Adele

Before Tobias Jesso, Jr. could become a Grammy-nominated songwriter, he had to realize he wasn't cut out to be a performer.

And I was depressed because I was like, “I can’t do this. And then it had been so long that she just was like, “Are we gonna write a song or what?” And I’m like, “I guess so.” And when I knew that I had this huge bill I had to pay and everything, the decision was made for me. And I got to know her and she got to know me. And then the next day he sent me a text message and he said, “Could you send me those chords that you were playing around with?” So I sent him the chords and I didn’t hear anything about it. And I think that at the time it became about, “Now I want you to go perform.” And I’m like, “But I’m a terrible performer.” And they’re like, “and we want you to do interviews.” I’m like, “That makes me really uncomfortable.” They’re like, “We want to put you in photo shoots and we wanna put you on TV…” I’m already very anxious. What happened was I said, “I don’t want to go.” My managers were like, “Okay, let’s just give him some time.” I said, “No, no, I don’t want to go to those places and be miserable.” And then it turned into this sort of choice that I had to make, which was, the promoters need to be paid. One of them was in Australia and one of them was in Japan. You go on tour and I’m like, “Wait, why am I going on tour if I have to pay to go on tour?” And they’re like, “Because then you do two more [tours] and then it starts paying you.” And I’m like, “I never want to play shows. I can get my ideas out in the right way and I can translate them in the right way.” And as much as I didn’t like my voice, I wanted to listen to the songs. I was like, “Okay, who’s gonna sing it?” And he was like, “you are gonna sing it.” I was in bands and playing guitar and bass and I was struggling to accomplish anything or have anything stick.