like we had this huge roster of songs and we spent like three nights listening to it over and over over and over I'm gonna tell you how I bit that went bottle of wine and everyone having a great time doing that and after day three you're all just like kidding yeah after 10 minutes it was like first song okay this one has to be no this one never has it after you said it was going to be on thank you
[Music] first of all I want to do the human thing and say thank you for joining me today it's good to see you again well thank you so much thank you for having us of course yes great to the great to see you all on such an amazing day we have we're not very good at sort of look it all came together very last minute because we have very little time okay and that's for you and and no one wants to be on camera
while they're eating but there's a whole tray of cookies for later if you want to eat them dude thank you the reason why we did this is because you are Grammy nominated you asked of the year yes we I appreciate that there's been a lot of swearing this morning I bet things like holy I just think it's a beautiful thing you know why because you've just you really earned it you've really worked and worked and put in the time and reached
out to all of us and said this is what we are you there's nothing about the amount of skin experience that is expected yeah that's true yeah absolutely like incredible to think like what's what's happening only like one year and one year and a half after everything like completely changed in our lives and of course this is like the biggest Milestone I think you can hope for so the last 12 months 18 months
has has been remarkable but I'm I'm saying like kids starting out kicking down doors that were not open to you yeah it wasn't like anybody was like oh there's a road map for Success where you're from and the music that you make on a global level there was no no one said oh yeah there's a band that came before you that played The Forum 10 years ago here's how you do it sure you did it I said it thank you
it's a beautiful thing um anyway that's the present moment long may we stay in it but we still have things to talk about music to to play album talk about and touring I mean how are you feeling this is an old school US tour it is yeah yes it is it is 100 it's like some 80s to go out there and take it to the peoples how do you feel we feel good because like we've been touring the whole year so now like the the machine is very well oiled like
everything comes easier than than normal for us and in general we always enjoyed playing live um a lot because we feel like it's the the cherry on top of all the work that you've done because everything that warns and and raises in studio at the end has to uh sound good live and you have such a privileged position at the back right you get to see the whole thing unfold before right yeah you're up
high you get to look at it the drama gets to understand how the show is going it's almost like you could be reviewing the show from the drum kit if you're present of mind enough to do it like when you see your friends in front of you and the chemistry becomes something that you can't put into words what does it feel like for you it's magical I mean I always have yeah I always had the best position actually yeah I have to meet it
I have to meet it but I really like the how they interact um like between them and the crowd and how the energies go go on like I drew in the geek yeah I really like it and like yet I still have to really be focused during all all the performance because if if I messed up some some hits then everybody's like noticing right so I really had to be focused on my thing but yeah I will I'm really enjoying all this
through you know why because the crowd is so energetic and even if I'm the first one from the crowd I'm really he like feeling the heel and and healing with them as well it is something about knowing your your role in a chemistry right and something that that is the sum of all parts is greater than the individual Damiano for you being at the front singing and ultimately a lot of the energy of how it's going to go and
you're an energetic band but if if you're tired or if you're feeling honest and you're an honest person I remember that from last time you're a truthful human if you go on stage and you know it's not you you've got to work through through something how does that pressure feel for you knowing that it's like the crowd's looking to you first and foremost like bam how is he is he on is he on form I think I always feel very
very comfortable getting on stage even if I'm like a bit uh low on Voice or sick or anything because I think that the main thing of our our life part is not even like my singing or they're playing it's more about the interaction and the chemistry between us and uh and uh and the crowd so if I'm like low on voice I just let the crowd sing a bit more he worked out that trick already yeah your way ahead of schedule
I took a photo I hope you don't mind I'm gonna show it took a photo and it was something I thought was really special before you're outside having a smoke and um I just took this photo I mean it's not a great photo so it's not going to go anywhere with my phone but this it just took the photo of your legs of the four of you just just from the waist down and the reason why I took that was because we spent so much time
looking at at artists from the waist up and we try to acknowledge everything that's going on that moment and and the weirdest thing happened when I saw you standing outside and I couldn't see what you were talking about or what your your faces were doing I got a real sense of the camaraderie of the band like your body language was tight and each of you was sort of facing one another it didn't
feel separate at all it felt really precious do you know what I mean yeah sure how often do you allow yourselves in amongst all of the thrash the crowds me this everyone your team who love you but still keep you busy do you allow yourself to just have that moment just the four of you away from everything else like it began I think that we're like learning more about our boundaries during this year especially because of
course since everything blew up we've been very happy and excited and wanted to do everything you know so of course I feel in this industry we want you to do everything exactly everyone is like giving you things to do but we were happy to take them and we never felt like saying no to anything so this year has been really really intense and I think that now we are not settling of course because we still want to go and
