An Origin Story: The Eclectic

When I took a visit to UAF in the summer of 2024 I saw the radio office and knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I do my best to listen to a wide range of music, explore different popular artists catalogs, and try to keep up with what albums have been trending recently so I knew that I wanted to be a part of sharing music to people. I think that stems from where I grew up, a lot of the music all kind of had the same sound. It got repetitive for me, and I got to a point where I couldn’t listen to country music and I made it my mission to listen to everything but that. I ventured into many different genres, my dad actually helped me a lot with that because he always wanted to keep up with what was good in the modern music scene.

My explorations got more and more niche but I never wanted to dip back into the country, I firmly believed it all sounded the same. I think it was when I visited Portland and my cousin who was heavily involved in the music industry introduced me to some of the modern country artists who were blowing up at the time. Talking to them I understood that they all had different stories, they had different reasons for making the music they did, and they had their own ways of demonstrating what their lives had been like. It became clear to me that we all had some form of struggle in one way or another, and that artists were just dealing with that the best way they knew, by making music that could comfort them and relate to other people. Since then, I have been open to all forms of music and have been trying to foster the same kind of environment on my show “The Eclectic.”