Goodboys, the men behind Piece Of Your Heart and Lose Control, joined BurnFM’s Char Stape and Thomas Davies from the other side of the world for an interview. Having sprung to fame earlier this year and achieved over 300 million streams of Piece Of Your Heart on Spotify, this highly amusing and extremely humble production trio shared with us their passion for heavy metal and revealed an exciting collaboration due to drop in February.
C: Hi, we are Char Stape and Thomas Davies here, on behalf of BurnFM and the SRA. And we are joined, from the other side of the world, by the wonderful Goodboys. Hello guys…
Hellooo.
C: How are you guys doing?
We’re very good thank you, how are you?
C: Yeah, I’m really good thank you. I wanted to know what brings you to Sydney?
We are here, we’ve been writing with some friends of ours for another project that those guys are working on, that they’re gonna be recording in January so we’re…(Laughing) yeah, it’s actually nothing to do with Goodboys but we’re here as writers.
C: Ooh nice, that sounds very exciting though.
Thank you.
We just have a few questions to ask you, as you guys are popping off a bit at the moment, so I’m going to hand it over to Thomas for the first question.
T: First of all, congrats on your new song, Lose Control. I really like it and it’s doing really well.
Thank you.
T: It features MEDUZA and Becky Hill and is already really successful. So, when you go into a session, what do you think makes a good feature vocalist?
Ah, that’s a crazy question. I think somebody who’s got, like, an iconic, instantly recognisable voice, who can translate the feeling of the lyrics into something that’s going to sound great in people’s ears.
T: I guess to make it stand out?
Yeah, just the passion that they bring to it and their approach.
T: Cool. Is there anyone else in the future, now that you’ve blown up, and have so many more opportunities, that you’d like to collaborate with?
Oh my gosh, so many people. Rag’n’Bone Man, Dua Lipa, Rihanna.
C: Rihanna!
Calvin Harris, why not?
C: Loads of people I interview say Rihanna – she is so, so famous.
T: When she gets back to making music…
C: …She’s got a long lineup.
When she gets back to my text…I’m joking, I don’t have her number.
C: In your other track, Piece Of Your Heart, I believe it’s you, Josh, who says, ‘What sorry, just quickly…’.
Yes.
C: I heard that supposedly, either you guys or MEDUZA wanted to take that bit out, so who had the deciding vote?
Yeah, well MEDUZA and us guys have the same management and there was kind of like a discussion in the management like, ‘should we leave it in,’ ‘should we take it out?’ One of the managers was like, ‘no, I’m telling you now, we have to leave it in,’ and was very decided so, okay, cool…
C: It was a good decision I think.
It was a great decision!
C: Yeah, I find that it’s really nice to have a kind of humorous side to the song, and it’s quite unique, so is it important to you guys to incorporate a bit of humour into your work?
I think it’s more about having something that’s just different and like a moment in your art or whatever that takes people by surprise and that people can remember.
Yeah, I would definitely say though, that some writing sessions can get pretty serious and what Josh is actually awesome at is kind of being quite fun and buoyant over a certain amount of hours. So, he actually, I can speak on behalf of him, saying that he does bring that to a session and I think it came through in that track for sure.
C: Definitely, it’s really good.
T: So this year you’ve made a lot of live appearances; you’ve been at the Summertime Ball, you were at The O2 Arena and also Ibiza Rocks. What can fans expect from your own live shows?
I think we’re working on it at the moment. It’s been interesting because we do a mixture currently of like DJ sets and then PAs where we’re just coming out and singing. I think in the future we’ll look to build a full live show, maybe with some instruments and stuff. It kind of depends on which songs come out, that we’ve written. It all depends on that!
C: Have we got a lot of exciting things to look forward to then?
Well, everybody definitely does. We’re almost locked in on our next single, coming out in February.
C: Ooo.
And I can’t say who with, but it’s very exciting.
C: Rihanna?
All I can say is, it’s someone you’ll know, but they’ve never sung a song.
C: That’s very interesting, I look forward to that.
T: I’m intrigued.
C: So, your name, Goodboys, it appears to be quite ironic in that it counteracts the ‘bad boy’ lifestyle that seems to exist in a lot of modern music…
(Sarcastically) Not at all.
