American Songwriter: Yacht Rock Revue Have “Bad Tequila” on New Single, Leave Covers Behind on Upcoming Album
When your career has revolved around performing other artists’ songs for 13 years, songwriting seems like a far stretch. For soft rock, cover crooners Yacht Rock Revue, it’s exactly what they did on their first album of original material, HOT DADS in TIGHT JEANS, out Feb 21.
Produced by Ben Allen (Kaiser Chiefs, Animal Collective), HOT DADS fuses everything YRR is in disco-rock funk beats and typical cheeky humor, all wrapped in old-school, radio countdown tracks like first single “Step” through swooning ballad “The Big Bang,” to comical “Another Song About California,” and opener “The Doobie Bounce,” never missing a beat in their innate cheesiness with I used to sleep on couches / Now I sleep on nicer couches.
Matthew Wilder (Mulan soundtrack, No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom), who co-wrote several of the tracks with the band, gave them advice on how to approach songs: go big. “He wanted us to go for a big, simple, unabashed pop anthem, which sounds easy on the face of it, but it can be hard to sit down and write something new that’s just three chords and the truth,” co-singer Nicholas Niespodziani tells American Songwriter. “It was three chords until we started working on it with the band and got a bit more complex for the sax solo.”
Second single “Bad Tequila,” taps into the “when life gives you lemons” concept—but with tequila—in lyrics Some people run from what’s coming / But it’s coming ready or not / People say it’s magic / But it’s just working with what you’ve got an chorus.
In many ways, “Bad Tequila” is a story about the band—specifically taking the leap into songwriting. [It’s] a lemons to lemonade story, with extra sugar,” says Niespodziani. “As a songwriter and artist, at first I felt caged by our accidental career as a tribute band. But over the years I’ve found my peace with it, and now with this new album I feel inspired and empowered by it. We make people happy for a living and that joy is wrapped up into this pop nugget.”
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Written by: Tina Benitez-Eves