Atlantic City Weekly

For a starving young artist with hungry mouths to feed, an eviction notice trumps ego every time.

So there’s not a moment’s hesitation when Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Michael Bolton is asked if he ever regretted not keeping any of the hit songs he wrote for other artists during the early stages of his career.

“Nope, I’ve never kicked myself, because also there was a time when my rent checks were bouncing,” he says. “I had three young daughters, a wife, [so] there were five of us to feed and shelter. When getting evicted is a reality for you, you don’t think, ‘Wow, I wished I’d kept that song instead of making a living as a songwriter.’”

Besides, Bolton, who began writing for other singers long before he became one of the world’s best-selling recording artists, says a songwriter never really parts with a song completely. He’s got platinum proof of that.

“The biggest hit that I’ve written was ‘How Am I Supposed To Live Without You,’ and Laura Branigan had a giant hit with it in ’83,” he says during a recent media teleconference in advance of his 2010 worldwide concert tour. “I was allowed to record it again less than 10 years later … and I had a bigger hit with it on my own album. So I didn’t feel like I had just undone something.”

During his earliest days in the business — he signed his first professional contract when he was just 16 — Bolton, 57, was writing for rock and heavy-metal artists. His own hard-rock band, Blackjack, toured with Ozzy Osbourne.

“I just always considered the kind of songs I was writing for other artists a different part of me, [things] that I would never express as a [singer],” he explains.

However, writing one kind of song for other performers, and then recording a completely different type of song as a recording artist, demonstrated the kind of diversity music producers and publishers like to see.

“The placement of songs is something producers and publishers look at, and it gives you a certain kind of [artistic] wage and currency,” he says. “Producers will say, ‘Oh, he writes for them? I didn’t know that, I think I’ll listen to the song he sent me.’”

When Bolton is writing a song, he usually knows going in whether the song is compatible with his voice and singing style.

“I think I’m fairly discerning in that when I’m working on an idea, I pretty much know whether vocally it’s in my wheelhouse,” he says. “[Is] this something that I really need to keep for myself, as compared to letting another artist cut it first?”

Bolton, who headlines Saturday (March 13) at Harrah’s Resort, has made a habit of seeking out and collaborating with a broad range of talent.

He’s worked with Kanye West, Jay-Z and, most recently, R&B star Ne-Yo. But the most exciting and promising new artist with whom he’s co-written material has been Lady Gaga, who confessed to being a fan of Bolton’s writing and singing style since she was a little girl.

Bolton says he’d never heard of Gaga before a producer hooked them up on the phone about 18 months ago, when he was mapping out his most recent album, One World One Love, released last September. Lady Gaga co-wrote and sang backup on the song “Murder My Heart.”

Before he agreed to work with her, Bolton listened to a few MP3 files of Lady Gaga’s songs, and he was impressed by what he heard.

“The first song I listened to was ‘Just Dance,’ and it sounded like a giant record to me,” he says. “When I met her, she started singing these melodies and lyrics and I realized I’ve got a real artist in front of me, someone who can actually sing and doesn’t need to be [computed-enhanced] to sound good. She’s the real thing.”

Teaming with Lady Gaga was an “unexpected collaboration,” he adds, and something of a surprise.

“I didn’t know who Gaga was because her album hadn’t come out yet,” he says. “And four months later, after we wrote together, she became the biggest thing in the world. I love to see someone that focused, who already has the vision of her career. People compare her to a new Madonna, but I actually think she has the range of her career more now than Madonna did when she first started out. She’s the epitome of an artist … and I adore her.”