C: (Laughing) No? Are there any challenges or surprises that you faced when adjusting from writhing Church music to mainstream dance music?
Nah I think, we’re the same people, we’re not kind of bipolar or anything like that. We kind of just mismatch everything, we’re just about good times man. If we’re writing Church music, it’s good times, if we’re writing ballads for other artists, it’s good times and if we’re writing dance music, it’s for sure good times so…we just love writing good, positive music and yeah…
And I think we’re super privileged because a lot of artists get kind of pigeon holed into one slot and we’ve been so blessed, I guess, that we can show all the different aspects of our personality through Christian music and writing for other people, and the dance music that we love so much as well, so yeah, it’s epic.
C: And you guys definitely still seem really grounded and it’s so interesting, bearing in mind that Piece Of Your Heart topped the dance charts in the US. So, with your popularity happening so quickly, how do you manage to stay so grounded?
Well we spend a lot of time underground in studios.
C: (Laughing).
We don’t get to meet many people other than who we’re working with.
Yeah, I think the thing is, it’s not an overnight success thing, we’ve been writers for a lot of years for different people; we’ve seen people come and go and we’ve seen how fickle kind of like being a hot act can be. We’re gassed and excited about what it is but it’s not changing who we are, you know.
C: Yeah.
So many of our best mates are involved and are around us in that process as well, so you can’t really get a big head or anything because your mates will call you out on it.
C: How about your relationship with MEDUZA, are we expecting more music with you guys or are you gonna go off and…
Well, we’re not talking right now. Nah, I’m joking.
Nah, we love those guys so much.
C: It’s an interesting collab cos it’s six of you altogether isn’t it?
It is, and it’s just a good crew of guys, we all get along, we all have a laugh, we all have similar musical interests. What’s cool is now, like Matt From MEDUZA can be off touring while like Luca and Simone and us guys can be working behind the scenes. We kind of get the best of both worlds, which is nice.
T: How did you guys meet?
We met writing for another project, funnily enough. And then, the song that we made for that kind of evolved into a new sound, and those guys called it MEDUZA.
T: Cool. So both of your songs that you’ve put out so far are with MEDUZA. If you do any solo releases in the future, what sort of direction are you trying to take your music in?
I think that’s what we’re trying to work out. I think for the time being, we’re looking to do a couple more features. We’ve got some features lined up with some other artists as well, which you guys will be hearing early next year, coming out ready for summer.
So I think this next year we’re going to be working a lot with other people, while we work behind the scenes on our sound. I think we’re going to keep the dance focus, keep the pop focus. What I love about what we’ve been able to do with Piece Of Your Heart and Lose Control is keep that underground feel, but still appeal to the mainstream. I think if we can keep that, that will be amazing.
C: I mean, it’s definitely appealing to the mainstream. You’re topping so many charts at the moment.
Definitely, and we just love collaborating man. I think when you collaborate, you open up so many more doors, and it’s so much fresher and f you hold onto something tight then it can get a bit stale. We’re all about collaborating and we love writing and producing stuff with people that we love, you know?
C: Mm yeah, you seem to really keep the fun in music, which is exciting to listen to.
Thank you very much.
C: And, just one final question, just a bit of an interesting one – if you weren’t to produce dance music, which other genre would you go for?
Ooh…I love singer/songwriter-y ballads, but my original love with music is definitely heavy metal.
C: Wow.
T: Ok, that’s unexpected.
Actually, the more people that I meet within the dance world, you’d be surprised how many people come from listening to that emo period and American and UK heavy metal.
C: That’s so interesting. Well, thank you guys for speaking with us today, it has been really great to hear from you.
Thanks so much for having us on! Sorry for the parrots in the background.
C: (Laughing) No, it’s great, it’s refreshing.
That is parrots, it’s not just us making weird noises.
C: I can assure you that the weather is nowhere near as good in England right now.
Apparently, it’s going to be 36 degrees here on Friday and it’s the middle of winter.
C: Wow, I’m jealous. I need to get down to Australia. But yeah, thank you so much; that’s been Goodboys for BurnFM and the SRA. Enjoy your time on holiday!
Thank you very much! Bye guys.
Written by Char Stape and Thomas Davies.
Listen to the audio of our interview here:
