wanted to.” And as I was at the show, I looked up when the next American Idol auditions were, and coincidentally they were the next morning in Columbus, Ohio. So, I didn’t tell anybody. I woke up at 6 in the morning the next day, and I drove up.

So, you eventually got all the way to the stage where you sing on camera for Katy, Luke, and Lionel. I know there was a little bit of the shenanigans behind the scenes. I know you were going to do “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, and you were ahead of the game, because then Luke Combs did it a few years later and had a big moment with it. But what happened, exactly?

Basically, long story short, they were like, “Hey, you have red hair.” One of the songs that I was going to play — you have to give them three songs —  was “The A Team” by Ed Sheeran, and they were like, “Hey, you have red hair, so go in there and make a joke about Ed and go play that.” And I was like, “OK, great.” So, I go in there, I play it… and now, granted, all these years later, I can finally admit this: I had no business even really getting there at the time, because I had never really sung. I wasn’t that great. I always tell people, I think I actually talked myself all the way to that audition. I don’t think the talent got me there. I think I kind of convinced them to let me do it.

But I played “The A Team” and Lionel Richie — shout out my guy Lionel — he loved me. He was great. But Katy Perry, her exact words were: “We have Ed Sheeran. Why would we ever need you?” That was exactly what she said. And I swear to God, I think if that wouldn’t have happened, I don’t think I would be where I am now, because those words have been in the back of my head since 2018. And now me and Ed are on the same label, and I’ve met him multiple times, and he actually got one of my vinyls, so that’s amazing. He’s a fan. He commented on my TikTok the other day. So, joke’s on her!

Have you ever met Katy since then?

No, I haven’t met her yet. I would love to, though. I would honestly like to thank her and be like, “Hey, you were kind of mean to me, but thanks for that.”

So, did you get two no’s and one yes?

Lionel said yes.

OK. Well, I get the impression that you’re glad that you didn’t go through — like it was a blessing in disguise.

Yeah. I’m one of those people that I just believe everything happens the way that it’s supposed to happen. And that was just part of it. Speaking of Ed Sheeran, I saw him say in an interview the other day, “You don’t learn anything in success. You learn everything from failures.” And I think that’s so true. I feel like because of that experience, I was like, “OK, I need to step away from doing that.”

Lots of really successful, famous people have auditioned for Idol and not made it through, so it’s actually good company to be in. But some people have said that they were devastated when they didn’t make it.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it definitely hurt. But I’m one of those people, I’m so competitive. It’s the same reason why I did my very first open-mic night, because my friends told me I couldn’t. So, having someone like her or them say, “You don’t have what it takes,” that just meant I didn’t have what it took right then. I just wasn’t going to let that deter me from stopping.

Did Katy’s Ed comment light a fire under you to work more on your own identity or sound?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my big goal, and it still kind of is my big goal, is I’m going to write a song that Katy Perry is going to record one day. That was my big thing.

I don’t mean to sound shady, but she maybe needed one of your songs on 143.

Yeah, I feel bad. That’s why I’m trying to be nice to her. I’m a fan. She’s getting enough shit on the internet from people right now, so I don’t need to be doing it.

I’m a big Katy fan too, and I actually thought she was a good judge on the show. And it seems like even though they didn’t put you through, she helped you, and that’s pretty cool. Anyway, enough Idol talk. You leave the show, and you get over it probably pretty quickly. Were you in Nashville already, at this point?

No, I moved to Nashville three months after that happened. That was in October, and I moved at the end of January.

I mean, talk about competitive. Everybody in Nashville is trying to make it in music, and it seems like you were getting opportunities that people who’ve been in that city a lot longer were still trying to get. How did you make stuff happen?

Actually, when I first moved to Nashville, I spent about a year and a half of proper in-the-trenches, just showing up, playing in public, doing all that. I was just some guy trying to make it. And then near halfway through COVID was when I got my first [break]. I wrote a song for a band called Arrows in Action that kind of did well on TikTok. And then there was another band called Games We Play that I had written a song for that did super-well on TikTok. There was another guy that I wrote two songs with and all these songs kind of did really well. And it was me and my buddy Spencer Jordan. We have been writing songs together since I moved there. He wrote every song on my album with me. He’s like my partner in crime, best friend, the best.

We had written these songs together, so all these songs in Nashville were going viral. And then all these publishers were like, “Who is writing these songs?” And they would go to the credits and it was these two guys that nobody had ever heard of. So, then once those songs happened, there was this surge of interest from people in Nashville. … I signed pretty shortly after that; I think I signed in May of 2022. And then right when I signed, I had seven demos that were of songs that I just sang the demos for, but they were going to be for other people. And when I showed them to my publisher — her name is Lynn Oliver, the most lovely woman in the world, the first person to ever take a legit chance on me in music — she laughed at me and she said, “If you think you’re giving these to anybody, you’re stupid.” She was like, “You’re putting these out.” And I was pretty against it, to be honest. I didn’t really want to do the artist thing.

