Kodaline: ‘Fans are always proposing at our shows’
Irish band Kodaline make the sort of soaring, radio-friendly rock that sets hearts a-flutter all over the world – so it’s no surprise they’ve ended up soundtracking hundreds of proposals.
What the band weren’t expecting, though, is how often people get engaged at their concerts.
“No matter where we go, somebody will get in touch with the venue to tell us that they either want to propose during a specific song, or they’d like to come up on stage to ask the question,” says drummer Vinny May Jr.
“It’s not every show, but it’s probably 80%.”
“The particular song they ask for is called The One,” adds singer Steve Garrigan, “which is a song I wrote for my friend as a wedding present.
“He’s a bit cheesed off because it’s not his song anymore.
“But it is crazy, yeah. We’ve played it all over the world. Someone got engaged at our show in the Philippines just two weeks ago.”
“We also get a lot of requests asking us to play at people’s weddings and it’s kind of like, ‘I don’t think we’re at that stage,'” adds Vinny.
The ritual came full circle three years ago when the band’s bassist, Jason Boland, asked his girlfriend to marry him in the middle of Ed Sheeran’s show in Dublin’s Croke Park.
Vinny got engaged around the same time – but The One was banned from his wedding reception.
“My parents were like, ‘Are you going to play?’ and I was like, ‘No, it’s a night off. We’re just going to enjoy ourselves.'”
“I really thought a drum kit was just going to appear,” Steve teases his bandmate. “And you’d launch into a huge drum solo and force everyone to watch you.”
The dual weddings coincided with a bit of downtime for Kodaline, who rose to fame with songs like High Hopes and All I Want in 2013.
“We needed time to wash the cars,” says Vinny. “Real life stuff.”
But the quartet returned last week with Follow Your Fire, an atypically upbeat pop song, produced by Top 40 hitmaker Steve Mac (Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, Pink’s What About Us).
The band dropped by the BBC to tell us about their “colourful” new sound, busking in America and becoming rock and roll cliches.
Courtesy : BBC
Photo : www.bbc.co.uk
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