“You Should Let Me Host” Writer Talks Oscars, His Creative Process, and Collaborating With A Childhood Friend

by Maria Russinovich

American university sophomore Brendan Moriak and his childhood friend Jake Collins released a music video this week titled “You Should Let Me Host” in response to the Academy Awards decoding for the second year in a row to go totally hostless. Their original song is an upbeat earworm where Collins sings to the Academy Awards about how they should let him host, providing incentives such as “paying for the hotel, the travel, everything is free!” At the time of writing, the music video has nearly 2,000 views on YouTube, and is available on Apple Music and Spotify. After watching the music video, I wanted to know more about the creative process that produced such a delightful song. I sat down with Moriak to learn about him, and the history behind “You Should Let Me Host.”

So, to start off, what’s your major, what year are you, tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’m a Sophomore, and I’m majoring in Music, with a minor in Business and Entertainment. I’ve been doing music my entire life. I have no idea what got me into music, but when I was very little I had a tiny, toy grand piano and messed around with it. Then when I was in Kindergarten I got my first guitar, and then I played violin in elementary school, but then I stopped playing violin because it was boring and my arm hurt. Then I picked up guitar again, and did a lot of guitar all throughout middle school, playing in shows and bands and stuff. It wasn’t until Junior year of high school that I started writing orchestral music. I’ve always written music; I always was an improviser and writing songs on the guitar and everything, but I didn’t really touch the more classical stuff until the end of high school. Now it’s all I do.

What kind of music do you get to create at school?

I do a bunch of different things, stuff for composition class, but mainly it’s just outside projects, personal things, stuff for clients and films, really anything I can get my hands on. I do a lot of orchestration work, so more of fleshing out other people’s ideas to instrumentation. I’m very interested in that kind of work, and I have a lot of fun doing that stuff.

Is that where your minor comes in? A little bit of the business side of entertainment?

Well, I have the minor because to do anything in music you’re going to need the business side of things, and I’m a business oriented person. It’s interesting to take the classes and learn more about it. But, you’re essentially your own business in the music world.

How do you find jobs or clients?

There are so many different ways. There are a bunch of Facebook groups, and so before what I would do is I would post in these groups and say “hey, I can do this thing if anybody needs this thing I’ll do this thing for you.” Once you do that a little bit and you become better and know more people then people recommend you to other things and you meet other people and it sort of grows like a spider web of connections. That’s really how my life has gone, I started posting in all of those Facebook groups, and I got my first film job because they were looking for a producer, and I’m not a producer, but perhaps they needed a composer! If they’re looking for a producer chances are they’re looking for other people, so I messaged the director and asked if he needed a composer and he said yeah so that’s how I got my first job. Just looking for any creative avenue, and also if you take your skills, like what your skills can do. So, that’s how I got into orchestration for people.

How does the orchestration process begin? I know that’s a big question to ask…

Well I can… I didn’t realize other people couldn’t do this but I can hear everything in my head, right? So if you play me a melody, I’ve worked enough with orchestras and writing where I could take your melody in my head and orchestrate it out. And then after that it’s just the process of sitting down and doing it. But I can hear it all in my head and I hear “oh, this would be an E.” A lot of the time it’s not and it sucks and you’re like okay, guess I’ll do something else, but it’s really just a matter of trying to think up “so, what do you want? Do you want huge, small, loud, quiet?” and just knowing how the orchestra works and how different instruments work together in different color palettes. It’s very much like painting. If you were to ask an artist “how do you think of the colors to be able to do this” they would say that they could see it in their head, and it’s just a matter of putting it on paper and putting the right colors together.

What keeps you going when you’re creating music?

Well, I guess it depends. For my personal projects it’s just because it’s cool and I want to do it, and it’s fun to sit down. Either it’s very stressful and I stop doing it, I have probably hundreds of unfinished Logic projects of just little melodies I’ve written and I just don’t know what to do with them. Other things, if you’re just doing something and you’re getting paid for it and that’s a pretty good motivator. It’s my favorite motivation. It’s like ah well, if I’ve got $300 in my pocket at the end of this let’s finish it. I don’t know, it all depends on what I’m doing and a lot of times it’s very stressful and very annoying, and very aggravating because things just don’t work. Or, you can’t think of anything and whatever you’re thinking of just sucks. Other times it’s the complete opposite and you’re just going and the next thing you know it’s 3 in the morning and you’re halfway done. That’s very rare. I get bored very easily with stuff.

How does your work vary from a personal project, a client project, or a school project?

