iN VIDEO: Kamloops musician wins nation-wide singing competition | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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iN VIDEO: Kamloops musician wins nation-wide singing competition

Madison Olds, a 21-year-old Kamloops song writer, won the contest that recieved submissions from accross the country.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED - Madison Olds

KAMLOOPS - A Kamloops musician has emerged victorious from a nationwide competition, earning prizes valued at $50,000 and plenty of new recognition for her talent as an emerging artist.

Madison Olds has won the nation-wide search put on by the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel called Pacific Rim Life Soundtrack.

The Vancouver hotel put out a call for Canada’s most talented single performer who best encompassed the west coast life. The contest, which ran from April 16 to May 16 received submissions from across the country spanning all sorts of musical genres.

The Fairmont Pacific Rim awarded Olds a prize valued at $50,000 consisting of ten nights in a gold owner’s suite, studio time to record a new song, performing at the hotel’s new performance stage, and many excursions.

“I get to stay in the amazing Fairmont gold owner suite, and I'm going to eat my heart out,” Olds says. “I'm going to eat so much amazing food and drink all the wine and do all the fun stuff.”

Olds won the contest with the song she says started it all, Moments in the Mountains. She was inspired to write the song after a sunrise hike with a friend, where the two woke up at 2 a.m. to take in the views.

“We were both kind of in a slump and I feel like we needed to watch something beautiful happen to get ourselves out of it,” Olds says. “So we got up, we laughed, we talked about what it was like going through high school, we talked about all the crappy things we went through, and the amazing things we went through. It was just this beautiful, nostalgic moment she and I got to share, and that's kind of what ignited the song.”

Olds wrote the song about three months after the hike, and it is now one of her most popular songs. It was used as a theme song for the 2018 B.C. Winter Games and continues to garner attention.

“I thought I could tell my kids one day, 'Hey, I wrote this song and nobody ever heard of it,'” and then it ended up fitting so well for the 2018 B.C. Winter Games theme song that we produced it and it’s just caught wind,” Olds says. “I think it’s almost half a million streams now, which is super exciting.”

Olds is a familiar face in Kamloops, performing at local events and recently snagging the Best of Kamloops gold award for best local band or musician. The singer is eager to get to the big city and share the experience with her family. Her dad and her brother are often spotted performing with her, and this experience is no exception.

“My dad and my brother are going to come to play with us because we’ve been told that this west coast experience is going to ignite some awesome songwriting experiences. So they're going to come to stay with me for a little bit and come in to play,” Olds says.

Part of winning the contest means she gets studio time, which she requested to do with one of her tried and true favourites, Ryan Worsley from Echo Point Studios. He worked with her on three of her singles to be released in 2020, and the two will work on one more for the same upcoming album.

She will be staying at the hotel from July 23 to 30 and performing at the Lobby Lounge on the 25. According to Kaylyn Storey, public relations manager for the hotel, Olds will be treated to many excursions such as bike rides along the Stanley Park seawall, the Capilano suspension bridge, and Harbour Air flight experience.

“She's here from the 23rd to the 30th for her first wave, but she does have ten nights in total. Because of her travel schedule, we had to split it up a bit,” Storey says.

She notes that the hotel has always been dedicated to the arts, but the construction of a new stage will better accommodate performers, and warranted a Canada wide search to put new talent in the spotlight.

“We’ve always had live music, it's one of the elements of the hotel's DNA,” Storey says. “Part of the renovations to the Lobby Lounge in 2018 was we built a dedicated performance stage at the front of the Lobby Lounge so it's further enhanced our commitment to music, and that's where the idea of doing the soundtrack (contest) came from.”

The contest accepted submissions for a month, inviting emerging artists to send in a song they thought would best fit with the Pacific Rim style.

“There were five judges who are a part of the Canadian music industry, from musicians to managers and they were all provided with the finalist info and they judged it specifically,” Storey says.

Jeffery Latimer, president of JL Entertainment, was one of the five judges.

"It was exciting to listen to the calibre of talent that submitted original scores and it’s refreshing to see how many solo artists are creating music in our country,” Latimer says in a press release. “This contest was special in its request for stories of the West Coast and our winner, Madison Olds, has a bright and beautiful sound that is both accessible and powerful.”

After this endeavour, Olds will continue to work on her upcoming album, which she says has a very new feel.

“(The songs) are a little top secret, but I can share that they're going to blow everybody away. It's not going to be expected,” Olds says. “The sounds are totally pushing the envelope, its got a little bit of Alessia Cara, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande, if they all had got together and had a baby, that's what this music would sound like. So not what my stuff sounds like right now, it's really exciting.”

Although she couldn’t give away much, she’s sure her new sound will please fans new and old.


To contact a reporter for this story, email Jenna Wheeler or call (250) 819-6089 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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News from © iNFOnews, 2019
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