Two years ago, Beckett McDowell was an Ojai Valley School sophomore taking conceptual chemistry and suffering through a long soccer season.
However, with the rise of COVID, Beckett saw an opportunity to change the course of his life.
He was given the option to transition out of the time-consuming in-person learning and into online learning. This allowed Beckett to give his time and attention to making music and developing a career around it.
For the past two years, Beckett has been hard at work in the studio, writing, performing, and producing originals for the world to see.
On October 28, Beckett released his debut single Weirdo, which now has nearly 140,000 plays on Spotify alone as of early February. Weirdo was Beckett’s very first release in his professional music career and gained a fair amount of traction on both Tik Tok and Spotify.
Beckett attended OVS from sixth to tenth grade and was a part of the class of 2022. Once Beckett finished his sophomore year, he left OVS to pursue his music career. He took online classes so that he could finish his high school career while also being able to put the majority of his focus towards making music and finding his foothold in the industry.
“I felt like I couldn’t always fully commit myself to the school because of music,” Beckett said. “And it’s great now because I’m finally doing what I love.”
Before leaving OVS, Beckett was primarily performing cover songs and writing some originals from time to time.
However, after leaving OVS, he met Pierre Bouvier, a Canadian musician who is the lead singer and basis of the band Simple Plan. Pierre saw the talent in Beckett and showed him one of his old Simple Plan songs called Weirdo.
Pierre, now Beckett’s producer, has played a major part in developing and evolving his music.
“When I listened to it, it was a pop-punk song, so we developed it into more of a pop song,” Beckett Said “Once we did Weirdo, we started working on writing other originals.”
After Weirdo, Beckett continued to write and produce originals.
So far he has been able to create an eight-song album with more originals in the works. As a solo artist with no record label to push his release, he has been able to find success in his debut release.
This puts Beckett in a very rare situation.
As a young artist looking into a record label, Beckett would’ve been in a bit of a tough position. However, now that he has shown what he can do with his own resources, it may sweeten the deal for him.
“With a solo release hopefully I can get the attention of a label, and then I’ll be able to score a way better deal with a label than I would if I had a great song and nothing else,” Beckett said
OVS senior Nic Jugan said it’s exciting to see Beckett pursuing his passion for music.
“Beckett released a professionally produced song, and that was inspiring, to see his dreams come to fruition and to see someone already making strides in their professional career,” said Nic, a friend and former classmate of Beckett.