Neck Deep are the exception. Formed five years ago in Wrexham, the band released their debut EP, Rain in July, in September 2012. Containing seven pop punk tracks, it was more like a mini album than an EP. While sales were not spectacular, Rain in July garnered attention from music fans and positive reviews for the fledgling band.
“People really began taking notice of us,” said singer, songwriter and frontman Ben Barlow. “We’d played some concerts but the EP actually created a demand for us to play a lot more shows.”
One track, What Did You Expect?, was recorded by Ben and Neck Deep co-founder Lloyd Roberts before the other three members had been recruited.
“My brother Seb is a producer and recording engineer. He was recording a hardcore band named Spires. Lloyd was their lead guitarist. I was at one of the recording sessions with Seb and met Lloyd. I wrote pop punk songs on my own for fun but had always hoped to record them. I got on really well with Lloyd, showed him some of my songs and we decided to record together as a duo.”
The boys needed a name.
“I just said what about calling ourselves Neck Deep and that was that. Lloyd didn’t offer any alternative suggestion so Neck Deep it was. I got the idea from the lyric of Boom, Roasted, a song by Crucial Dudes. The line is ‘Neck deep in what you couldn’t be.’”
What Did You Expect? gained enough online interest to prompt Ben and Lloyd to form a live band. Spires’ guitarist Matt West was the first recruit followed by drummer Dani Washington and bassist Fil Thorpe-Evans.
A second EP, A History of Bad Decisions, was issued in February 2013. A group holiday in Florida was combined with two critically acclaimed shows. Fan filmed footage was posted online and seen by executives at Hopeless Records who immediately signed the band.
“We had intended to make an album and self-release it,” Ben explained. “But we always hoped something might happen with a record company and we couldn’t have hoped to sign with a better label than Hopeless. They believed in our music and gave us the freedom to develop as a band.”
Their debut album, Wishful Thinking, fared reasonably well in the mainstream charts but was a big genre hit peaking at number two in the UK Rock and Metal chart. It was a similar story in America paving the way for Neck Deep to be in demand to perform a US concert tour. This would necessitate a change in the life of each band member.
“We were not a full-time band,” Ben stated. “But the response to our album meant Lloyd, Matt and Fil could quit their jobs, Dani turned down a place at the Academy of Contemporary Music and I dropped out of university.”
Sold out tours of the UK, Europe, North America and Australia confirmed going full-time was the right decision. So did the chart success of their 2015 sophomore album, Life’s Not Out To Get You.
The LP reached number eight in Britain and number 17 on the Billboard 200. It also hit number three on both Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts. In Britain, it was number two on the Rock and Metal Albums chart and gave Neck Deep their first number one on the Independent Albums chart, a position which was matched on Billboard’s Independent Albums chart.
Riding high as the band were, their album title could not have proved more ironic for Lloyd Roberts. Life was certainly out to get him in the form of a 17-year-old girl who complained to police that Lloyd had sent her sexually explicit messages two years earlier when she was underage.
The police investigation cleared Lloyd of all allegations. Sadly, rather than the traditional assumption of innocent until proven guilty, any accusations of a sexual nature now seem to assume the accused is guilty until proven innocent. Lloyd left the band to protect their good name. He was replaced by former Climates and Blood Youth guitarist Sam Bowden.
Neck Deep’s recently released third album, The Peace and The Panic, has become their biggest hit to date. They have again enjoyed massive success in the genre charts but the album has also achieved enormous mainstream popularity reaching number four on both the UK chart and the Billboard 200.
“We felt fairly confident it would do well,” Ben remarked. “But we’ve always been a pop punk band and some of the songs on our new album are in a different style. I think Life’s Not Out To Get You was a great album but the songs were written when we were going through a period of uninterrupted happiness.
“Things have happened since then which made us think it was time to get a bit more real. For example, my dad died. We were in America when I got the news he was in a bad way and he was dead by the time I arrived home. That experience hit me hard and is reflected in the new songs.
“There are bad things in life that you can’t avoid. Sadness, failure, anxiety, death. Realising this has changed me personally and us as a band. It has created a development and change in at least some of our music. I think this is for the better in terms of the quality of our songs and, thankfully, the fans seem to agree.”
The Script
The Script are back with their fifth studio album, Freedom Child, and lead single, Rain. It is a record which frontman Danny O’Donoghue feared he would be unable to make.
“I had nodules on my vocal chords,” he explained. “It was from doing 300 shows in a year, partying and burning the candle at both ends.
“Fame came to us in our late-20s so we were grateful for everything we had and weren’t going to say no to anything. We didn’t know if the concert offers and TV appearances would come again or stop.
“My vocal problems made us stop. Everything wasn’t removed during the first operation. There were more nodules which were removed during a second op. I then had to keep silent for two months, which was really difficult for me.
“Next came the problem of learning to sing. I couldn’t just try to sing, I had to learn how to sing differently. I had to relax more while I was singing and avoid tension around the neck area. I also had to rebuild stamina in my voice. It took about six months. I’m so thankful everything worked out well. I was afraid I’d never sing again.”
The video for Rain can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iA-MHxa8C8
Freedom Child is posted in full at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv4e3QtPZ7g
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift used to be known as one of the nicest people in popular music. She was polite, respectful, kind, generous and friendly. No-one had a bad word to say about her.
Things began to change after the infamous Kanye West incident at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009. His interruption of Taylor’s acceptance speech after she won Best Female Video seems to have been the catalyst. Taylor received nothing but sympathy and support after Kanye’s boorish behaviour but it appears to have hardened her attitude.
She has since become embroiled in a number of controversies and feuds. Her break-up with Calvin Harris, one of a string of boyfriends, was less than amicable. Calvin’s fans trolled Taylor with a slithering snake emoji. She has also had high-profile feuds with Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian plus further situations with Kanye West.
These disputes, and more, are covered in Taylor’s smash hit new single, Look What You Made Me Do. The track was teased online with a series of snake videos, clearly aimed at Calvin Harris and Kim Kardashian, while some of the song lyrics refer directly to Kanye West. Critics have actually labelled Taylor’s single as the ultimate takedown track.
The accompanying video, which also digs at other targets such as Beyonce, former Denver DJ David Mueller and digital streaming services, is posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmd-ClpJxA. It smashed the record for views on YouTube in the first 24 hours. Adele’s 2015 video for Hello held the previous mark with 27.7 million views. Look What You Made Me Do registered 43.2 million views.