do best and best and best but we're trying to understand that sometimes it's okay to say no to something and take time for ourselves for both our personal lives but also like to give more time to the music and do things with the right amount of time and not to stress all the time because then I feel if you burn yourself out then it's hard to enjoy what you're doing you know and that's like the biggest shame
of everything like when you lose the passion about what you're doing that's what it is that's we've seen it so many times over and over again great artists because the art Falls further and further down the ladder of priority yeah exactly it's really tough do you have you have you been able to maintain and improve your EQ your emotional intelligence as human beings as just people through all of this because to
your point we're good at asking you to do I I think that that even if it was like a very very intense experience and very demanding and tiring I think that like being under that amount of pressure and that amount of um uh busy and things to do it kind of helps you grow because you understand like which are your limits and and what you really enjoy to do and what you enjoy a bit less so it it kind of helps you to
build up what is going to be the next five ten years you have to make tough calls I mean you had to make a tough call this year it kind of broke my heart as a fan a little bit but I broke my heart on your behalf that you had to say no to reading and leads in order to come play something else I spend a lot of my time in the UK I know how important reading and leads is for fans and how much you would have
Slade that Festival this year like thanks I actually think you would have owned it but you had to make that tough call yeah and I've been dying to ask you how tough that was and ultimately what the reason was behind that because fans ultimately understood but not at the time you know it's hard there's no right answer yeah there's no right answer and I think that's no right choice in this kind of moments or situation of course
for us it was like uh uh very sad and and hard to decide we thought and thought and thought about it over and over and over everyone's got a rationale behind why you should do one or the other sometimes people could understand like the strategy things and sometimes it's like it's very hard to um keep everything together all the time and and we try like our best to keep it like authentic and and organic but but
sometimes also like we don't know which is the right thing to do I know you roll with a good team I know you have someone super close to you who ultimately helps guide you and helps you make your music can we talk a bit about that relationship because it is quite unique in the in the in the modern age to have somebody that close to you who who understands the aesthetic and philosophy of the band in equal measure normally
it's one or the other it's very uh weird because of course like we started working together when we did The X Factor and uh he was like the the musical director but we found a great day at the office yeah great day at the office for him he's gonna go home he's gonna go sweetheart you know I think my life's just changed probably yeah image connection immediately because he was like the only guy there who was a
musician yeah and look kind of understand and had the sensibility to understand the journey and and to nurture your story yeah and it's like you were supposed to be out in week one you know you're supposed to be kicked out after week one all the way sure and I I think he he managed like to dive into our four different personalities and now we have this kind of uh Brotherhood family relationship and it's
it makes everything kind of easier because because you trust blindly the the person who's uh giving you advices and who's helping you to be fair to everybody they're on Fast Forward yeah to try to understand what really makes you tick and you don't have the time right no to explain yourselves over and over again that's his job he knows sides of us that that of course nobody else in the industry knows so and we have to
write music or take uh hard choices he's helpful and then we have a song like feel which is just excuse me Kasabian crazy man I like that I like that that's cool yeah that's like the reference right out for perspective yeah because it has that sense of Groove and a bit of Revolution to it so it's it's like it's like dance floor with a scowl on you know which I really I love that about that particular that side of
Mona skin because you give a lot of reasons for us to put our hands in there and sing and be joyous like that makes me want to spot yeah a little bit where does that come from what part of the band does that come from is that you Victoria is that all of all of you how does that how does that kind of I think that like this whole record is oh there's a lot of variety compared also to her previous records
because like this time instead of like trying to find a common Direction the four of us and follow it we try to follow more each one's individual Direction and ideas and stuff so I think that's also where a lot of the inspiration for every different song comes from and this one especially it was very thought like about the live side and also the vocals and the instrumental being like tied together as
if it was one instrument like everyone's doing the same riff at the same time it's just like about the the energy of being all together and the sound of the words and everything I think that it's one of the song that actually it's one of the most kind of amazing point between the four of us yeah because there is like the reef thing and then the Melodies are more of my universe but but it's a yeah it's a meeting point but
but what Victoria said it's very like on point that this album is very different because instead of uh starting from the center and and trying to space out from it we started from four different places which are our four individualities and and we try to I love that going on the same island you know I love that I love that it's so smart it's just on a human level it's so smart yeah yeah this album is a monster
really yeah because because you figured out yeah you know we do Frankenstein you know we do it we look what we do with bands is we take a look at you as one image and we want to keep you all together and then we say oh you must be all the same and I don't know we get we're all like an absolute shock when you break up yeah what what are you talking about and what you figured out is that actually the the sum of all your
