ELA student forges path outside music journalism

Taylor Markarian ’15 is in love. You can hear it in her voice and see it in her face when she talks about her feelings for Los Angeles.

“I loved it the second I got off the plane. I never fell in love with a place so immediately,” said Markarian, an Emerson College Los Angeles student.

Describing LA as “never boring,” Markarian knew she had to come to the City of Angels because it made the most sense professionally. A Writing, Literature and Publishing major with a minor in Music Appreciation, Markarian has written several reviews and done a lot of work in music journalism. When she started looking for internship opportunities in LA, she decided to forge her own path outside of music journalism.

“I wanted to intern at a record label that produced the type of music I’m interested in,” Markarian said.

Enter Epitaph Records, a label Markarian listened to while growing up in Tenafly, New Jersey. As part of her internship, Markarian has been able to write for Epitaph’s website, collect news clippings about bands on the label, gather media contacts, and make connections. She has even been able to interview Brett Gurewitz, guitarist and songwriter for the band Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph Records. Meeting people in the industry has been invaluable, Markarian said.

A singer, Markarian’s love of music developed when she was a young girl. Growing up as an only child in a single-parent household, Markarian says she found comfort in music. When she was feeling alone, she would turn on her iPod and find bands on the Internet expressing the way she felt. Not only does she want to be in a band and record music one day, but she also hopes to work on business projects and continue to write.

“I kind of want to do it all,” she said.

Until then, she’s going to continue discovering different facets of LA.

“LA jives with my personality,” Markarian said. “It’s got a thousand different personalities to it.”