Living Room

AJR stormed the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year with SpongeBob SquarePants-sampling smash “I’m Ready”. Not bad for a song that was written, recorded and produced in the New York-based brothers’ apartment. Adam, Jack and Ryan followed that up with another great, DIY single called “Infinity” and released a similarly-titled EP.

I read that “Infinity” was based on childhood memories. Can you elaborate? I just think love and that pure emotion that comes with love is best represented by kids and the initial innocence that you see in these young kids. A lot of those emotions we tried to put into “Infinity” and create that kind of nostalgia.

Was there a particular event that trigged it? I don’t think it came from an event specifically, but “Infinity” was a fun one because it was so collaborative. The concept of “Infinity” that we wanted to explore was one that was never explored before, so we were really excited to see what it would mean for different people and put it in that childhood sense.

The band is known for its DIY approach. Why is that so important to you? We had such a specific vision for the music at such a young age. We definitely wanted to go into more of a diverse, alternative direction from every other type of music out there. We thought that working with a bunch of producers and writers would kind of hinder that for us and dilute our vision. So we just started doing that and it stuck ever since.

It works really well for us. And moving forward, we’re not opposed to working with other people. But right now our first album is called Living Room and it’s kind of a concept album because the entire thing is written, mixed and produced in the living room on like a $90 microphone and a computer with no sound equipment.

Is there a song that is particularly special on the LP? One of the songs that’s definitely going to be on our album is on the InfinityEP as well and it’s called “Alice By The Hudson”. Growing up in New York City, we listened to a lot of Beach Boys‘ music but we’re also inspired by the city around us.

So lyrically the song takes inspiration from the city but musically it takes inspiration from the Beach Boys, it puts the production in a more modern setting. There’s a spoke-step breakdown, which is something that we kind of invented. It’s the same way that people make up steps using a baseline and messing it up — we did the same thing with vocals.

Is there an artist you would really like to collaborate with? I think Lorde would be really cool to work with, she has some really cool forward-thinking ideas. That would be really interesting to see what we could come up with.

Do you have any favorites among the current crop of “boy bands”? Over the last couple of months, 5 Seconds Of Summer put out some songs that are really catchy. Like the hooks are really strong, and I think that was really impressive. But we’re just really big music lovers. So if One Direction puts out something like “Story Of My Life,” then we’re gonna love it.

Have you already started thinking beyond your debut LP?We’ve started writing for album two, we have some concepts. We’d definitely love to do some collaborations — whether we’re featuring other artists or writing with other artists. We’d definitely like to broaden our horizons. We definitely think in a progressive way in terms of our music, like what is a good time to release a certain song.

I saw Kanye West do this interview where he talks about he has to speak with the textures of the time. Like he had to do Late Registration at the time, even though in his mind he was like far beyond that, because that’s what people would get. So that was very interesting.

You have a lot of New York references on your album. How has growing up in the city influenced your music?

Jack Met: Growing up in New York has been our favorite thing. We just love it so much. New York has such a rich and diverse culture to it. We started out street performing, and that is the biggest thing in New York. We felt from such a young age that we were really part of the culture. We thought it was really necessary to include these references -- we have a reference to the Hudson River and we have a song called "Growing Old on Bleecker Street." We just felt it really fit with our sound.

What was the craziest thing that happened to you while street performing?

JM: We had a homeless person steal our microphone at one point so he could showcase his own project. That was crazy!

Did you learn anything cool from busking in Central Park so much?

Ryan Met: We learned a lot -- not necessarily about the park -- but about the street performing culture. There are all of these weird time slots. You need a permit for amplified sound. There's kind of a mutual understanding between street performers -- that we start when the other guys are on a break. There are these hip-hop break dancers that we became friends with that were also street performers, so we worked out our sets in between.

JM: There's a whole unknown politics to street performing.

Did you ever combine your performances with the hip-hop dancers?

AJR: [in unison] That would've been so cool! We would've doubled profits! We did not even think of that.

What is the most meaningful song on your album to each of you?

Adam Met: They're all meaningful in different ways. We had so many songs to choose from for the album -- every song means something different. We have everything from opera samples to yodeling to Spongebob to crazy things on the album. Right now the song that speaks to me -- and it changes every day -- is "The Green and the Town." A lot of the imagery in the song was based on the Aeneid by Virgil, the epic poem. So, it has a lot of rolling hills imagery and it's over pirate-y style production.

JM: For me, it's our song "Growing Old on Bleecker Street." I really gravitate towards songs that could be in the background of a movie as someone is kind of walking around or doing something. I think "Growing Old on Bleecker Street" really fits that feeling as I'm walking around New York and I would be listening to it. It just feels kind of right.

It's a very movie-esque title.

JM: Yeah! Like a Woody Allen-type kind of thing. Which is another one of our songs.

RM: We should make a movie -- like a short film -- called "Growing Old on Bleecker Street!" [For me], like Adam said, mine keeps changing, We have a song called "Overture," that's the first song on the album. We love the idea of an overture for theater, where it takes the different themes from different songs and it combines them in a really artful way. So we thought we'd do a modern, electronic version and take a lot of samples from the album, take each theme, and work them together in a very artful way. And the fans seemed to have responded to it really well to it, so we're pretty proud of it.

