Blondes Gone Viral! Interview With TikTok famous band Blondes

Moosik spoke to Alex Davison, Tom Herbert and Dan Stroud from Blondes following their single ‘Coming Of Age’ reaching one million streams after going viral on TikTok, speaking about music, their upcoming EP, the future of the music industry and their own future.

Congratulations on 1 million streams on ‘Coming of Age’! How does that feel?

Alex - Thank you very much, it’s amazing! All we talk about now is “Can you believe we’ve got a million streams?!” It’s the most used sentence in our house, mainly because of the time frame that we did it in, it all happened so quickly. We were all at home doing nothing about it, it all happened by accident, Tom always says that we all had COVID-19 when this all kicked off we were in bed ill.

Tom - We couldn’t even go for a pint to celebrate! It’s almost ironic with us going viral, at a time we were all coughing and couldn’t smell or taste.

Now you’ve hit 1 million streams, has that changed your expectations or raised the bar for future releases?

Tom - Not in my opinion. For me the numbers never mattered too much, we released the song when we had hardly any listeners anyway so we were just making music that we enjoy and while it’s sick that we’ve got a million, we just enjoy making music.

Alex – We’re just making music we enjoy.

Tom - And we’ve been writing loads since and the next release is already done.

Dan - It has opened up a lot of opportunities for us, but now we can look further and we can look for more numbers going forward.

Tom - But in terms of the music we make I don’t think it has changed that much.

Despite having gone viral, the scene in Nottingham is bulging with talent, with artists like Do Nothing, Keto, Slumb Party and Soft Girls and Boys Club, how do you guys keep yourselves in the foreground of your local scene?

Alex - Most artists at this stage in their career find themselves faced with that issue, obviously we’re very lucky that the internet has spread us far and wide, but you’re right there’s a scene here that we want to be involved in. It is very very difficult when you can’t gig and for the most part, we’re treating it like things are on pause for the moment and there’s very little you can do besides jumping on YouTube or TikTok and streaming live sets or making video content, there’s not a huge amount you can do to stay engaged with the local scene when you can’t gig. But we have some very exciting things planned for when the industry opens up again, booking shows and looking to gig.

We want to go elsewhere in the country but we especially want to take root in our home city (Nottingham) and build ourselves up organically and we’re very keen to stay involved in the scene around here.

What are you all listening to at the minute, what is on your quarantine playlists?

Tom – For me, nothing’s really changed DMA’s, New Order, Arcade Fire, although the last thing I listened to was the Nativity soundtrack!

Alex – I’ve had a lot of big band, swing and jazz on because it’s Christmas

Is that going to inspire some future releases?

Alex – I would love to release a Christmas single!

Tom – We could cover the Love Actually song!

Alex – We watch a lot of live sets in our spare time, because we can’t gig, we’re looking for inspiration as to what we’re going to do when we’re next on stage. Stroud and I were watching some Bombay (Bicycle Club) last night and they’re so tight and have such a good groove to their live set and we’re awful! So we watch that to try and learn I guess.

Dan – I wouldn’t say we’re awful, I think we just enjoy drinking too much! I think there was a gig were we were a bit drunk and me and you were playing the wrong stuff, and I just went off and threw up! We’re not the best, but we’d like to be the best.

We watched the cure set from Glastonbury, a lot of the Arctic Monkeys stuff, they’re really good live. We like watching The 1975 stuff, but their production’s booky we can’t afford that.

Alex – The conveyor belt’s nuts! I don’t think Will could handle moving his feet to the rhythm of a treadmill while singing.

Tom – Move your feet to the treadmill beat.

You’ve been quite busy over lockdown with an EP, what can we expect from this more like what we’ve already heard or a new direction for Blondes?

Tom – It’s growth. We took down our first EP, but you can still hear one of the tunes on Youtube, and it was a good EP, classic, indie boyband kind of vibe, and ‘Coming of Age’ was a sort of continuation from that, more mature, but this stuff is like ‘wow’. It’s all of our music tastes in one and it vibes.

Alex – The first EP that we recorded ‘Nothing’s Cool Forever’ which is no longer on streaming platforms, was all written by me, and it took inspiration from popular indie bands, and it was more just us finding our feet. ‘Coming of Age’ and ‘Honey in its own right but ‘Coming of Age’ definitely was the first tune were we all input our own idea of what we wanted the sound to be it was the first song apart from maybe ‘Honey’ that was truly a Blondes song, and we’ve taken that idea and moved with it.

It’s not so much anymore that we’re trying to write indie songs, or pop songs, we’ve got a much better understanding of what a Blondes song is and we’ve taken that into the next EP. It’s continued from that, but we’ve done things a little bit differently, we’ve got a couple of interesting things for example we’ve got a trumpet at one point, Maybe I was influenced by the big band and jazz!

We’ve really been able to push ourselves with the support of our management and producers, and it’s been a really interesting experience taking what we know to be our sound and trying to push it in different directions. Tom is right it’s less about same or different and more about growing in a certain direction.

Talk us through the writing process of the EP, and how did it all come together?

Alex – I used to write most of the material, but now we live together, it becomes a lot easier to write together. Stroud has done a lot of it, we’ll go to Stroud’s room where all of our stuff is set up with an idea or a few ideas, and just play together and try to construct an idea into a song. Stroud wrote a couple of the tunes we recorded recently because I was in the shower, and he was waiting to get in and he picked up a guitar and wrote some chord progressions.

When you live together, you get a much quicker response on things, you can show someone a chord progression and get straight into our ‘studio’ (bedroom) and hammer something out.

Your music that’s out at the moment has drawn comparisons to artists like Peach Pit, Her’s, Current Joys, who do you see as your biggest influence in music?

