ALEX DAVISON | MARK TURTON | WILL POTTER | DANIEL STROUD | TOM HERBERT
BLONDES. Five young men drawing on their experience of coming of age in unusual times, capturing the euphoria of adolescence and the nostalgia of growing up. Their recent single, COMING OF AGE, a heady and intoxicating swirl of guitars and synth-driven melodies, came as the band began a new partnership with Austin, Texas label C3 Records.
BLONDES began three years ago at Nottingham University, meeting as freshers from widely disparate areas of the UK – Lincoln, Maidstone, London and, in the case of two of them, Chester. Their first year together saw them play forgettable shows, write forgettable songs and perform at band competitions they would rather forget.
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.
“Coming of Age started with the guitar riff,” explains Alex, “and there was something so nostalgic sounding about it. The song itself is a semi-autobiographical story about risking something with the blind hope that it would pay off. In a way, it became our self-fulfilling anthem.”
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, steadily building a following in their ‘home’ city and releasing their debut self-financed EP. 2020 opened with a string of shows, filling small venues throughout the city, but BLONDES, like everyone else, then found themselves locked indoors during a pandemic that had all but closed down the music industry, unable to play live or set foot in a recording studio. It became a time to reflect and to write music.
It was then, in October 2020, that social media catapulted 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 more than a million streams of the song and over 200K monthly listeners on Spotify, and the music industry began to take notice.
The band has recently 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. A video for COMING OF AGE will be released in February. BLONDES have since been back in the studio recording their debut EP for the label, to be released in the spring, and live dates will follow whenever it’s safe to do so.
BLONDES are:
WILL POTTER | vocals
ALEX DAVISON | guitar
DANIEL STROUD | guitar and drums
MARK TURTON | keyboards and guitar
TOM HERBERT | bass
