Aly & AJ Rein in a New Era
The singer/songwriter sisters strove to make a record that felt like California, and the album is so infused with that uplifting sunshine. “Yeah, it's fine. Where you going, sunshine? We've got time; Sit back and I'll drive you to all the pretty places. Pull us away from where the pain is, These open skies, Leaving the past behind. I would, for all the pretty places”, they sing in the opening track, Pretty Places.
Feed your soul and your inner child by playing ““a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun” from start to finish. Let it bookend your summer, and be on the lookout for the “A Touch of the Beat” 2022 Tour!
Check out our exclusive interview with the duo below!
First and foremost, I have to ask because me and my friends blast this track every other day and I hear it at 80% of every function that I go to. Did you think that your single ‘potential breakup song’ would become such an iconic staple in the pop community?
AJ: I mean, who would’ve ever known, that's the beauty of music, you never know. When you produce what you produce and you put it out and you're not sure if it's going to land or not, no one can predict ahead and no one can predict if something resonates with your fans or not. I mean, we know our fans well enough now that we kind of know how to serve them, which is great because that's really the industry we're in. We serve the fans, but also make sure it feels right to Aly and I.
Aly: I think we've learned that more and more over the years that we want to make music that we feel really proud of years down the road. I do look back at our old songs and I think there's some that we would probably do very differently, but at the end of the day, you can hopefully walk away from this experience in the music industry and have no regrets. I do think that AJ and I are at least on the path to that.
What was it like being under the spotlight at such a young age? I mean, you two played a monumental role in our current generations' childhoods and you’re still making waves today. Did this have any impact on you both at all? Whether it be good or bad?
Aly: I think it's a mixture for AJ and I think that we’re lucky that we had each other, I think that was a massive plus for us as people and as siblings. Just as young children growing up in the business, the fact that we had someone else to lean on that was going through it as well, was very helpful. I think the things that can be, damaging about being in the industry at that young of an age, as you can have low self-esteem because you feel like you're not perfect enough or like everyone's watching you.
Thankfully, we kept a pretty normal life. We weren't in the spotlight 24/7 and I think that was our parents and us just choosing to not take part in things that exposed us, to everyone every single day of the week. I think that overall, we had a really positive experience, as young children, actors and musicians. I definitely think that the ups and downs of what we went through have brought us to where we are today. Especially with this new music, the songs that we're writing now and the experiences that we've had over the last 15 years as a band, I think all of that has been necessary to meet us at this moment.
Yeah and this is your first full project in 14 years, could I ask you why you both took such a long break? Perhaps you needed a break from the spotlight? How did you both find your way back to music?
AJ: It's one of those things where we started so young that I think it's inevitable that at some point you have to figure out: who am I as an adult artist? What do I really want to put out next? What do I want people to hear from me in the next 10 years? Is it going to stand the test of time later? I mean, there are so many questions that as an artist, you can ask yourself and everything you put out never goes away. I mean, it's a timestamp on your career and just who you are as an individual. So we were like, ‘let's take this time to figure out who we are outside of Hollywood records.’ We had obviously just come off the success of two records that were really prominent pieces in our art and I'm really, really proud of those records.
I also felt like Aly and I needed to find out who we were, heading into our twenties and we had left the label. During that time, Aly never really focused on acting and looking back on it, I wish we hadn't taken 10 years to be honest, but I'm also like, 'we can't erase the past' and I'm glad that we took those 10 years because we ended up developing our craft and we kind of did it privately. Now, here's the music for the first time in 14 years that we can introduce to people and I feel really strongly about it. Whereas if we could really step in that 10 year gap, I don't think I would be very happy with some of that music.
Aly: Yeah. I think a lot of it is music that you're making in a moment where you're having growing pains. I think that we see that in some artists and in others, we don't, because they start at an older age where maybe they've had those growing pains already, not in the public and not under the spotlight of the industry. So I think for us, it had a lot of positives. I mean, if I could go back and do everything again, would I have taken as long of a break, probably not. I think that time just kind of got away from us and then next thing we knew, we realized we haven't made a record in a really long time, even though we were still songwriting and collaborating with other people during that time, we just were kind of holding all of those songs and those ideas and those sketches of songs close to our heart. We just didn't want to let them go. We didn't want to release them to the world.
