Australian singer Allday reflects on his career, future success, and being his own biggest enemy
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
It’s 10:30am on a Friday, the granola has just about settled, the birds outside are singing their morning call, and Australian-born singer/songwriter ALLDAY is on Zoom talking about the time he posted a video of an old man’s cock and balls on TIKTOK. In his defense, the artist, whose real name is Tom, explains from his house in Melbourne that he thought the angle had done well to hide the genitals. Plus it probably serves the bloke right for doing yoga naked in public during an age when literally everything is documented. Either way, as Allday later found out, the folks at TikTok didn’t take too kindly to this kind of NSFW content.
The musician is propped up on his sofa, nestled in his hoodie and battling a sinus infection, bathed in a purple hue lighting that satisfyingly reflects how his throat must be feeling. It’s a call that already feels different to others. Either because the pre-interview nerves have been diminished by a DM on Instagram just before, or because of his immediate almost palpable charm. But rather than a well-positioned laptop in front of pianos and a studio desk, or an obvious effort to try and show off some one-of-a-kind artwork, Allday looks straight down the camera, nothing to hide. In fact, it feels a bit like FaceTime-ing a mate.
“Essentially, I accidentally posted an old man’s dong onto an app that’s designed for children. So, it wasn’t my finest hour,” he admits. But the honest mistake wasn’t ever going to keep Allday away from the platform. His days of posting geriatric testicles might have been over, but his time creating light-hearted, amusing videos with his girlfriend were only just beginning.
A most recent creation of Allday’s is a video of them both sitting in the car during golden hour, sharing what ostensibly looks like a moment. “Why did the golfer wear two pairs of underpants,” his girlfriend asks. “In case he gets a hole in one,” Allday responds. “In case he gets diarrhea,” she says blankly.
Allday would probably be the first to admit that this isn’t comedy that will blow your socks off and take the couple touring arenas around the world. Then again, there’s definitely been worse comedians. But Allday doesn’t do TikTok for that. He’s doing it for himself. He says he does find joy in it, but more than anything it helps break down all of the pretences and guises that musicians hide behind these days.
“I think there are times when, as an artist, you can feel - I have felt - like a little bit oppressed by this feeling that I need to create more than just the music,” he says. “Part of me thinks sometimes why can’t the music just be enough? But I’ve actually found a lot of joy in it because I do it with my girlfriend, MEMPHIS, and we muck around making silly videos and we piss ourselves laughing when doing it. And by doing that, I’ve given up this veneer as the musician and all the mystery and whatever that comes with it - basically the cool side. I’ve kind of given that all up by making stupid videos and I’ve found that quite joyous.”
But even funny TikTok videos can’t escape the pressures that artists face in 2021. As the music industry becomes less and less the business of albums and artist development and more the business of streams, the need to perpetually declare an artist’s relevance in the ever-changing landscape must linger in the back of the mind like a group of increasingly confident drunk men at the back of a bus.
“I think definitely making the biggest TikTok record is the ultimate success that anyone can experience,” Allday says with a smirk. “Before I did this album - God, it makes me laugh - we were meeting with new labels and someone said, ‘would you be prepared to write a song specifically with TikTok in mind?’ I was like, Ma’am, I’m sorry but I’ve released three albums, you need to get a 19-year-old to do this.”
Shortly afterwards, Allday released two songs on TikTok, one a love letter to his mullet, and another about throwing away out of date penne pasta, the latter has been compared to a ballad by THE 1975. Whilst neither of these songs have had the same seismic impacts like that of OLIVIA RODRIGO’S Drivers License or Foushee’s Deep End, Allday has stuck to his guns as an artist who won’t give in to industry pressures for the sake of going viral. And now with the release of his fourth full length album, the artist is more than capable of doing things his way.