I try to intertwine them all. For my composition lessons, school projects, I’ll just write personal projects. It all depends on what I’m doing and some things take a lot longer. For example if I want to write a 7 minute full orchestral piece it’s going to take a while whereas something like the “You Should Let Me Host,” my friend and I had written the chords, and then we messed around with it. He came over one day and we did the whole thing in a day. He came over at noon and left at 7, and I was up until 3am finishing it. But for something like that it’s all together, but that’s also because I didn’t have to write the music, I just had to orchestrate and produce and everything.

Oh, so it was a song that already existed?

Well, no so my friend Jake had this idea for the song and he sort of spearheaded the chord progression, and then we sat together and we wrote the song. Then he came over and we recorded it, and from there I added in all the strings and the band parts and arrangements and everything.

What is your relationship with Jake?

I met Jake in high school. He is my best friend from back home, we’ve done a bunch of stuff together. Anywhere from musical theater, acting together, produced a show together my senior year. We’re always working together and writing stuff, we work very well together creatively.

So, how did “You Should Let Me Host” come to be?

Well, Jake goes to Emerson College up in Boston, so we did the music the day before both of us went back to school from Winter Break. We did it that Saturday, I mean we were scrambling to finish it because he had to get back to pack because he was catching a plane at 9 on Sunday, and I was leaving at 11. I was really surprised we pulled it off.

What inspired you both to make the song?

This is all Jake, all his humor. Last year when Kevin Hart stepped down and they weren’t going to have a host, Jake wrote up a nice email to send to the academy as for why he should host. I mean, this kid is so funny. I went over to his house in December because we’re working on a musical right now, so I went over to start writing that, and while I was there he was like “alright, let’s take a break from this, I have a really great idea that I should write a song to host the Oscars.” He sat down and showed me the chords he had been working on, and from that we finished the song there, and then recorded it later. But I mean, that’s all Jake, even I can’t come up with that.

How did you record the song?

I have a cute little bedroom studio where everything’s done. I’ve been working out of my bedroom since 6th grade and doing my recording. All of the vocals are live, obviously. We just recorded it in my room, but every other sound is just a MIDI sample. I keep tweeting the song at Lin Manuel Miranda because I want him to see it, and we have more ideas but he just lives so far.

Where else can people find your music?

Brendanmoriak.com. I have a lot of stuff, if you type in my name on YouTube an array of things that I would and would not want you to see are on there. What I mean is I came up through the School of Rock program, it’s very much like the movie, it’s the same idea, where kids get together and rehearse and they do a show. So, I played a lot of shows in middle school, so there’s just all kinds of stuff. If you just Google my name, I don’t even know what’s out there.

Who is your celebrity idol?

Well, in music it’s John Powell who no one knows, but we’ve all heard his music. He scored How To Train Your Dragon and all of the Ice Age films. He’s great, I’d love to meet him or work with him. For a celebrity idol in general, that would have to be Ryan Reynolds. He’s amazing and I want him to be my cool uncle. I feel like I’d get along well with Ryan Reynolds.

When you’re at school, how do you record?

I do everything with MIDI instruments. MIDI is basically like a synthesizer but for orchestral instruments. There’s a whole thing that goes into programming it to sound like real instruments, but I do everything through MIDI. It’s easier, and recording is just so much work, it’s too hard. I would love to be able go to Abby Road and record live instruments there. One day…

What kind of work do you do for the school as a whole, beyond your major?

Anything I can weasel my way into, or that people make me weasel my way into. For example, right now I’m working with the orchestra director and we’re doing a big AU pops concert in the Amphitheater in April. (Shoutout to that.) We’re doing a bunch of song arrangements for songs like Skyfall, a bunch of fun pieces, and hopefully it will be a big thing. So right now I’m planning that, and I’m conducting in that. But for other things, last semester I ran the pit for AU Player’s Little Shop of Horrors. The semester before I worked with the music director on re-orchestrating Company, and I conducted that pit. I mean, anything else I can get my hands on really, any way I can get in there.

What other things do you do on campus, or off campus other than music?

I work with a startup entertainment company called Asteria Entertainment. I do marketing for them, so I’m their Marketing Director. You may have seen some of their events, we put on a couple of comedy events last year and we’re putting together a bunch of events this year. But, other than that, just music.

Finally, what is “the dream” for you?

The dream changes constantly, but it’s always to be a successful film composer. To be able to score a Pixar film, I love Pixar. They have the best music. Like Ratatouille and Up. Or to work as an orchestrator for Pixar. I listen mainly to film scores, and some alternative and pop here and there, but yeah, music is my whole life.