Your album goes from chill, acoustic tracks to very electronic-heavy songs. How would you describe your sound -- or would you label your sound as something specific?

RM: It's definitely pop, if I had to [give it] an overarching word. Going back to the New York City thing, I think we're super inspired by the city. … We live in Chelsea, where it's super chill and there's the High Line. We're pretty inspired by a lot of diversity and everywhere you go in the city, you see different types of people and different types of landscaping. We're really into that. We just like to keep surprising people on the album, and just when you think we're gonna do a really nice acoustic song, the next song full-out, dub-step, electronic production.

AM: We also like to make music that we like to listen to, and we don't just enjoy one genre of music. We wanted to make an album that covers everything. It's overarching pop, like Ryan said, but there's everything from folk to hip-hop to Beach Boys influences, so we wanted to include all of that on the album.

RM: I don't think anybody just enjoys one type of music. I think the average listener loves many different types of music we wanted to include.

JM: Hopefully that could be the future of music -- a wide range for each album.

What is your fave lyric on the album?

RM: I'm gonna pick a lyric from our song "Big Idea," and that song really tells our story. "Good music's still good even if no one is watching." And that has to do with us being a band for like 10 years where no one was watching us and we had to keep believing in ourselves.

AM: A fan of ours in Madison, Wisconsin, got this lyric tattooed on her arm -- it's from "Growing Old on Bleecker Street." It's "You cannot rush what can't be timed."

JM: I think my favorite lyric is the first line in the chorus of "Infinity," which is our single right now. It's "All our troubles gone / Like when we were young." Ryan wrote that lyric, and when he sang it for me, it just hit me as a lyric that could just apply to life in general. it just made me feel really good.

RM: I'm glad I could do that to you!

What is like for you for a fan to have your lyrics tattooed?

AM: That was our first experience with a fan tattoo! [laughs] It was crazy. It means a lot to us! I'm really glad she picked that lyric. I'm glad that resonated with her.

JM: There's a lot of really specific things that fans can do to really solidify the fact that we're a band that they really like, which is such a crazy thing for us. [The tattoo] is one of them. And also, the first time that someone said "You guys are my favorite band." It doesn't happen a lot, but it has happened. That's just a crazy thing to think about -- my favorite bands growing up are the bands that I idolize. The fact that we came from playing on the street to being someone's favorite band is just amazing for us.

Ryan: We're still very new at this, so it's all just really exciting for us.

We just like to keep surprising people on the album, and just when you think we’re gonna do a really nice acoustic song, the next song full-out, dub-step, electronic production.

How did you choose "Infinity" as your single?

AM: I think it was the fans that ended up choosing it. We put out a whole bunch of songs on YouTube and we saw the reaction, and then the "Infinity" video got a TON of views. We really enjoyed the song and thought it would be a nice, second step from our first single. But also the fans seemed to react to it really well.

RM: Whatever we did for the next single,we wanted it to be really different from [their first single] "I'm Ready." If we did something really similar to "I'm Ready," we could easily be pigeonholed as something and we wanted to just be like, this is the depth of what we can do. This is the gamut.

You've toured with Demi Lovato, Fifth Harmony, the Vamps… What is the most memorable moment you had with each artist?

JM: With Demi Lovato, we only did one show with her, in California. That was, like our fifth show we had ever played and we had never played for an audience that big -- it was 15,000 kids out at the Pomona State Fair. It was this HUGE stage and it was just the three of us on it. It was just unlike anything we have ever done before, so it just introduced that whole other side of performing -- the idea of performing in an arena, which was just completely new to us.

RM: We did something with Hoodie Allen in the U.K. a year ago or so. That was our first tour. We got flown out the U.K. so that was really exciting. Hoodie Allen has a really funny fan base in the U.K. -- it's all guys our age in tank tops, kind of like bros. We were expecting to be booed off the stage, and they really took to the music and we've kept all of them as fans, which is really exciting for us. We just did the Melanie Martinez tour. She came up with a very interesting sound and image -- she dresses like a demented baby -- so she has all of her fans dressing like that. She has a cool, really niche fan base, and that was cool -- we were able to make some of those fans that were clearly just there for Melanie and dressing like her.

JM: Touring in general, we've realized, is super important to us, because each show that we play -- we play shows with a huge range in demographic -- each show that we play it makes us realize how much further our music can stretch. We did a tour with Lindsey Stirling, who is this electric violinist. Her audience is like 30-year-olds and up, and we were like, "Okay, let's do this tour and we'll get it over with." And even [her audience] -- they were coming up to us after the show, and they were like, "Wow, you guys have cool music." It's really cool 'cause it makes us see how far our music can stretch.

AM: We opened for Train, and he has a very adult audience. It was really exciting to see people connect to the music. Even those shows -- like Train and Lindsey Stirling -- we've made fans there and they end up coming out to our headlining shows. It's really nice to see that our music connects to so many people.