Tai Verdes

Singer Tai Verdes has built a reputation around his buoyant, laid-back pop sound. His breakthrough arrived in 2020 when the track “Stuck in the Middle” spread rapidly online, opening the door to his first album, the breezy and stylistically diverse TV, issued the following year.

Raised in Southern California as Tyler Colon, he learned piano, guitar, and ukulele during his youth. Following graduation he enrolled at Babson College and joined its basketball squad, yet his commitment to singing never faded. He ultimately left school to chase music full-time, taking a retail position at a phone store while carving out evenings and weekends for creative work. The COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 sharpened that focus; he began recording vocal takes inside his car and sharing the results across social platforms. That August he uploaded “Stuck in the Middle” with a promise to release it officially once the clip reached 1,000 likes. The song quickly caught fire, leading Verdes to ink a deal with Arista. In May 2021 he unveiled his inventive debut full-length, TV, which wove together pop, hip-hop, and R&B. A standalone single titled “3 Outfits” followed in March 2022.