parts the individuality that you all have the difference is is what makes the differences special there is no point in like trying to imitate each other and everyone just being selfish and thinking about their own thing it's better if we like embrace our differences and even if like maybe I don't know someone has a different taste in a direction I might not be the first fan of and same goes for them like it's better to embrace all
our differences and give space to everyone to express themselves and like be happy and be represented by the record so that's why we had to like really open our minds and like challenge our boundaries because some things we do we would never have done without each other you know yeah totally God bless Vic right the Danish Diplomat in the band is it's very important this is the final point of the this is the final
conclusion after one year of being a oh wow that's pretty good I love it oh man but in the end we made it everyone everyone I think everyone took y'all like huge steps yeah this album huh long a lot of big songs a lot of tunes no or killing no filler as they say um out of how many is every song on the record were there ones that didn't make the record like how did you put it all together as a body of work there's so
many that didn't make it yeah so we we had like two minutes 60 60 what are you just exhausted by that well yeah by the end of it like yeah at the end that was like I will never write a song again like too many words in my head like I was going crazy but like we had this huge roster of songs and we spent like three nights listening to it over and over over and over and every time doing like this championship
and everything this didn't qualify this isn't any High bit that win it started out with a bottle of wine and everyone having a great time doing that and after day three you're all just like kidding yeah yeah after 10 minutes okay this one has to be no this one I want to ask you Thomas I want to ask you what was your favorite memory before you started to reach the world and started to and The X Factor thing when
you were just busking and hanging out and it was just you're making it up as you were going along was there a memory that really jumps out to you that's really precious that when it was just simple uh oh no no no it's okay I will see maybe um half the time to stay chill you know and thinking all about the music yeah this is the yeah the part that I missed a lot in that period just said that focusing on yeah nothing but
but what you're gonna write just on the music I mean and just I don't know hey guys we have this idea I mean on that keyword it's happened like for this record it's happened because we spent like three months literally yeah because you asked for it exactly yeah exactly and so yeah I I mean it's a lot that part you know to have the the freedom of okay I have just thinking about music and so I think that the difficult yeah
the hard part now is keep this balance you know between the the music and this crazy train that we live now at the moment but it's cool because at the same time it's also a challenge in other kind of ways and I have good news for you from my perspective and we've spent decades and decades sitting in this chair or standing and talking to artists like yourselves is that um you're you're
living in a time when you when the era of no is so much more accepted than it ever was before yeah that's true yes this is that's very true yeah the the awareness it's spreading we can't do it without you yeah no I I think that yeah a lot of artists are are starting to talk about and kind of correct the balance right yeah renovate the expectation that that the audience has a good day renovate the expectation
good as a quote it's a good one but yeah like you can expect every artist to do like a hundred gigs a year it's it's too much literally too much if you see me talking to somebody on I wouldn't assume you'd ever watch my conversations but if you stumble across one and I'm talking to somebody really cool and I use the term renovate the expectation don't think bad of me I I give it to you like I'm very happy to be with you thank you brother
um you did something that that uh is a is a power move it's a beautiful move you teamed up with the Great ghost cat the great snow leopard Max Martin yeah he who shall be heard and never seen uh how was that experience for me personally like I learned a lot on the the writing process because he's kind of a genius and I hope you don't mind me saying this but you do you guys are the rock band of the
highest level like you are an engine that powers a Ferrari but you write these pop Melodies that are just kind of take it and just make it float in a different way it's part of the magic of honestly yeah exactly I'm a pop singer but with Rockstar Energy yeah and so and so when you when you get to work with a Max yeah we connected very very well like and and also like you you don't expect someone of his uh caliber to be like
that open and say oh I I don't want to put like my signature on it I just want to take what you're doing because I think it's very original and fresh and everything and help you to to to maximize the the the the the quality of it and I think that this this kind of collaboration and sharing it has been very helpful for all the four of us yeah absolutely I think like as you said like I think the the cool part and that has
always worked also like between us is that like we play like as a rock band with Rock Energy distortion pedals and everything but then we can do on top like more pop Melodies but singing with damiano's voice so it's like I think that what's make an interesting mix between the four of us and that keeps and like that makes us make rock but in a more Modern Way somehow like it doesn't feel like we're or at least to
us I don't know but it doesn't feel like we're redoing the same rock that has been done in the 70s you know no you bring a flamboyance that has existed in previous that's why we so hate it the flamboyance or the fact that people think that you're retrospective um we're not doing the exact same thing but yeah other people that's great you don't want to be accepted by people who haven't changed
no that would be interesting right I think that listening to the same kind of music for the whole life it's kind of you're not growing so pop music has changed so much like I I was talking to Oliver from a band called The xx this morning I was like you changed pop music and then Lord I think probably heard your music and she changed pop music and then I think Billy probably heard Lord and she changed pop music and the
