Ones2Watch Home

What happens when you take two experienced songwriters sequestered in adjoining East London studios, each placing another digital bricklayer of comps on another record? And again, and again? Out of this common and brittle tedium comes a moment of unplanned sonic stewing, a reflex of two composers passing time and the ultimate result is “Home,” a bristling earworm of a song that has sent its infectious nature across the internet. 

Described by Scott and Oli, the two members of Good Neighbors, as a happy accident, “Home” is the type of song that can cement a new trend, solidify an expressive pivot, a song that catches wind and seeds the next few seasons of sound, a transcendental hit. Pulsing with piano keys then chords, fuzzy effects, and crucially a whistled intro and outro, the song, like its subject matter, is comfort food, a novel familiarity that feels like a loving heartbeat felt in a deep hug. 

Invariably, two things happen when a release becomes a beanstalk that soars into the cloud cover above. First, what to do after a surprise success is laboring. Secondly, creative pressure builds, often walling some artists into creating a mimicry of that very song. Fortune may have shined on the Good Neighbors boys twice, in that they are well into crafting additional songs, including a banked single they see as “even better,” and generally have a temperament that invites the blessing. We may not have a compass setting on where Good Neighbors might end up, but a safe guess is shows across the globe. However their journey ends, we’ll always come home to this substantive single as the happy beginning. Wanting to know more about the breakout duo, we FaceTimed the boys mid-day and mid-commute to dig in. 

OnesToWatch: First of all, congratulations. You destroyed the internet with your first release. That is not something that normally happens, especially in my world. It's usually attrition and throwing things at the wall until it finally works. Why do you guys do what you do? Why are you artists? Why are you trying to penetrate the very difficult world of international music?

Oli: I don't think there's a straight answer for why we're doing it. We weren't even planning to do what we were doing at the moment. We both started as songwriters, and we were having a few dull sessions in London where the music wasn't the most fun thing to make. And so we got in early one day before one of our sessions and literally gave ourselves an hour to write whatever we wanted. The first song that came out is a song that will hopefully come out later this year called "Keep It Up." It literally just came out, almost fully formed. 

From then on, we had this little bit of ammunition of, “Yeah, maybe this could be an artist project,” and then we just kept doing more and more of these little bonus sessions before writing, and every time we did one, a new song came out. “Home” came out so quickly, in between two hours of sessions that we've had, and I guess it forced our hand to be like, you guys should be artists and not just be recording all of this music yourselves.

So, given your guys' experience in the profession, what do you hope to do differently, or what makes this project different from prior projects?

Oli: From my perspective, and I guess we share this perspective as well, as where the industry seems to think things through, we've purely come from the fact that we weren't going to make this project in the first place. Everything was a happy accident—we've never thought any stage through any more than it needs to. It's always been like that. 

All the drums on “Home” and the guitars were recorded on my phone because the idea was there, and we needed to capture that moment and let it make the final cut in the record. People can hear that in it, the real parts of stuff. As soon as people said they liked it on TikTok, we thought, how about we release it in four days? And luckily, people were so down to help us internationally, and that's why it's had such a visceral response, because we've gone with human emotion, and we've really met people's needs without thinking it through doing this whole dazzling campaign. It's just been two guys that make music. And people like it. It's very broad strokes. 

So, this is anti-AI. This is a statement on analytical, computer-generated music.

Scott: Yeah, it's just basic pure feeling. 

Pure feeling, pure emotion. Love it.

Scott: But even down to the artwork you know, Oli just did that on a napkin the day it was going off on TikTok. Yeah, nothing's been thought through. 

Given the success, that must feel good. Do you have more ambition built into the project now? Or have you just found something that works, which is just to be emotive and put it out there? 

Scott: Yeah, it's been interesting to see where it's connected. We never expected it to give, like, the possibility of going to America this year—stuff has definitely opened up our ambition and goals. It's pretty wild.

Oli: It's weird because we're catching up with our own feet because, obviously, we literally planned that shit maybe in March. I take it really slowly, step by step, it’s like all the songs that we've been banking up now feel like they have a purpose, which is really sick.

Tell me a bit more about your history together. Have you guys written together for a long period?

Scott: We've been together for two or three years before this on many different projects for other people. This is the first time we've written something that's, well, we had no aim at the time but for us.

So, what's your process like together? How do you craft a song?

Oli: It's been different every time. We're very similar to where I used to work. It's not like everything's been quite a knee-jerk reaction, wherever it's been. Scott has an idea and has to get it down from a production point. Like, there's a song coming up here, and Scott freestyled most of the melody and production for it. And then I heard it was like, "Oh, my God, this is perfect." And then I came in the next day, while Scott had a section, and then I just lyric, the whole thing. And then there's been another tune coming later this year, hopefully, it was like me with just an acoustic guitar the whole way through. Scott heard it and then effectively remixed the whole thing. And then there are ones like "Home" where we have both just been in the room. 

I was coming home from the funeral of a family member, and I came back to London, hugged my other half, and relaxed my whole body. Imagine if home isn't a location; it's a person. I took that into Scott. And we just did three dummy chords. And then that sparked a whole, like anthem in itself. So, there's no rhyme or reason. We really like to follow our noses. That is why the music doesn't sound too thought through; it's very loud and suddenly marks itself, which is really nice.

At this point, do you have a progression or a plan in mind? 

Scott: I think we have a lot of ideas. I think we're lucky that we banked up eight tunes that we were really happy with before we thought about releasing them. So now it's more just like how do we get all of them out, as opposed to catching up and writing stuff now? 

Right.

Scott: Because yeah, I mean, the ones we've got ready. We think some of them are better than "Home" and want to get them out.

Have you guys started writing anything since you banked those eight songs? 

Oli: Honestly, we've been so inundated with people from the US, Australia, and home. We actually wrote the song as it blew up and we took a week away writing, so when we were done with that, we just went home and finished the song. So we did that. But we're now sat on five more demos that are unfinished. We should go on to doing that.

These are good problems to have.

Scott: Oh, 100%!

To contextualize each of you, what do you do individually to find some peace and relaxation center and ground yourself?

Scott: I think running for both of us. That's like our peaceful escape to soak everything up. 

So we're gonna have a marathon-like VIPs scenario where if fans buy $1,000 in merch, they get to run with you?

Oli: There's gotta be a video!

Scott: I like the sound of that story. [laughs]

I think you stepped on it a bit, but if this goes according to your wildest dreams, what will it look like in a couple of years? 

Scott: Playing massive shows everywhere. You really want to tour because that's something we never got to do fully in our other projects before, right? This feels like it has so much opportunity to play shows everywhere. That's a big bucket list item for both of us.

Oli: The happy middle ground is to be able to keep writing but also to go and see the world side by side. There are family members that I've not seen in years in Australia, and we've already been offered to play a show out there this summer, and that's fucking sick. It is so cool that we can get out there just because we're doing something that we love.

Who are your OnesToWatch?

Scott: I would say Royel Otis, but they're big now.

Oli: I really like this artist out of the UK called Artemas at the moment.

Oh yeah, Artemas is huge! He's one of our top 25. I love his genre lists.

Oli: We've been working on his projects as well. 

Are you Serious!? Oh, wow. That's amazing.

Oli: Yeah, he's great. He's also just helped us massively with learning social media.

It's not an easy task, that's for sure. I actually think that's the reason bands succeed or suffer these days. It's just that social media has nothing to do with the music, sadly.

Scott: Yeah, just like embracing it.