Sasha Alex Sloan: Viral House Photo Led to LA Songwriting Deal

A giant word "DORK" painted on her parents' house sent Sasha Alex Sloan to Los Angeles.

The singer-songwriter told Music Business Worldwide how a viral Reddit photo turned into a publishing deal, in an interview published on 19 October 2026 for its World's Greatest Songwriters series, supported by AMRA.

Sloan said her father is from Siberia. At age 10, he hired a Russian piano teacher for classical lessons. She quit because she found it boring.

Her mother steered her in a different direction. She bought Sloan a guitar, plus chord books for the Beatles, Queen and Phantom Of The Opera. She also bought a Carpenters CD and a Kate Bush CD. Sloan said she became obsessed with both.

The first song she remembers writing was called 'Pitter Patter'. It was about stubbing her toe and crying. Her mother suggested she perform it at a school talent show instead of 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'. She did.

Sloan later applied to two music schools, Berklee and Belmont in Nashville. She chose Berklee after learning her grades would have put her on automatic academic probation at Belmont.

Then came the house. Her parents had painted the word 'DORK' on their home, with an arrow pointing to her room. Sloan posted a photo of it to Reddit. It went viral overnight.

She left her SoundCloud link in the comments. The son of a music publisher found it and passed it on. Two weeks later, she got a call from Steve Lindsey.

Lindsey had a joint venture with Warner Chappell, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group. He offered Sloan a publishing deal, the contract that administers a writer's songs and collects royalties for their use. His advice was blunt: move to Los Angeles and become a songwriter.

She quit school. She moved.

What makes this stand out is how ordinary each step sounds in her telling. No audition show. No showcase. A bedroom joke, a comment link and a phone call built the bridge from Boston to Los Angeles.