Tom – Susan Boyle! No only joking, for me it’s New Order.

Alex – Tom has pushed New order into the band, I never really used to listen to New Order, or at least not a lot of it. When I listen to them, I think that’s exactly what I want us to sound like. We influence each other, I listen to a lot of disco and synth stuff, Tom listens to more progressive stuff from the 80s and a bit of punk as well.

Tom – I would like to do some Sex Pistols sort of stuff, although none of you would like that.

Alex – I think in terms of bands that are around at the moment, Easy Life has been a big influence on us they’re doing really well for themselves at the moment. Peach Pit definitely, if you look at our playlist on our Spotify page, all those bands are on it, current joys are on it. We jam to Peach Pit all the time in our rooms and stuff.

You’ve referred to the fact that you’ve received a lot of exposure from TikTok, from the use of sounds and making your own videos. Do you have any comments on how apps like these are changing the way music is presented and marketed in the modern world?

Dan – I personally love it but at the same time, it’s quite sad because back in the day it was all about physical music, how it looks and how the sleeve looks etc. But times have changed and with streams being so accessible it is definitely the way forward. We are very grateful because without TikTok we wouldn’t be here. Well we’d we’d still be alive!

Tom – Yeah we are really grateful for that but we want to gig, and the sad thing about streaming is that Spotify gives you nothing. But TikTok is the new big social media platform, and it is a realy good way of exposing new artists and it’s good because indie music isn’t really big on there, and we’re one of the only UK indie bands to break on there.

A lot of people would argue that the use of TikTok and especially with bands like you guys and The Rills making your own videos, does that give a closer, more personal connection between artists and their fans?

Alex – That’s been really fun, we weren’t huge TikTok users as a band, half of us didn’t have the app and we didn’t really use it until ‘Coming of Age’ took off. When we started making videos, it’s a way more natural interaction with people and people get to see us for who we are, just 5 mates making music so getting to show that side of us was really fun.

Also when we get to go on live we get to chat to people, and have a beer with our fans and while it may be unusual, it’s a really organic way to build a fanbase and it’s a lot of fun for us too.

Tom – The demographic on TikTok is very different as well, before most of our fans were our mates. Now its global, a lot of American teenagers, random people who may not like the music but are interested in us as people. Stroud gets a lot of attention from TikTok having a lovely face.

How was it that you found out that ‘Coming of Age’ went viral on TikTok, did you stumble across it yourselves while scrolling?

Alex – I could not even begin to tell you how strange this experience was, I can’t remember who found it, I think it was me or someone sent it to me, I remember seeing the first video when it was on about 17,000 views but it wasn’t mega viral. The video made by bettercallhall on TikTok, we were refreshing it every couple of minutes and it was jumping by hundreds of thousands of views at one point and it was crazy as we realised how mad it was. We checked our Spotify analytics page and we had 25 people listening at that time and we’d never had anywhere near that! It was insane to us. To go from just 5 lads having fun making music to having millions of people hearing our music on TikTok was just surreal.

You guys are definitely on a roll and you’ve picked up a lot of momentum, but do you have any regrets? Is there anything you’d do differently given another chance?

Tom – Not got coronavirus! I don’t think we’ve got any regrets because we didn’t really do much, it all happened on its own, there’s nothing to regret, I guess.

Alex – It was always a shame taking our first EP down, but I wouldn’t say that it was a regret because we’re always looking forward and we’re going to take those songs, rework them and hopefully put out something better. Yes we’ve got momentum and we want to keep moving in the same direction, and although it was a shame, but if we’ve got goals to do it better, there’s nothing wrong with that.

What advice would you give to anyone just starting out or just starting writing music trying to get noticed like you have done?

Dan – Make a TikTok!

Alex – It’s really lovely having people message us about ‘Coming of Age’ which was inspired by going to Glastonbury and seeing bands thinking, “maybe we could do this” and people message us saying that our music has inspired us to write music or to start a band. That’s always the best messages to receive and we always say the same thing to those people just make music you enjoy because if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, other people will identify with that and that’s the best piece of advice we can give because that’s what we’ve done and we’ve had the ultimate reward from it.

Tom – It really doesn’t matter what numbers you’re doing when you start out, we were hitting virtually no numbers until September. Do it because you enjoy it, not because you want to be famous or you want to travel the world. If you don’t enjoy doing it you’re doing something wrong.

As emerging artists yourself, how will COVID-19 affect you guys, and the industry in general?

Alex – A lot of it hinges on things out of the control of the music industry, there’s a lot of politics involved and there’s the economic side of things too. It’s hard to say without knowing what is going into the music industry. There’s been a lot of campaigns running to keep grassroots venues alive and it can feel a little bleak at the minute looking at how the pandemic has affected small venues and small bands and small record labels, but you have to hope that when this is over people will remember what it was like to go to a show and they’ll miss seeing small bands at an intimate gig.

There’s definitely a big movement for supporting local and small businesses and I think that will translate into the music industry as well, there’ll be a push because people won’t want to see their favourite venues go under or see small bands suffering. At least we hope so, it will probably have to come from the bottom up, government funding would be great but sometimes you need people to come together and support stuff they really care about.

For those who don’t know Blondes, describe your music in three words.

Tom – Euphoric

Alex – Indie

Dan – Pop

Obviously a lot has changed in the past year, but where do you see yourselves in five years’ time?

Tom – Headlining Glastonbury 2025

Alex – That’s the ultimate goal. We’ve always said why not? Why not aim for something so high, it doesn’t matter if we don’t get there, we might as well aim for it.

Dan – We never thought this would happen so why not aim for the biggest festival in the world?

Blondes viral single ‘Coming of Age’ is available for streaming across streaming platforms, follow their social media @blondesband for updates regarding their upcoming EP.