Skylar Grey Had to Sell Her Song Catalog, Including Eminem and Rihanna’s ‘Love the Way You Lie,’ to Pay for Bitter Divorce
06.06.2022 - 18:25
/ variety.com
Steve Baltin Skylar Grey’s co-signs and collaborators include Eminem and Rihanna (2010’s “Love The Way You Lie”), Diddy (“Coming Home”) and Dr. Dre (she contributed to 2011’s “I Need A Doctor” performance at the Grammys), and the singer and songwriter is herself a multiple Grammy nominee.
Yet, for the last six years — since her last album, “Natural History” — she has all but retreated from public view.During that time, Grey hit “rock bottom,” she tells Variety, suffering a divorce so bitter that she was forced to sell her catalog to pay her legal bills. She wasn’t happy about the sale, but Grey has moved on — now engaged, she has started the process of rebuilding her library with a new album, the intimate, self-titled “Skylar Grey” (released April 29).
Variety spoke with Grey about the tumult of the last few years, why she doesn’t want to tour anymore and her plans going forward.You’ve had a lot of life upheaval since we last spoke.I wasn’t really allowed to talk about everything that was going on because I was in a legal dispute, so I didn’t want any of that to bite me in the ass by saying something. So yeah, I just was keeping it private.
But since 2017 I was going through a divorce and lawsuit, that was just wrecking me emotionally and financially. This past year, 2021, we finally resolved it, settled, I had to sell my catalog in order to afford the settlement, which was very sad in a way, because those songs like “Love The Way You Lie” and “Coming Home,” those are my babies.
But at the same time, nobody can tell me I didn’t write those songs just ’cause I don’t own the rights to them anymore. I didn’t want to sell them, but it was my only way to put the past behind me…So this wasn’t like what Bob Dylan and Bruce
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