weekend distorted the out of the hills and he got a radio hit out of it and he changed pop music and so what you've done is you've come in on the Rock Stallion and changed pop music yeah you're the band within that camp who said like why should everyone else get to change and we have to stay in the same Groove yeah I mean your point is pretty interesting like I I kind of agree with that um and I think it's a way of think
things I mean how you think of music is how you you approach it and all all of your actions are considered in your thinking about the music so your action creates music new music so it's created by a new way of thinking something so I think these kind of it's kind of tricky actually but I think it is kind of the key of how we have made what we made it was also not like so thought about like we literally
when we started playing we were like 16 years old and we were just like doing what we liked without thinking like who's gonna judge us is this real rock is like without any pressure we're just like playing for fun in like School parties and stuff so we're just doing what we liked and that's like for example like begging that now is like the biggest hit we have we just played it like for fun because we're like okay
we're playing at school parties we need to play a song that will make everyone in a good mood and then we started playing it and we just played it our way so that would mean more rock than the original but that's just how like our character develop but it's not like we were thinking okay we want to make rock put in a more pop way but there's no way anybody on the planet could have ever said we're gonna get to be the biggest
sort of like Stadium playing Rock Band on the planet by going through X Factor anyway it's just not really right it's not a reality that's an anti-strategy the anti-strategy and that's kind of what's beautiful about what you represent is that you seem to really embrace your outlier status that the outside is comfortable for you even though everyone's drawing you in the room feel like you're the perennial outside
the band I think that that the fact that's more cool of us is that we feel comfortable in kind of every context yeah like there is a TV show is a super cheesy music competition is uh super elegant uh I don't know like whatever and we just go there indoor and if we have to jump on a table at a business meeting we do it like it's it's just have you done that yeah we did it yeah you know it's it's just we enjoy what
we're doing and I think that that shines through every platform we're in it please tell me if I'm wrong I'm sorry I don't watch it a lot but uh I'm lying I don't watch it ever but are you the first band or artist to truly come out of Eurovision and however long and actually have Global success actually crack America us and yeah did but yeah like in the last few years that like I think it's we can say that I
mean it's one of the biggest thing in competitions on the planet and that no one ever comes out and actually has a hit career yeah that's weird it's so weird I mean it should be it should be modern skins everything yeah yeah maybe they will be if they invited you back they must admit they must want to put you on the board of directors no we go as guests of honor for the rest of your life would you go back like not in the
comments you go hang out and just TV tours are not fun it's like the European Cup you can win it twice three times four times you can imagine that imagine doing an error Vision every year wow oh my God is this car manager your strategy that would be like a bit of cheating but I love that you've also been nominated um you have an Associated Grammy nomination if you work on the Elvis film
congrats that's another thing it should be acknowledged as well yeah thank you that was a cool cool experience I bet it was because because I see a lot of that kind of um Entertainer as artist a lot of the time it's like if you're an artist to entertain oh it's a fine line between over entertaining and being an artist and artists should be sitting there creating the Arty Entertainer is to entertain Elvis was both and there are
examples of both Bono as both um Beyonce is both you are both so it must have been really nice as a band to be able to acknowledge the influence of someone like Elvis Anne also work with somebody Bas luhrman who I feel like is your visuals yeah it is sick no I like I think it was the perfect match because because Elvis it's I think the most influential artist ever it completely changed the way artists look and are
seen by the audience and also the way they behave and the expectation that people have on on artists so I think that having the chance to kind of jump in a story and being even if in a small part part of it yeah and was such a such a beautiful experience and also like that we have a huge connection with with Elvis with his songs so it also playing it it's it's it's a huge honor because like there will forever be our own
version of an Elvis song and it's uh it's kind of a milestone it's pretty amazing yeah I mean how can you not believe in magic yeah yeah when you're a kid and also same birthday so we kind of are you serious yeah are you serious yeah man what's your birthday 8th of January 8th of January yeah see lucky day God was like man I gotta give everyone some good news in the first couple of weeks of the year
otherwise people are gonna go crazy these human beings in their whole time space continuum this whole calendar they've created they're gonna blow themselves out here I need to give him Bowie I need to give them out one on a fun fact about our birthdays everyone has a Nate at the end yeah it is 8th of January I'm 8th October you're 28th of April and Thomas is 18th of January January right yeah so it's kind of it's kind of right
it was meant to me it's meant to be what's your star signs my wife's a Libra what about you Taurus Capricorn Capricorn no Pisces thank God for that I'm very I love Pisces but if you put a Pisces in your group you'd explode the first time we met was super early and everyone was really tired and I was tired and we had a good time we actually Against All Odds we had a good time but this has been great for me I've had such
a great time getting to know you properly and just better understanding the chemistry of the band we don't have to have this conversation ever again next time we meet we can just talk about whatever's happening in the moment and just laugh and have a great time so I'm gonna I'm gonna call time right now say thank you and until next time thanks for your time take care of each other the road man it's laughs