Jason Derulo reveals how a near-fatal injury sparked his most successful songwriting

Jason Derulo, sat down with Fleur East at Hits Radio for Off The Record. He opened up about growing up in Florida, how he launched his career in the record industry and the life-threatening injury which inspired him to write his most successful music, at the lowest point in his life.

The 'Want to Want Me' singer recounted the time he was preparing for his 'Future History World Tour', but was left severely injured with a broken vertebrae, and had to recover for seven months. The injury left him struggling physically and mentally after he had to cancel his tour.

Jason explained to Fleur: "I was actually preparing for the tour and the trainer that I was with, he was like, ‘you need to prepare yourself by doing a bunch back-to-back to back-to-back'.

"You know, so I got kind of used to doing that and like every day he would increase the number more and more and more, and we were basically training for... You know, to be able to do it when I'm at my most tired point, which is cool, but I think there's other ways to do it."

He continued: "But anyway, I slipped during one and I bailed and you're never supposed to bail when you're doing a back tuck, and I landed on my head and broke my C2 vertebrae. I was out for seven months of my life and I mean I could have, I could have died!"

Jason, who had to cancel his tour as a result of the injury went on to say: "(It was a) very, very low point in my life and I talk about it all the time that, sometimes when the world stops and you're at your lowest is when the change happens.

'Talk Dirty'

Jason has huge success with his album titled 'Talk Dirty' in the US, named 'Tattoos' around the world. The singer went on to explain how despite struggling after breaking his vertebrae, he came up with some of his most successful material.

"You know the best changes can happen, and I feel like in that moment, well in that time period, I was able to, you know, just block out all the noise and just focus in on what mattered, which was the creative," Jason explained.

"I got lost in a routine, so every single day I did the same thing, the same time, I ate at the same time, I went to sleep at the same time, I made music at the same time every single day," he continued.

"And that was when I made my most successful album. The ‘Talk Dirty’ album, which had six platinum songs on it and it was at my lowest point in my life."

Admitting he couldn't dance to the songs he'd written due to his injury, Jason said: "But I was trying to make music that was totally opposite of how I actually felt inside, you know. I was really just trying to put myself in a different headspace and yeah, it ended up paying off."

How did Jason get famous?

During the chat with Fleur, Jason opened up about his rise to fame, revealing he comes from a huge family. The singer told how he grew up in Miami, Florida, in an area he said "wasn't very nice". However, he went on to explain that he never knew that his family were broke because they provided him with "time and love, and togetherness".

"I grew up in a very large family" Jason told Fleur. "My grandmother had 15 kids, and all of those kids had a lot of kids, so I had a lot of family around, I wasn't really a friend-guy. My family members became my closest friends."

The singer went on to say that he started to make music when he was just eight-years-old, late into the night. When Fleur asked if he'd always known he was going to sing he replied: "Oh yeah, since I was four-years-old.

"I knew very early on that's what I wanted to do, and I hardly wavered."

The 'Marry Me' singer explained how MySpace propelled him into the music industry. He had previously spent time writing songs for artists from the age of 16. "It was hard for me to get into rooms with decent-sized producers," he admitted, explaining: "Those producers were trying to place records with the big stars of the day. They didn't really care about who was trying to come up and make music."

Jason started to suggest writing songs for artists such as Ginuwine, which eventually got his songs placed with artists, and he was able to build up his songwriting credits.

However, it was later down the line, when he put his songs on MySpace where his career really started to take off. His music was noticed by the brother of music producer J.R. Rotem (Britney Spears, Rihanna and Sean Kingston). Tommy Rotem started to send him beats for him to write to. Eventually he was invited out to Los Angeles as a songwriter, and on the first night he and J.R. Rotem wrote seven songs.

Jason went on to write two songs called 'Replay' and 'Whatcha Say' for Sean Kingston, however they were both turned down by his label. But, luckily for Jason it was later decided that 'Whatcha Say' would be his debut song, and the rest is history! 'Whatcha Say' has now had more than 360 million views on YouTube, and was certified 5× Platinum in the US and 2× Platinum in the UK.

Listen again to Jason Derulo Off The Record

Jason Derulo joined Fleur East for Off The Record. You can listen again to the show on Rayo.

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