ALEX DAVISON | DANIEL STROUD | WILL POTTER | TOM HERBERT
Nottingham based BLONDES follow the extraordinary success of Coming of Age, the first fruits of their partnership with Austin, Texas label C3 Records, with the release of their new single MINIMUM WAGE. Recorded at Coastal Sound Studios in Liverpool and produced by Rich Turvey (Blossoms, Courteeners, Vistas, BLOXX, The Coral, Clean Cut Kid) the single explores the bittersweet emotions of growing older whilst delivering an intoxicating melody prime for summertime.
“There’s a moment, and it creeps up on you,” explains guitarist Alex Davison, “where you suddenly find yourself older, stuck in a job that you don’t really like, and with very little financial reward, watching everyone and everything around you growing and changing. And you realise that this isn’t what you hoped for, and yet you can’t hold on to that because life rarely turns out as you expect. Things change, people change, and in ways that you can’t control. But you can control how you respond, and how you respond is key and will define your life.”
MINIMUM WAGE follows the recent announcement that the band will perform at Liverpool Sound City on Saturday 2 October, with further festival appearances and live dates to be announced soon.
BLONDES began three years ago at Nottingham University, meeting as freshers from widely disparate areas of the UK. The eureka moment for them came in the summer of 2019 whilst watching a set from The Vaccines at Glastonbury Festival, during which they heard an impassioned speech encouraging the audience to start a band and be fearless in chasing their dreams.
BLONDES took this encouragement to finish a song that guitarist Alex Davison had started writing years ago; a song about chasing those dreams that would eventually develop into Coming of Age. With an inherent belief and a handful of great songs, they decided not to return home after finishing university and would instead focus on the band in Nottingham.
It was in October 2020 that social media then helped catapult the band to the next step. Coming of Age became a viral sensation on TikTok as thousands of videos featuring the song suddenly appeared across the platform, racking up millions of views. An official Coming of Age trend was launched on TikTok, resulting in over 3.5 million streams of the song and over 200K monthly listeners on Spotify, and the music industry began to take notice. The video for Coming of Age has since amassed well over 350K views on YouTube alone.
The band are now signed with C3 Records, which was established in 2018 by Charlie Walker and Charles Attal, co-founders of C3 Management and C3 Presents, one of the world’s largest festival producers. BLONDES have since been back in the studio recording their highly anticipated debut EP for the label, and a video for MINIMUM WAGE, directed by James Slater, will follow later this month.
BLONDES are:
WILL POTTER | vocals
ALEX DAVISON | guitar
DANIEL STROUD | guitar and drums
TOM HERBERT | bass
