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Credit: Adam Saunders & Satoru Takamatsu

We love feeling a little extra, more bounce in the step, a happy aura and its associated confidence, a deluxe version of ourselves. If you too want this feeling than look no further that Aussie hitmaker BOY SODA, who, after the success of his album, SOULSTAR, decided to double dip and drop a deluxe version that kept this impressive album onto of our playlist. With an amazing sound design, instrumentation and execution, it's hard not to be wildly impressed by the scope & ambition if this record, even more so when its built upon. Fresh off some international travels, we were very blessed to have this soulful star in our studio to catch up on being deluxe, lifestyle and best venue size for a man of his talents:

OnesToWatch: Who are you? 

BOY SODA: I'm BOY SODA. 


How have you been? 

I've been good, man. Catching lots of flights this year. 


Any good travel tips? 

I feel like it's just lip balm. Invest in a water bottle, eye mask. Blanket over the head. 13 hours sleep.

You've obviously had great success in Australia. What's it like as you start winning over an audience globally? Do you feel that it's different? Do you approach it differently? 

It just feels like an extension of the music. I have no idea how these songs that come from nothing are able to transmute the whole world and travel and spider web out of the country, let alone just within my immediate circles. It's this beautiful, very magical thing to witness, and I feel like I don't understand it, but I'm just very happy to be here. 

When you're writing songs, do you ever think of that? Do you ever think of where it might end up, how the audience might relate? 

I think the destination is not something that the artist really has control over. We can ride it from a place, but how people receive it is hundreds of thousands of different ways in different contexts, you know? You can hope that it can travel in many different realities for people. But I think I have an acceptance that if I just get it as true to myself, then it'll be easily received by everyone else in their own lives or situations. 

I have a question about the greatest secret in music. Where does the accent go when you sing? 


I don't know. We just start singing and we enter this neutral place. It’s a potent thing that you struggle with when you first start singing. Because the accent makes sense when I talk, but when I sing it doesn’t feel very reflective of the music. We lose the twang, and it’s pretty natural, but also because the twang sounds a little bit crazy. 

I've always loved that. You meet people and you're like, oh, I had no idea that you were German or something, you know?

Yeah, people say that all the time, that they had no idea I was from Australia. 

Let's get into your songwriting. You've obviously been writing for a bit and I think you've mastered it in some respects. How do you approach it? What works for you? 

It's just this perfect marriage of craft and subconscious to me. There are little things waiting to be accessed that we don't know we’re thinking and feeling all the time, but maybe can't articulate and the only time that those things get articulated for me is when I write music. I trust the process, I know that there's something I need to say. Also, obviously the craft of it, like playing with structure and rhyme schemes and the phonetics of how things sound in my teeth and my lips and what feels more aggressive and more sexy for the song, I’m obsessed with all those things. So I think trusting the process and marrying just a love for the craft is just this, it's put me on this journey of songwriting a lot.

I'm glad you articulated that because sometimes it's hard to discern what's unique about a person’s music, but I think the fact that you're experimenting in that sense is really palpable in your music. You have some beautiful touches there. Where does that experimentation tend to start? 

For me, melody comes first. Sometimes I get lyrics first, but usually it’s melody. Melody’s really like the king and queen of my domain and dictates where I go in a lot of ways, but then it comes down to collaboration, like who's gonna bring a certain energy into the room or certain sounds or a certain taste that that is going to illuminate the canvas enough for me to like to see the vision. Then I let melody take the ride and take my hands off. 

Have you ever had a terrible, horrible, I-can't-believe-I-tried-that idea that ended up becoming really good? 

All the time. One of the most valuable things that mentors told me when I was young is that horrible ideas can lead to really good ideas. Someone might be earning their 20% because they said something so stupid, but it's the only reason that you thought about the cool thing, right? So you have to be completely unafraid to throw shit at the wall. Every idea pivots into something. Bad ideas turn into gems. 


I love that. Let's get into your deluxe album. It's an interesting thing. Is the “deluxe” made up of B-sides or new material? 

It was new material, actually. We'd been working on the album for a year, and then I created this world that has become so potent to me and I've lived in it and posted about it. These songs were informed by the world of the original album, so to be able to expand on that was really fun. 

