You might be familiar with the band AJR (Adam, Jack, and Ryan) from their hit songs "Weak," "Bang!," and "Way Less Sad." Well, AJR stopped by Valentine in the Morning on to talk about music, childhood, how part of 'Way Less Sad' was meant for a Cardi B song, and so much more! The band of brothers released their fourth studio album "OK Orchestra" earlier this year and they're not only having a great 2021 so far, but 2020 was pretty great to them as well.
"We got really lucky and we actually had a really good year. Obviously, a lot of people can't say the same and a lot of fans can't say the same, but we had a song that blew up this year and that was truly a blessing. I've never said that word before, but it was literally a bless. It was really cool because obviously it was 'Bang!' and I think it was just very of the time. It had this sort of like very apocalyptic feel and we did write it before we knew anything about a pandemic. We wrote it 2 months before the pandemic started and it was kind of like the song 'If The World Was Ending.' 'Bang!' had this really apocalyptic feel like the world is kind of ending and the reproduction is a little weird like let's go out with a bang and I think they heard that and was like okay that's how i'm feeling so let me turn that up a little. It was just a great moment in music when that happens."
Now that the album is out, AJR is in Los Angeles where they just won their first ever award.
"That was the first award we've ever won any kind of award in life like truly in life that's not even a joke. You know those kids that like oh that kid is going to get the first prize in the talent show and he always wins, well we were always dead last truly dead last always. We didn't make the superlatives list, I think they just couldn't find anything for us. Remember in the talent show, one of the teacher's was on the panel and she gave first place prize to her kid who was a student there? It was rigged. It was completely rigged. Ryan and I did a full on Justin Bieber 'Baby' rendition and we dressed up as Justin Bieber so I mean c'mon. We still didn't get it. "
AJR's latest single 'Way Less Sad' is a song that everyone can relate to, but the story behind it is incredible because it almost never happened. Apparently bits and pieces of the song were originally meant for Kygo and Cardi B!
"9 years ago we sampled this little bit of a Simon & Garfunkel song called 'My Little Town' and it's the horn line that you hear in our song. It was like our favorite song growing up so we took it and we put it in our hard drive for like 9 years and we were like okay we'll find the right song for this. Fast forward to about 3 years ago now we wrote a song for Kygo and we sent over the song and it had this chorus "Don't you love it, don't you love it? No, I ain't happy yet. But I'm way less sad" completely different verse and everything completely different production. They didn't want it, but we were like wait a second that is such a good chorus and incredibly relatable so we took it for ourselves. Then what happened was we wrote a song for Cardi B including the sample we had 9 years ago. They did not want that, but they wanted it for another rapper and we were like wait but the sample and the beat is so good let's keep it for ourselves and we sort of combined those two songs and kind of filled it out and then it became 'Way Less Sad.'...It's so funny we wrote a song and then she put out WAP and we were like we were WAY off. We were WAY WAY off. We weren't even in the same universe."
AJR will be going on tour in 2022.
Don't forget to download and stream 'OK Orchestra' and keep in touch with MYfm on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook!
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