Really?

Yeah. I had signed my publishing deal. I had become a professional songwriter, and to me, that was the dream. That was what I was chasing. And I had gotten that, so I was like, “I didn’t really need anything else.” But then they were like, “Listen, let’s just make a TikTok account. We’ll put out one song, and if the song does anything, we’ll put out another one. If it doesn’t, you don’t ever have to put out a song again.” And I was like, “OK, that’s fine.” And I made a TikTok [account], and my third TikTok I ever posted did 4 million views. And then it all just kind of snowballed out of control since then. And then those seven demos became my first EP, which is called How to Lose a Girl in 7 Songs.

That is an amazing story. Do you still write for other people, or want to, or have you put aside that part of your career for the time being?

Honestly, when I finished this album, up until a week before this tour started, I had only written songs for other people. I went back to writing. I did some country songs. I did some songs for female pop artists…

Anyone you can mention?

No, not yet. But there’s some cool ones that I’m pretty excited about.

I’m excited for you. I’m curious, you were sort of semi-joking about getting a song on a Katy Perry record, but if you could have any artist record one of your songs, who would it be?

This is going to sound so silly, but I feel as a songwriter, you just have to aim for the biggest and the best. And I think having somebody like a Rihanna cut or who knows, a Bruno Mars song, I think those are the ones. Because those are legacy artists that are going to be around. Or Adele.

She’s due to put another record out.

Adele, I got choruses! Give me a call! I got hooks, I got verses. Whatever you need, I’ll make it happen.

We were talking about how you got compared to Ed Sheeran early on, and you got past that. I know this isn’t a super-new song by you, but I do have to ask about “Not the 1975,” which is on Going, Going, Gone, even though it’s from 2023. I believe that’s also based on a true story — this time from your life.

So, basically I was in L.A. actually, and I have a girlfriend of two years now, but this was before her. And I was at some bar and I had just gotten signed. I was trying to be cool, whatever. If you tell anybody you’re a musician, no matter what, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I bet you are, dude.” And so that’s kind of what happened, and I was like, “No, no, no! I’m signed to Atlantic Records! I play shows!” And this [woman I was chatting up] said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. You will never be Matty Healy.” That’s what she said, as a joke.

I mean, nowadays, being told you’re not Matty Healy is probably a good thing…

But it was in the height of all of that [1975 mania]. So, somebody said that, and then the next morning I woke up and I came up with the line, “She said, ‘I like your confidence, but you’re not the 1975.’” Then we wrote the rest of the song and it was just like, “How many 1975 puns can we fit into this song without it being corny?”

Well, I’m all about puns. There can never be too many puns for me. Didn’t Matty Healy hear the song and like it?

Yeah, he DM’d me and he said, “Congrats on the song.” But then he also said, “You owe me a million dollars.” And I was like, “Actually, sir, we legally checked.” Because we had to send this song to their team to make sure that we were good to do this. We were going to make money off it, obviously.

And you’re a pro songwriter. You know the way things work.

Yeah, I know all the rules and stuff. We had to send it to their legal team, but the legal team responded and was like, “This is awesome! Do whatever you want.” So, obviously he was joking around. But man, I would love to meet him one day. That would be such a cool thing. I feel like that would break the internet.

I think it’d be funny if he actually got onstage with you and was like, “I am the 1975.”

When you’re signed to a label and you have a big song doing all these things, there’s always ways to try and capitalize on it. And one of my A&Rs was like, “You should DM him and see if he’ll feature on the song.” And I was like, “Are you fucking crazy? Matty Healy is not going to feature on this song.” And they pestered me about it for a while. They’re like, “Just send him a DM!  What’s the worst that could happen?” And finally, I was like, “Fine, I’ll send him a DM.” So, I was like, “Hey, Mr. Matty, if you ever want to get on this song with me, it could be a big thing, so just let me know.” And then the red “Seen” on Instagram popped up. Nothing, nothing. And then I deleted it so fast, dude. I was like, “That wasn’t me!” If I ever meet him in person, I’ll be like, “Listen, that really cringey message I sent was not my idea. I would never do that.” It was cringey.

But it all worked out. You are not the 1975. You are not Ed Sheeran. You are Knox Morris, or Knox. You are your own person, your own artist.

That was so nice. That was so good, right there. Thank you!

I appreciate that you appreciated that! Before I let you go, is there anything else you you’re working on that you want to talk about?

I just want to say to anybody that’s listening, thank you so much for listening to my music. My debut album going on is out now. … I just know that whatever comes after this is going to be equally as beautiful, if not more. And I’m very, very excited for the future.