4Music

Back with their third album Streets of Gold, the 3OH!3 boys are currently riding high in the charts with new single My First Kiss, featuring LA party girl Ke$ha. We ask Sean and Nathaniel what they really thought of the Tik Tok singer as well which British popstars they have their eye on…

 How was working with Ke$ha on your current single, My First Kiss? 

Sean: What basically happened was, about two years ago, we were working on My First Kiss. I wrote the first tag line and we thought it would be cool if it was a guy and a girl response. The producer was working with Ke$ha at the time and brought it in. She was a little bit overly aggressive and a little bit crazy. For me, she’s cool and she came straight from dodgeball practice and I just thought she was a kooky girl living in LA. But then her career jumped off and it’s crazy listening to her music. Basically, the production and songs are her style. She asked us to work on Blah Blah Blah and it’s been a good relationship. Whenever she’s around, we hang out and its cool to see her work. 

Nathaniel: It’s crazy. We’re pretty close friends with the people who produce her music. Its nuts that she had a No.1 with her song before she’d played like ten shows. We toured for a year before we’d had any success on radio. I think that’s an advantage to us because we managed to have a very solid fan base to come to our shows before any popular success. We thought our rise was pretty fast, but with her it’s crazy. She went from no-one knowing her to being on the covers of magazines. I think she’s handling it well. She’s still the same chick.

 

Sean: We heard Tik Tok and we knew that song was gigantic.

 

How did working with Ke$ha compare to working with someone like Katy Perry on Starstrukk?

 

S: I think they’re very, very different in every sense, musically and personality-wise too. They’re both large than life, obviously, and they’re pretty normal girls when it comes down to it. Katy has an incredible singing voice, whether people know it or not. She has an absolutely incredible singing voice. She can belt. Kesha has her own rapping delivery style. Working with them was similar in that it was both pretty easy. Katy nailed it and wasn’t afraid to do as many re-takes as possible to get the best possible vocals.

 How would describe your new album, Streets of Gold? 

S: I think it’s a lot like what we’ve done before – it’s electronic and pop-sounding – but I think we’ve gone a little bit further into different arenas. There’s a song at the end of the album called Love 2012 that has this industrial Nine Inch Nails production on it. We have a couple more ballads and a song that’s a surfer throw-back. 

N: Hopefully, it’s an expansion on what we’ve done in the past and developing. We had a lot more time to make this CD and we’ve learnt a lot more as songwriters. 

Did you learn anything from making your last album, Want? 

N: We’ve just learnt so much more technique. Its also a lot more varied in the album. As Sean said, its fun for us to make different styles of music and keep it very 30H!3 and have out stamp on it. I never want to put out an album where every song is the same. Hopefully it has something for everyone on there. 

How do you think your fans will respond to the new material?

 S: For us, it was a natural progression in sound. If they liked the last record then they’ll like it. There are some departures that maybe they won’t like or maybe they’ll love them. That was a risk we were willing to take.

 What inspired you while making the new album? 

S: For me, lyrically, I was looking to do something that was more my style and not all over the board, like ‘here I am rapping, here I am singing.’ I wanted a combination of that and something I was comfortable doing. 

N: I was drawing inspiration from a lot of places. The electro scene is huge in terms of the sonics of stuff. We’ve been travelling a lot and that’s inspiring, and it was just important for us – especially on this album where we knew a lot more people would be listening to it right from the get-go – to stay true to music that we wanted to do and that was cool for us and fun to make. Not to over-reach but devote to most to it.

 Are you influenced by the electro-pop scene in the UK?

 N: It’s been huge. Even two or three years ago, before our last album, when the Justice stuff was going off. Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of British girl pop music. The Lily Allen record is one of my favourite records of all time and we actually worked with Greg Kurstin who produced that. We’re definitely heavily influenced by the sounds that coming out here. 

Are there any British acts you’d like to collaborate with?

 S: I like a lot of the girls like Ellie Goulding and Marina and the Diamonds. They’re awesome and have such a cool style. The way that Marina sings can’t really be compared to anything. 

N: I think Lily is amazing. As a lyricist, she’s really clever and really honest, and a cool singer too. There are a lot of girls I’d like to collaborate with.

 Do you prefer working with female artists?

 N: It’s cool because it provides a contrast to our voices and I’ve always been attracted to the female voice over electronic music. I guess it’s just worked out.

 And what about your own working relationship with each other?

 S: I think everytime we write a song it’s different, but for the most part Nat does the production. He’ll come in with a beat idea and I’ll have ideas in my head like a repetitive bass line or a vocal idea that we’ll work a beat around. We have certain roles when it comes to coming forth with ideas but once everything’s in the room everyone does everything. It’s a great process and seems to work. Its nice because I think we value each other’s ideas.

 You’re releasing your third album. What’s been some of the highlights since you started out? 

N: It’s pretty crazy because though our rise was pretty quick, its also felt, in retrospect, fairly well paced. Every few weeks or months, another cool thing happens. In the beginning, it was playing the venue in our town, and then last year it was playing Reading festival and having our songs go platinum out here in the UK.

 S: Meeting our idols like Little John. Those types of things are mind-blowing.

 Do you have any particular career ambitions? 

N: We wanna perform on the Space Station MIR. 

S: Yeah, if we could be the first band to play at a space station that would be good. 

N: For our album release, we wanted to film on one of those anti-gravity planes. But that didn’t happen. As for tangible goals, overall its just keep making music, keep travelling and tour with our friends and make new fans, and feel like we’re doing something creative and worthwhile.

 Have you thought about what the next single will be? 

N: We were talking about it today. There’s a song called Double Vision that’s a pretty good summer song. 

S: But if it comes out in winter… It might make people think about summer. 

N: We’ll see. It’s something you can think about it and debate about a lot. When the CD’s out, it’s what the fans want. I think we’re fortunate enough to like all the songs on the album.

  

The single My First Kiss and the album Streets of Gold are both out now.