INTERVIEW: Julia Michaels on Why 'Issues' Is About Herself & Her Favorite Celebrity Reaction

You may know Julia Michaels for her hit single "Issues" she released at the very beginning of this year, but there's no doubt you've heard her work plenty of times before. In fact, she has 12 hits on the Billboard Top 100! Julia has been a songwriter for a long time, and has penned hits like Justin Bieber's "Sorry," helped write several songs for Selena Gomez, especially on the pop star's last album Revival including "Good For You" and "Hands To Myself," as well as written songs for artists like Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Gwen Stefani, and a long impressive list more over the last four years. She was also recently featured on Kygo's "Carry Me," from his 2016 Cloud Nine album. 

With "Issues" (which reached No. 24 on the US Billboard Top 100) out in the world for the last few months, fans are eager to hear more, and good news for them -- there is more on the way as Julia plans to release an EP in the spring/summer of this year.

We recently caught up with the 23-year-old from Davenport, Iowa, and during an exclusive interview, she told us about what the transition has been like from songwriter to artist, how she got her start in songwriting, what "Issues" means to her, and more.

[Buy "Issues" on iTunes] 

Julia released "Issues" on January 13th of this year (2017) via Republic Records, and although she's been involved in the music industry for a number of years now, the transition from songwriter to now artist has been "different" for her. She says, "The process has been a bunch of adjectives rolled into one. I've been a songwriter for a really long time, so the transition has been so different for me. But I've got a lot of really supportive friends, and family, and fans, and it helps make everything go really smooth and less chaotic."

Before "Issues," Julia penned a long list of hit songs you've no doubt heard on the radio multiple times in one day, and she says she began writing songs as a kid, turning poems she wrote into music. "I've always loved words, so I would write poetry about anything and everything. I remember one year, my mom got me a piano when I was about 11 or 12, and I would just take all my poetry and put them to the piano. Very poorly. Still can't play for sh*t, but I would just put those on the piano and try and sing them. And then at a certain point, I figured out the structure of the song and stuff like that. Then, when I was about 16 was when I actually started professionally writing."

When asked if she remembers the first poem/song she every wrote, she cannot recall, but says, "I imagine it was probably something very emotional and very brooding."

Being that Julia has written so many chart-topping songs that ended up on other artists' albums, you have to wonder if she ever wrote a song that she wishes she kept for herself. But, Julia tells us the answer is no. "I have actually never written a song for someone else that I wanted to keep for myself. I'm a songwriter, that's what I do. I'm not precious about it. If someone is going to sing the song as passionately as I was about writing it, I'm like, 'Please, it's yours.' Like, 'That's your baby.'" 

Fast forward to 2017, and we now have "Issues." And if you really want to get a glimpse of Julia, she says that her song simply her. "Everything about 'Issues' is me in three minutes. I am a jealous person, and my highs are high, and my lows are low. I could probably fill a dictionary with all my issues."

"Issues" has not only attracted a number of fans to Julia in general, many of these fans are also fellow singer/songwriters. "There was a point where, almost every day, someone new was saying something, and some of them were people I had never even met that were reaching out to me, and were like, 'Issues is such a good song.' I'm like, 'Wow, thank you. Thank you so much!'"

One of these people is Sabrina Carpenter. Julia tells us that her favorite reaction to "Issues" from another artist is from the 17-year-old singer/songwriter.  "My favorite reaction was actually Sabrina Carpenter. She actually [was] one of the first people to do a cover of 'Issues' and I hadn't even met her. I didn't know her at all and that was the first time that I saw someone else sing my song. Then I met her about two weeks later, and she was like, 'I love your song' and I was like, 'I love you.' She is so sweet."

For fans who can't get enough of "Issues," Julia does plan to release her new EP in the spring/summer this year, but she is still taking life one day at a time at the moment. "This is all very new for me, so I'm trying to take it one day at a time, one step at a time, and I feel like an EP is gonna be the next part to tell the story, so EP in like spring/summer possibly, and just taking it one day at a time."

Watch Julia Michaels' official "Issues" music video below.