AJ: It kind of makes me feel good that we had that window of time to just work on music and it was between Aly and I, and it's just stuff that people won't hear and if it leaks it leaks. Some stuff has, and that's fine, but it was our moment to figure out who we were as adult artists and we got to do that privately.
Amazing. Speaking of your album, what’s the process like when you both conceptualize your vision? Walk me through your process for this album.
Aly: We had a conversation with our producer Yves Rothman and it really started with us getting off the road and being super inspired to make a record and to make a record that kind of saw us in a new light. We wanted to make a record that felt like the place we were born and raised in and being California kids, we wanted to infuse that into the album. We wanted this record to make people feel good and make people feel free. I think when we set out to do that, a big part of delivering that to our fans was making sure that we gave ourselves the time to really create in a space that inspired us. So we chose a studio in Los Angeles called sunset sound to record the majority of this album and we picked a collection of incredible musicians to play this music. We really chose not to make this record with a bunch of overdubs.
We had five-six guys in one room at one time recording them and then AJ I would do our vocals afterwards and that just felt like the best way to capture the sound and this music and energy. We kind of went back a little bit to the old school way of making records. Now people are so used to making records off their laptop or not even picking up an instrument and being able to do it all via the computer and we just didn't want to do it that way. So I think that was a huge learning curve for AJ and I, in terms of how we looked at the record and how we looked at the making of the record, because we hadn't really done it that way before. It made us feel really proud of this music in a way that we, that we just haven't been about any of our past records before we felt extremely connected to it. We weren't very confused about any of the topics or lyrics or musical choices.
AJ: Honestly, it was all about songwriting. Just write as many great songs as you can. The song writing was that that was at the heart of the whole project. Some people start with a concept, some people start with an image. For us, It was like, write all the best songs we can write, put them together with Yves. Then from there, the vibe of the record would fall together. When we came up with the album title, which is obviously connected to Don't Need Nothing, we were at the studio and we were like, ‘what are we going to name this record?’ This was back in June, July of last year.
Aly was like, well, ‘I think we should name it, a touch of the beat, gets you up on your feet, gets you out of the end of the sun.’ It honestly really came that easy because that's a lyric from the chorus and that kind of took off as, all right, this record is about getting out in the sun, driving down PCH, being on a road trip, the open road ahead and what life has for us on the other side of this pandemic. That's really the concept that took the record to a whole other level.
Speaking of the lyrics, Your latest album breaks the fourth dimensional wall in every sense, I mean all of your music does, but this album seems really special. Could you both talk about the writing process at all?
AJ: The writing process for us has kind of always been the same, everything really starts with Aly and I. We're very much the drivers of the melody and the lyrics, but we have some co-writers that we really rely on for some of the music orientation and some of the instrumentation that's written and I love that. Yves Rothman and Jorge Elbrecht, those were two of the guys that were really involved with this past album. I have to say, it'd be really hard to walk someone through our process because it's never the same, well, it's the same in the sense that we've always worked the same way together, but it's always different when you start a song. Sometimes the lyric starts things off. Sometimes a melody starts things off. Sometimes it's a guitar line.
Aly: Sometimes you're like, oh, I love this song and I want to make a song that feels like the song, but it ends up sounding super different. You'd never really know that when a certain artist inspired a track on one of the records of ours. I think it's more about getting into a space and kind of allowing the good energy of that song that has yet to be born, to kind of float into the room. I think if you can kind of stay open-minded, day after day to that, it starts to come to you. Especially when you mix that with great collaborators that you really trust, it's magic and songwriting is one of those things that I find to be so special because it's not really something that's learned either have that ability or as a person or you don't. Whereas there are many things that can be learned, you can learn to play guitar, you can learn to sing, you can learn to surf, but you can't really learn to write a song. You either have it inside of you as a person or you don't so it's a very special art form that AJ and I have a lot of respect for.
For sure and this album can be labeled as a crossover between nostalgic and melodic sounds. What prompted this exploration or rather continuation into this soft, indie sound? Did your home inspire this sound?
Aly: I think the place that we live in inspired the sound, AJ and I both live in Laurel Canyon and there's a lot of music history here that we've been able to learn about over the years. I think that it's a combination of the kind of records that we're listening to, that we're fans of. We've always kind of lean more towards alternative indie rock type music and as much as we appreciate pop, that's not really what's on our regular rotation as listeners, when it comes to listening in the car or on vinyl, or even on my phone and in the airport. So I think it was just us embracing that side of our musical tastes that we've never really done before.
