Meet Xander Sallows
Sallows has been using Spotify to release his own music since September 2020. While his music is not overtly limited to the Christian genre, he sees it as an expression of his faith and has found success in both Christian and non-Christian music circles.
“I was inspired by other artists and wanted to be able to impact people in the same way that they’ve impacted me,” Sallows says.
He oversees every step of the process himself, including producing, writing, singing, mixing, and recording his music. According to him, it takes between 100 and 200 hours to produce just one song. He started writing music his freshman year of high school, and he produced and recorded for 3 ½ years before releasing music. Now, he is hired by other artists to help produce their songs.
As a creative, he says that he sometimes struggles to allow himself to be creative amidst the pressure of perfectionism.
“I question, would anyone want to listen to this?” Sallows says. “When I started, I had about 100 people listening every month, and now, I’ve had over 250,000 people listen. I never expected that.”
In April, one of his songs hit the Christian charts for the first time.
“Right next to me were artists like Toby Mac and We are Messengers, and it didn’t really make sense,” Sallows says. “I knew it had to be the Lord at that point.”
Through his work on Spotify, Sallows was able to achieve his dream of making a song with the artist who inspired him to make music, Matthew Parker, who also just so happened to be Sallows’ most listened to artist on Spotify for five years in a row.
Parker drove from South Carolina to Sallows’s home in Michigan so the pair could co-write the song “Skydiving,” which is Sallows’ most popular song on Spotify. Sallows says that was one of the most impactful experiences of his music career.
Although he has always liked music, he never imagined he could turn it into a career. Now that he has found success on Spotify, he is pursuing a degree in music production at Grace.
Most recently, Sallows released one song on Thanksgiving and three more as well as an EP on Dec. 3. He will have four more out on Dec. 31. His songs can be streamed on most music platforms.