Today, we sat down with The Yalla Yallas to talk music inspiration, heroes and much more! Be sure to check out their music on Spotify below after the interview!
Here is the interview:
What is your inspiration to write your music? Is it your surroundings?
Everything is a potential inspiration, especially when you’re writing about life. I come from a tough city in the northern England called Leeds, most people here are honest working class who have hearts of gold, but most people are no nonsense. If you’re a knob then someone will let you know. I love that honesty. People are very welcoming but if you think you’re better than anyone else you’ll soon get found out. We have quite a good bullshit detector around here. Quite a lot of people have a great distrust of authority or politicians “They all piss in the same pot”. So coming from that place I feel like I’m primed to be able to observe the outside world, to question everything, to welcome but to quickly figure out people’s motivations. We’re quite a progressive city, things are always improving … slowly but improving nonetheless. I don’t know about others but that gives me a sense of hope, and there’s a lot of hope in my music.
What type of music did you listen to growing up?
Everything, and I still do, I’m utterly in love with music, all kinds of music. I was born in 1983 so I grew up in the 90’s and the music was so diverse, the whole Brit Pop/Brit Rock scene was a hotbed of diversity, I’d listen to bands like Pulp, Garbage, Radiohead, who were making interesting music, We still had the American Rock thing going on in Guns n Roses, Nirvana, and Marilyn Manson, I loved the rave bands like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. I’d love Trip-Hop like Massive Attack, Portishead, and then Drum n Bass like Roni Size. There was just bands everywhere making all kinds of wonderful music, even the disposable chart pop music was great in the 90’s.
Is there someone you looked up as a hero?
Not particularly, I don’t think it’s right to put people on a pedestal. For too long we’ve been putting people on a pedestal and we’ve got to a point in society when we realise that these people are not perfect. People are outraged and cancel culture becomes the response. It’s our own fault really. Most of these famous people are just humans like the rest of us and we’re all flawed … every single one of us. Some people inspire me completely and I’m utterly in love with parts of their personality but there are other parts of their personality which are abhorrent. I don’t think you should write off an entire human for a whole lifetime, people change … I’ve changed a lot, my views or behaviour are not who I was at 15, 21, 27, 33 or now. Also when you think about it … do you actually even truly know those people who are close to you? So how can you pin all your hero worship on a complete stranger whose art you admire?
If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing today?
If I weren’t a musician I’d probably be a lesser more miserable person. Music taught me about emotions, love, being open minded. I’d probably be walking around kicking a can and being angry with life.
What advice do you have for our fans out there that want to create music?
Just go for it. Write down your thoughts and tap out a beat. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. As long as you’re enjoying it. In fact don’t worry about being good at all. I sang out of tune for nearly twenty years. It didn’t really matter. I think I wrote a hundred rubbish songs before I wrote a good song. Then once you get a hang of it your good songs just keep getting better. Like anything you just have to put the hours in.