It felt really good to be free in that way with this record and not even necessarily needing to write for one specific genre, knowing that, there are songs on the record that lean a little bit more pop, and there are songs that are a little bit more indie and there are even songs that have a little bit more of a folk inspiration to them. So I think that we'll continue to fall into that world the more that we make records and we're already preparing for the next album. We've written 10 songs so far and I'd say about half of those are actually in a pretty great place. So, it was just trying to stay creative and keep that flame going as long as you can.
Amazing. The definition of music consumption has changed over the past few years. How did you both witness the evolution? Did you feel pressured by all of these new sounds at all?
AJ: I have to say, I don't really think we felt pressured because it's been so long since we were really in the game that when you've taken that long of a break, there isn't any pressure because so much time has gone by, you're not working on your sophomore slob. You didn't just come off a huge hit and you have to prove yourself again. We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. We were literally like, all right guys, this is all the material we really care about. We hope you do too. Then I think because there was such an authentic push with this record and this cycle, people just responded to it. I really think when you do things out of, just being true to yourself, it works. When you force things, it can work too. It's bizarre, but Aly and I don't really tend to work that way, so there was no pressure. It was kind of like, put out your best work and let's see if people latch on and they did.
You’re both part of a generation that exists in the age of social media. However, you’ve both grew up during an era where technology just unveiled itself but wasn’t quite as big as it is today. Would you prefer to go back to the old era or are you happy with where we’ve advanced in society? The way that music is shared? The way that music is produced?
Aly: Well AJ and I, we're very much the types that do not love change. We get very attached to the way that things are. So it was a big change for us to come to terms with the fact that the music industry had changed so wildly since we had put out music. But I do think that the accessibility of where we're at with music is a plus. I think the fact that artists and songwriters and producers and musicians aren't being paid properly in these streaming worlds is not good and is really hard because all you're relying on for income is touring and merchandising or branding. So I think that is a sad place for where we are as artists but I think that the hope of technology bringing music to people in an easier way is a plus. So I don't know, I'm kind of torn between the two worlds, I do think that AJ and I getting out on the road is very much a focus for us for the rest of our career. I think that being able to play music live for people and being able to influence how they feel that day or night is a huge honor. So I'm really looking forward to us getting out and touring next year, one where we're finally doing a proper tour in Europe and the UK, and then we come over here in the states. So that's kind of something that I'm very excited about for us to kind of dive into again.
What feelings do you both hope to conjure up as people rediscover your music or find your music for the first time? What feelings dominate when you both listen to your own music?
AJ: I think for our fans, nostalgia is probably the biggest feeling for a lot of people, whether it's an old song or a new song, because I think Aly and I have such a sound when we sing together, that it makes people feel like, oh, even if I'm hearing a new song that I've never heard before, it feels familiar, it feels like Aly and AJ. When we put our voices on a song, it just comes together as oh, these are those sisters, I get it. For me, the feelings it conjures up is kind of this sense of, I want to go play these songs live, a lot of times when we write music in the studio, I'm picturing what it's going to sound like or translate to on stage. It also conjures up nostalgia for me, I've been writing with my sister since we were 11 or 12. So I always feel really good about writing music with Aly, and then, maybe bringing it to another collaborator and getting their take on it and then bringing it to a stage. It's really cool to have kind of a time capsule of our lives together in song form that really represents who Aly and I are. From when we got signed to when we were putting out our second record to when we were putting out a Christmas album to the two EPs to now and it's wild.
I guess my last question would be, what’s next for Aly and AJ? Will we be seeing more of you two? Any plans for the rest of the year? And can you tell us more about the central themes of your upcoming project(s)?
Aly: Next is us playing Lollapalooza next week, which is wild. So we're right now just prepping with our band and getting our set together, our outfits and the whole thing. But really it's just prepping for this tour that will be happening at the end of February next year. We’ll start prepping for that in December or January and, writing new music and we have a deluxe record that's going to be coming out, in the late fall this year, along with some singles that coincide with that deluxe record. We have a little cover that we're dropping as well. So yeah, we’re just trying to stay creative, we're trying to make sure that the fans feel that they're well fed for the rest of the year. We’re also working on some really cool collaborations with some brands that we feel really connected with. It's very much music at the very front for us, which is really nice, but it's been awhile since we've had, music on the front burner.