How did you match these songs to the original album? Was it similar emotions, tempos, what drew them together? 

I was just so informed by the pillars of the original album. There was a lot of experimentation with vocal tone and beautiful major to minor and minor to major inversions. Also an old approach to mixing as well where it's not super compressed and pop and sparkly. More roomy, underprocessed sound. So I was equipped with these characteristics, and had also done so much hard work figuring out how to get these emotions out of my body or translate these life events that it felt easier to let them pour out of me. I could just kind of hit continue and make songs informed by that. 


Did you have any different expectations or ambitions putting this deluxe out? Or was it just riding a wave here and letting it keep going? 

Partially riding the wave, but it's also such an amazing time to be an artist in terms of content and shelf life. People are posting songs that they made 10 years ago and you can start a campaign for an old song whenever you want, essentially. So, it just felt like a really amazing opportunity for people who hadn't found the original album to get pivoted back and find this world. 


Beautiful. I'm going to pivot to some fun questions.
First of all, I heard you played in front of 10,000 people. Is that the most amount of people you played in front of? 

Yeah, easily. 


Some artists, maybe after retiring and playing in front of tens of thousands of people, prefer smaller shows due to the obvious difference in emotional connection.
Do you have a change of mind or attitude there? 

I think you always want both. I totally understand people that are doing big shows all the time that don't get to have those intimate moments because the audience is literally so far away, you know? You're physically along a long way away. So I feel like I would never want my career to be all stadiums without the other, more intimate shows. Art is made to be received in different spaces. I would always want to keep a balance of that. It's going to be human. If you stay far enough from the audience long enough, then that gap just gets bigger and bigger. 

Very healthy attitude. Speaking of festivals, who is your dream lineup? 

I'd say Joyce Rice. Gabriel Jacoby, Matt Kane, maybe some jazz cats like Roy Hargrove. I mean, the list goes on. 

At your most peaceful, where do I find you? What are you doing? 

I am at my house. And there's some incense burning. I probably just cleaned it. I've been building the fuck out of my plants at home right now, so my plants have probably just been watered. I got some ferns and palms inside. There's a vinyl playing. 

Well, sorry to interrupt, but I'm here with all of your friends and we're hungry. Look in the fridge right now. Can you whip up a meal and if so, what would it be? 

Okay, my fridge currently? They'd just be getting coffees from me. 

What if you got to go to the store. 

I'd probably do steaks, chimichurri. 

If you could manipulate time and space, would you? 

I don't think I would. Every time that I thought I wanted to be somewhere else or I wish things could have gone different, whether it's a minute later or 10 years later, I always am so glad it didn't fucking happen. I don't think I'll ever be in the position to know what's best at any given moment in time for myself. Things shouldn't be messed with.

Is there a place in the world you have not been or have not performed that you still have on your dream list? 

South America. 

Any specific venues or countries? 


It's more just the vibe, the energy there. I'd love to go play in Brazil, but just go anywhere South America. I would love to make music there as well. Go find the percussionists, and build some sounds because they’re nice with it down there. 

Last couple of questions, I would love a non-music recommendation from you.

I just read What I Think About When I Think About Running by Haruki Murakami. It's nonfiction. My guitarist actually lent it to me. When we're in Japan, I've just bought a bunch of his books because I forgot how much I love his writing. It's his philosophy on running, but it's really like his kind of metaphor for life and I guess what it feels like when he’s not working anymore and he's X miles into the marathon. It was just a very motivating book to read, very beautifully written. He's a very transparent writer in the way that he's very honest about his strengths and weaknesses. So when you read it, you have this softening of your own weaknesses because of how transparently he writes about his. I really enjoyed that book. 

Predictably, going to ask you for a music rec, if you have any. 

Artists from New Zealand, MOKOMAKAI and Troy Kingi just dropped a joint project together and it's pretty sexy. I would say it's Larry June-esque

Lastly, I want to end on anything you want to share, advice, counsel, promo, shout outs. 


We're playing LA at the Echo, and we're playing New York, Baby's All Right. So those’ll be our 1st shows in America, which we're obviously so excited for. And we got some shows back home after. Remember it's not that hard to be nice to people.