THE FESTIVA INTERVIEW: Boys Like Girls
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Boys Like Girls lead guitarist Paul DiGiovanni talks fast on the phone.
And there’s good reason for that. Since Boys Like Girls busted onto the national music scene in 2006, his band has made all the right moves.
Boys Like Girls, which hails from Boston, has maintained personal connections with its earliest fans. They’ve launched infectious, guitar-driven pop rock radio hits. And they took plenty of time to craft their sophomore album Love Drunk, which debuted in September. The lead single of the same name recently surpassed “The Great Escape” from the debut album to become the group’s biggest hit.
In just three years, Boy Like Girls has become one of the biggest bands in radio rock, especially for fans ages 14 to 25. So DiGiovanni talks fast during phone interviews. He needs the time to continue pushing his band to the limit.
The group is touring right now, and they will stop at Mission’s Las Palmas Race Park for an Oct. 30 show with Cobra Starship. After that, touring continues through the fall.
BOYS LIKE GIRLS & COBRA STARSHIP
WITH: The Maine, Rocket to the Moon
WHEN: 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30
WHERE: Las Palmas Race Park, North Taylor Road, Mission
BUY TICKETS: www.ez-tixx.com
COST: $25 advance and $28 day of the show
Q: Has the tour already started?
DiGiovanni: Yeah, we’re a week or so deep right now.
Q: Where are you?
A: Blackfoot, Idaho. We’re in kind of the middle of nowhere. There’s no internet and bad phone service.
Q: How’s the tour going so far?
A: It’s awesome. Most of our tours have been pretty close to sold out or sold out. All the bands have been good, the fans have been great, everything’s been fun and it’s been busy. We’ve been having a great time.
Q: Cool. I wanted to ask about the song “Love Drunk.” I’m sure you hear a ton of questions about it. That to me seems like your biggest song yet. Has the success of that song impacted the band at all?
A: I think actually just recently that became a bigger single than “The Great Escape,” which is off our last record. It’s awesome. We were so nervous about making the second record, and we had a lot of success off the first one. Bands are always nervous about what’s going to happen after they do the first record, but we couldn’t be any happier with the success of that. That’s only the first single off this record. We have a bunch more planned that we’re excited about. It’s exciting, but at the same time we want to keep pushing it and making it bigger and better.
Q: At what point when you guys were working on “Love Drunk” did you know you had a huge hit on your hands?
A: It was one of the first songs that we heard and put together as a little scratch demo way in the beginning before we even went in the studio. That was one of the ones that just got us so stoked and amped about the entire record and just pumped about actually going into the studio. We were all just on the same page and just going crazy ready to roll with it. We were all in love with the song from the beginning, but you never know what it’s going to do on the radio on TV or anything like that.
Q: Was that written from personal experience of yours and everyone else in the band?
A: All the songs are written from Martin’s personal experience, but I mean obviously we’ve all felt that way about a girl in the past. I think it’s pretty relatable for everybody.
Q: One thing I’ve noticed about you guys, it seems like the Internet – file sharing, iTunes and blogging – has really helped you guys and blown you up. Why do you think it’s helped you so much?
A: Yeah man, it’s helped a ton. That’s kind of how we got our start. That’s just how stuff is now days. New bands get fans off the Internet from having a good song that kids like. It gets big online and that’s when the labels go out and find it. It’s a little different than it used to be. It’s pretty cool that now the kids choose what music is going to be big instead of the executives at labels telling people what music is going to be big. That’s just kind of how we got discovered in the beginning and we’ve always kept in touch with those fans from the beginning from years and years ago. We’ve always done as much as we could to stay in touch.
Q: With bands like you guys and Cobra Starship and a couple others, I feel like pop rock has become a lot more danceable in the last few years. Why do you think that is?
A: I think it’s just part of a trend that’s going on right now. A lot of bands are just doing that straight up, disco, four on the floor, no real instrument type thing. I think it’s just a trend. We have a little bit of influence in some of our songs like that, which is cool, but we’re still doing the real instruments. We’re still a rock band. Those trends are kind of scary. I don’t want to totally fall into that. Those trends come and go, and people forget about all those bands. We still always want to be a rock band.
Q: So you try to strike a balance? Like with “Love Drunk,” I’m sure the kids dance to that at the shows…
A: Yeah totally. It’s awesome because when we play that song and the chorus kicks in, every kid is jumping up and down, which is awesome. In the heart of it, there’s still group vocals and screams and guitar leads and stuff. It’s still a real rock song.
Q: You’ve had tons of success. What other goals does the band still have?
A: I think it’s just one of those things where once you get somewhere, you just want to get even further. You get even hungrier. If someone told me four years ago “Hey, you’re going to be in a band and in four years you’re going to have four big singles and two records and have a label and be on tour,” I would have been like “Wow,” and be a happy person. Now that we’re all here, we think there’s so much further to go. One of our goals is getting as many people to hear our stuff as possible, and to be around and relevant as long as we possibly can. And to just keep making music people like.
Zack Quaintance covers features and entertainment for Festiva. You can reach him at (956) 683-4447.
