This week, Jon Bellion returned to center stage after years of remaining behind the scenes: the veteran songwriter-producer released Father Figure, his first album in seven years and a poignant reflection on fatherhood, including his relationship with his own father and his experiences as a dad of three. A deeply personal project that includes a picture of his parents on the album cover and a voicemail from his uncle on the track list, Father Figure also demonstrates Bellion’s status as a gifted collaborator, with Luke Combs, Pharrell Williams and Jon Batiste lending their voices to his story.
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Bellion — who has contributed to hits by Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and Miley Cyrus, and recently co-helmed “Friend of Mine,” Rihanna’s first new single in three years — says that he’s not playing a “numbers game” with the album, and that the metric of success he’d like to reach with Father Figure is more abstract. “If my album can give you one more day, then I’m cool with that — that’s the goal,” he tells Billboard. “To give a listener another day of inspiration? I could live with that.”
Yet along with its emotional power, Father Figure also offers a fresh industry blueprint, as the rare project in which its credited co-writers will receive a percentage of master royalties, or “points,” on the album. Bellion worked alongside the artists that comprise Beautiful Mind Projects — his management, publishing and label company — including studio whizzes Pete Nappi, Tenroc and Elkan, all of whom also contributed to Rihanna’s “Friend of Mine.”
Bellion says that the decision to provide points to his fellow songwriters was the result of his own “frustrations of being a songwriter and being paid dirt — morally paid dirt — for 10 years. I don’t want to hear people talking about, ‘Oh, he’s made money and he’s successful, so he can’t talk about how songwriters get paid dirt.’ … If you write an entire song with a group of people, and there’s $10 and they only pay you 25 cents, there’s moral injustice there.
“If it’s $10 million and they only pay you $250,000, there’s moral injustice there,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter the way you microscopically change that — it’s an insane thing to say. I’ve always been vocal about that, and I don’t care what people’s perception of that is, because songwriters get paid f—king dirt.”
After self-funding Father Figure, Bellion admits that he does have “a new perspective and a new appreciation for what the label is doing,” but still believes that there’s a way for record labels to allocate less money toward promotional efforts and more towards creative collaborators. To that end, Bellion says that he decided to focus his promotional campaign less on short-form content, and more on proper music videos for four songs from the album — including the title track, which received a moving visual on Friday (June 6).
Bellion says that the album rollout has been an invaluable learning process. “You’ve got to start somewhere,” he says. “I’m understanding the workings of the label, and stumbling through it. And even if I come out losing money — which I think I will on this album — but still getting the writers paid at least a point or two, and giving them the courage to go into the next meeting to say ‘Well, John did it!’ … Someone has to be the guy to be like, ‘I don’t really know how to make my money back while giving out a ton of points if I’m funding the thing myself, but I’m gonna have to jump into the world to put my money where my mouth is.’ I don’t know if this is gonna work out, but at least I tried to do the thing.”
As Bellion gears up to promote Father Figure from the stage — he’ll perform a sold-out intimate show at SOB’s in New York, and headline Forest Hills Stadium on Aug. 23 — he hopes that his unique standing in the industry will turn his gambit with the album into a successful model.
“I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum,” he says. “I’ve been on the label side, I’ve been on the publisher side, I’ve been on the writer side, and I’ve been on the artist side. So there’s more of a holistic angle, and I can try to bring everything in closer, to get to a better place, possibly.
“I’m not trailblazing,” Bellion continues. “I’m gonna go to Capitol Hill and dedicate my life to — I’m not saying that. But putting my money where my mouth is, where it actually counts? It’s a good place to start.”
