Sharon Van Etten was once an aspiring songwriter in Tennessee, but she had no idea how the music industry worked. So she moved to New York City and took an unpaid internship working for a record label.
“I started doing mail orders and then learned my way around the music blogs,” Van Etten says in an interview with Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “I didn’t know what a music blog was at the time.”
Cripplingly shy, Van Etten toiled in anonymity during the day, then performed in clubs at night. Her boss, Ben Goldberg, had no idea she aspired to record for his label, Ba Da Bing Records.
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