Manager Spotlight offers a small insight into the heads of incredible managers. This week in the spotlight is Rebekah Tayler!

How long have you worked in Management? 
I’ve worked in management for coming up to 8 years now.

Who do you manage now?
I’m working with Passenger, Cher Lloyd and an amazing new development artist called Jed Holland who has his first release coming up. So a pretty varied roster!!

Where did you find your first client and what inspired you to take them on?
I was lucky enough to be offered an Office Manager job at ie: music 8 years ago and was taken under the wings of industry legends Tim Clark and David Enthoven. From there I quite quickly started assisting across Passenger’s campaigns. Fast forward 8 years and I’ve worked on 8 albums with Passenger and the team. Across these campaigns we’ve achieved 19 official #1 singles and 4 official #1 albums across multiple counties, as well as over 3 billion views on YouTube. I still feel really inspired by Mike (Passenger) as an artist and feel incredibly lucky to have learnt the ropes with him.

What’s a good/bad day at work look like for you? 
There are ups and downs every day. The best days are when I feel like I’ve really achieved something for my artists; and the bad days are when I come across key people who don’t share my belief in my artists. I do take a lot of motivation from the latter though!

What has been the highlight of your management career to date?
There are many moments, big and small, that are highlights for me. From the first official #1 album campaign I worked on; to quietly taking in a show we’ve worked really hard to put together; to self-releasing a top 5 album. Working with Cher Lloyd is a massive highlight for me – she’s insanely talented and it’s really satisfying hitting targets and driving forwards with her. Helping to achieve sales of over 1 million copies of her recent single None Of My Business is something i’m really proud of. Another big highlight is hearing and loving a demo for the first time, overcoming all the various hurdles and industry politics over the following months to get everything together for release and then hearing the finished product on the radio for the first time 💪🏻

What do you think are the big challenges for a manager in the current COVID-19 situation?
Every corner of our industry has been affected by COVID-19. Aside from the huge obvious challenges around live and the devastating knock on effects that’s having, the biggest day to day challenge is asking our artists to be across even more online platforms to connect with audiences. We’re so lucky we have access to all sorts of new amazing platforms and technologies which no doubt can and will be monetised (which is essential), but expecting artists to suddenly be able to connect via a mobile phone and perform without audience energy is a challenge that I don’t underestimate. I think so much is already expected of artists releasing music these days and they’re feeling the pressure now more than ever.

What music are you currently listening to?
A huge variety – I do listen to a lot of pop music but have also been exploring catalogues of artists like Dolly Parton and John Prine who my artists have recently mentioned as being influences on their own music. Cher Lloyd also released a single last week called “Lost” (yep – shameless plug) so that has been playing quite a bit as well – my boyfriend recently said he thinks he has now passively listened to it upwards of 500 times over the course of the last few months. Lucky him I say!