Going down the same road for a long time tends to get a little weary, which is why Gentle Bones and lullaboy are taking a fun little detour.
The two Singaporean acts recently announced their new duo project Bones & The Boy. Born out of the creative mind of the 'dear me,' hitmaker, the project serves as the pair's "creative holiday" away from their solo music careers.
"We wanted to come up with a project that allowed us some space to take what I like to call like a 'creative holiday' from our own individual paths with music, and really just create music based off what we enjoy and yet are not limited to what we feel like we have to do for our own stuff," Gentle Bones tells Bandwagon.
"We have always been able to vibe with each other's music. Although we have different fan bases it's really cool to be able to come together and make this project as one. We hope that both of our fan bases will be able to appreciate this because we're not swaying too far away from what we usually do but at the same time we're exploring and experimenting with a lot of new things that maybe some people will be surprised with. It's just quite exciting because it's uncharted territory for both of us," added lullaboy.
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As we got deeper into our conversation with the newly formed duo, it was clear that Bones & The Boy was a project of a genuine passion for music and admiration for one another.
In between compliments on the other's work ethic and anecdotes from their "too smooth" writing session, Bandwagon caught up with Gentle Bones and lullaboy to talk about what went on in the booth, how they've grown through the years, and the story of how their debut single 'Good In Me' came to be.
What has it been like working with each other? Did you learn anything new about one another?
lullaboy: It's super cool, you know. I've been listening to Gentle Bones's music ever since I kind of first started getting involved in the Singaporean music scene. I remember when he first started releasing music, people were like talking about like who he was and how his music is so good, it was kind of the first time Singapore is releasing pop music. I think for all of the people in our generation, we were really shocked and surprised and also hopeful. Now, fast forward many years later, getting the chance to make music together, it's really incredible. It's quite an honour for me.
ok the secret is out, “good in me” with the top singaporean artist, gentle bones, out june 10th. #newmusic #lullafam #dreamer pic.twitter.com/B0nZzviOeq
— lullaboy (@lullaboyxo) June 3, 2022
Gentle Bones: Thank you for your kind words, I'll pay you some cash after this (laughs). I'm personally a big fan of what lullaboy has been doing for a long time, I think the music that he creates is very authentic. There's so much music out there and I think really true authentic music cuts through everything and gets the attention that it deserves. I believe it's not an easy thing to do but lullaboy has been doing that with his music. It has been very influential to me.
Coming together, I've learned a lot. What I really appreciate a lot about him is—not just with this music but also as a person—I feel like he has a lot of love to give. He's always very interested in just finding different ways to add more love to things. So even in the whole writing process, we just go into the flow really quickly which is really a beautiful thing. He's amazing for doing this.
lullaboy: Oh wow, thank you. I'll have to send your money right back (laughs).
Tell me more about your debut single ‘Good In Me’. What story does the song tell and how did it come together?
Gentle Bones: 'Good In Me' is really about the beauty of being able to find someone who's able to see the good in you. I think we're always trying to get around life, trying to make the most of it and in turn, try to protect ourselves in a way. So, we tend to always just to play a bit safe, we tend to be a bit more judgmental or a bit more cynical in order to protect ourselves from possible harm, especially from people that may break our trust. I think when you're able to find someone who's just immediately very open with you, let their guards down, and just takes notice of the good in you first before the bad is quite a beautiful thing. The song tries to explain that in a way that someone actually does that with us.
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lullaboy: It started off with a little voice note demo that I had—and I wanted to highlight the story because it just shows Joel (Gentle Bones)'s amazingness. So, I had been sitting on this idea for a very, very long time, maybe two years, and I could never do anything with it. I didn't know what to do, how to turn it into something but when I played it for Joel, I think it only took like 10 minutes and he already has all these suggestions of things we could do. And within a flash, it was done, the song was done. This was our first time ever writing together so I was just shocked at how this guy was able to take something that wasn't anything and he turned it into our first single together and I'm really thankful for that.
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Individually, you’ve both recently had major individual releases. So, what is it like coming from that to now working on a duo project?
Gentle Bones: This is a project that I've been wanting to do for a long time. It differs a lot from a more regular collaboration because of the whole 'creative holiday' element so to be able to come together with lullaboy and really say, 'hey, let's just do something entirely different' is exciting. We have as much space as possible to just write songs that we enjoy.
We don't just listen to music that is similar to our own music, we listen to a whole bunch of other stuff and appreciate a whole bunch of other music as well and to be able to do that and conceptualise this new project is fun. It's really fun as a songwriter and as creators, because there are really no limitations, we're just making music.
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lullaboy: I was just realising this as Gentle Bones was speaking but the name of our duo is Bones & The Boy, and one thing that I noticed from the first time we wrote music together—which was actually through Zoom— was that he really brought out that boy in me. And also hopefully that boy in himself as well, I think he can testify to that.
We were really able to go back to our roots. That wasn't something that we meant to do on purpose. We really wanted to explore and try new things, but as much as I feel we have achieved that, we just couldn't help but kind of be thrown back in time. There's this sense of nostalgia to the music that we're going to be showing everyone. And I just it's something that I really love. I don't know if artists are supposed to always be listening to their own music but to be honest, I've been listening to our songs very often, and I love it.
Since you've started your musical careers, how do you guys feel you've evolved and grown as artists? And how does that bleed over to Bones & The Boy?
lullaboy: For me, I think I'm not scared of being myself anymore. Over time, the songs that I write and the songs that I want to put out, they're something I resonate more and more with each song. On a more technical aspect, I feel like we gain more experience as artists every year and we gain a little bit more professionalism so hopefully, overall, the quality of the music goes up with the quality of the stories.
Gentle Bones: I feel like it is a huge privilege to be an artist because when you evolve your music, you usually also evolve yourself. You have to grow as a person in order to attempt music that you will increasingly feel for; because we all grow as people, we experience more things in life. We all mature, whether we want to or not so it's been an amazing thing for me to be able to just make sense of that by writing music.
I think I tried to develop my sound as well as a separate thing altogether, I'm a bit more strict on that aspect and I think you hear a little bit of that with Bones & The Boy. This project is something I'm really proud of—it's the music that we made with our producer Jason Gelchen from Homeground studios. I've worked with Jason for quite a long time so I feel like this music is also a combination of our previous efforts with my own work, and I think we've really like crossed another threshold of what we feel is great music. I'm really excited for everyone to listen to it and the content itself is really it's very deep, relatable and authentic, I'm very proud of it.
What do you hope to achieve with this project?
lullaboy: Bones & The Boy is a combination of the best of us. You know, I feel like it's me, Joel and also Homeground studios. We put our hearts and our souls into this and we believe and we hope that the fans will resonate with this music.
My hope and dream are that it becomes something that every Singaporean can be proud of. But more on top of that, it can be something that Southeast Asia is proud of like and that we can showcase this sound and this art on a global scale. So, thank you to all the fans for getting us this far, because this project wouldn't be here without them.
What’s next for ‘Bones & The Boy’? Are there any other projects we can look forward to?
Gentle Bones: We have more in the works for sure. It was too smooth of a writing session, we couldn't just stop with one song. We wrote a couple more and we're just trying to release 'Good In Me' first and hopefully have the listeners be excited at what we could possibly create. The songs that are coming up are amazing and I just can't wait for the listeners to really to see what we have in store.
Listen to Bones & The Boy's 'Good In Me' here.
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