With their name already gathering huge momentum in their home country of Canada these last few months, Neon Dreams now continue the support for their upcoming studio album with their new single ‘Don’t Go Hating Me Now’.
Following up the release of the record’s lead single ‘Sick Of Feeling Useless’, ‘Don’t Go Hating Me Now’ brings back more of that bright and glossy pop-rock sound they are quickly getting noticed for. Filled with bold production and killer hooks, this looks like just the beginning for this fast-rising pair.
So with the new single available now, we sat down with them to find out more about them, the song, and what we can expect from them in the near future.
Words by Chris Bound
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
Photocred: Christoper Brew
Chris) Hi guys, how are you today?
Neon Dreams) We’re good! Getting ready for the release of our album “The Happiness of Tomorrow”. We create all our own music videos and content so we’ve been pretty busy with that!
For those that haven’t heard of you yet, how would you best describe your sound and who have been your biggest influences so far?
If Gym Class Heroes and Adam Levine teamed up and made music to a coming of age TV series in the early 2000s that would be us. We are 90s kids, so we grew up in that era and all the sounds from pop-rock / pop-punk / pop and hip hop we embrace into our sound which everyone is calling ALT POP now.
Frank Kadillac - I love this question because there are so many layers to it if you go deep into every artist there are 2 or more influences that they become a hybrid of. If there was a chart of music that shows how much I’m influenced by someone just based on how much we’ve listened to them it would be Coldplay, Taking Back Sunday, Third Eye Blind. A lot of early 2K hip-hop/pop.
And what would you say has been your biggest inspiration in music so far?
Adrian Morris - Our fans inspire a lot of our music, the stories they share with us, the way they open up to us. Making someone’s day better or helping them get through something is one of our biggest goals as an artist.
Do you remember what the first song was that made you want to start a career in music?
AM - I think when we met as teenagers we both knew we wanted to do nothing but pursue music. There're so many songs that influenced that for us, but one song we always both land on as an influence in our teenage years is ”MakeDamnSure” by Taking Back Sunday. That band has really influenced us.
You have just released your new single ‘Don’t Go Hating Me Now’. Can you tell us how that track came about? Is there a story behind it?
AM - We started writing the song as a concept of someone who was losing themselves and their relationships with the people that cared about them. The lifestyle of success and partying and everything that comes with it was taking over their personality. As we were writing, I started to relate the concept to myself. There was a point in my life where I was using alcohol as an escape from facing my own personal issues. When I over-drank those issues would come out and I would lash out at my own friends and not even know it. I would wake up the next morning with people I care about upset with me for reasons I couldn’t remember. In one of those situations I was at a party with Frank and he told me I had too much and it was time for me to go home. He was just looking out for me but I lashed back at him telling him that I hated him and we got into a public argument. I woke up the next morning having no memory of it. When we were writing it, it felt like we were opening up with each other about it. Sometimes it can be difficult to admit you’re struggling to someone you care about but honestly they’re the people that are there to help you when you need it. Those people are the last you should push away.
And was there a particular style you were looking for when you wrote it?
AM - I played the opening guitar riff at the very beginning of the writing session thinking nothing of it, Frank looked at me and asked me to play it again and I had to take a second to remember exactly what I played. That’s why co-writing works really well for us, sometimes we need each other to recognize what’s good or not.
A lot of the time when we’re writing we go in without walls or limits on our creativity, we just try to go in and come out with the best possible outcome.
You are also about to release your new album ‘The Happiness Of Tomorrow’. What can you tell us about that record?
FK - We’re bringing back everything we grew up on. The theme is a coming of age soundtrack to a late 90s early 2000s movie. From start to finish each track can be played throughout a whole movie. I think we all have those moments when we are watching a life-changing movie when something soooo relatable happens on-screen and you feel emotional about it... then bammmm the song that your gonna sing for the rest of your life comes on. I live for moments like that.
And are you pleased with how the album turned out?
AM - We’re really proud of it, we had a moment when working on it where we called each other and said “Hey, this is something our younger selves would be really proud of, something we would’ve wanted to be a part of”.
The coronavirus outbreak has obviously affected everyone’s plans, but what have you got in store for the rest of the year?
AM - We’re fortunate enough to live in a part of the world (Atlantic Canada) where covid cases have been really low. We have a thing called the Atlantic Bubble here where no one is allowed in or out without a 14 day quarantine. It’s allowed us to schedule a tour which we’re kicking off on the release date of the album. We’ll be doing 12 shows within Atlantic Canada.
And finally, what has been the most unusual thing to happen to you since you started the band?
Well right now we have a song that’s charting at #2 in South Africa called “Life Without Fantasies”. It’s a song that came out a year and half ago and it was a deeper cut on our last album “Sweet Dreams To Sunbeams”. Over the last month we’ve watched it grow in SA and really amazing to see the power of streaming, the internet and virality. We’ve never really experienced something like it before, and it’s pretty crazy it’s happening because we never promoted to that country before. It’s really an amazing feeling to see something like that happen.