Drinking With My Smoking Friends, is unlike anything Allday has released before. Put simply, the record is rooted in escape, picking apart a deep-seated longing to break away, which feels all too appropriate after the past year. But pandemic or no pandemic, the album would sit proudly on any playlist built to bring on that main character moment, because the record is not just about growing up and growing out of what you know, it’s a needed reminder of how life should be treated; a series of necessary changes, shifts, ambitions and developments that just so happen to make up our lives. Wrapped up in sounds of Manchester in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and ultimate nostalgia bands like The Dandy Warhols and legends like the Rolling Stones, Allday’s first time working with a full band of fellow Australian “muso’s” creates an amalgamation of the hopeful euphoria found in pop and alternative tracks, the honeyed, modest vocals of a singer who doubts his voice, and the underlying somber nuances that accompany adult life.
“I feel there’s a lot of this album that I’m really truly proud of, more than I have been of other parts of my albums in the past... like a higher percentage. But I do feel like I can do better. I feel like I’m getting it now.”
Before Drinking With My Smoking Friends, Allday admits that a lot of his work has been a journey of testing the waters as an artist; a way of playing around with different styles and genres, moulding him into a musician that doesn’t always hark back to one sound with each of his releases. The word for this would be ‘multi-faceted’, but Allday assures me it is, in fact, stupidity.
“I feel like so many artists could do different things, but they’re smart enough to just protect their brand, and I’m the only one who’s stupid enough to destroy their brand by switching,” he explains. “That’s how I feel about it. I love seeing artists when you go onto their Spotify and all their songs sound the same. I’m like, this is brilliant, this is marketing. LANA DEL REY’S brilliant, but you go onto Lana Del Rey and you know what you get. You can click on Lana Del Rey, let it play for two hours and you know exactly what you’re gonna get. With my music, you can’t do that unfortunately.”
Allday may deem it unfortunate, but there’s no denying most people would find it exciting, not to mention an impressive display of musical and songwriting capabilities that are increasingly rare nowadays. Spanning across hip-hop, rap, alternative and pop, the artist’s discography is varied to say the least. His collaborative works with the likes of fellow Australians TROYE SIVAN and THE VERONICAS have also no doubt cemented his scope as an artist. But that’s what feels the most invigorating about Drinking With My Smoking Friends - the fact that the album seems like a moment in time for Allday; a glimpse of what the artist is still capable of, how he’s growing, where he’s going and how he is finally starting to put out the music that reflects who he is as a musician.
Allday wants his music to transport the listener. Especially with his new album, which grows out of a desire to get away, the artist hopes of detaching himself and his audiences from reality through tapping into the other “realm” that can be accessed through music. “To me, that’s what good songwriting is and that’s what connects me to film and all other art,” he explains. “Connecting to that truth, or that other realm - thing - that everyone knows is there but don’t know how to express. But we just feel it there and sometimes songs take you there.” And Drinking With My Smoking Friends does take you there. The first song on the album, Void, carries an innate sense of spirituality with it throughout; a connection to a world beyond. The song - written in light of the passing of one of Allday’s close friends - explores grief and the need to carry on, even at the most despondent of times. Another, Stolen Cars, plays with a dream of running away like Bonnie and Clyde, with such vigour and passion that the only ties in life are the ones you have to each other. Dissecting just two songs from the album, it’s obvious that the record does what Allday has set out to do. But speaking with the artist, it’s hard to ignore that he doesn’t see it all in the same way.
There’s a frustration in Allday’s voice when talking about his work and his career, as if he knows what he wants but he hasn’t quite reached it yet. Even though we’re discussing his fourth album, it’s like Allday is already looking onto the next project as his way of proving himself as a musician. As an artist, he doesn’t settle. Neither does he rest on the fruits of his labour. Instead, he talks about his work as if it was the next step towards regarding himself as a success in his own eyes. “I’d just like people to hear my songs and be like that guy’s a pretty good songwriter, that’s all I want. It’s not too much to ask. I feel like I’m this far away. Give me a couple of years and people will go, yeah, that boy, he’s pretty good.”
“Maybe it’s this intangible thing that I’ll never defeat. Maybe the problem is within me. Maybe this feeling that I’ll never be enough comes from my childhood,” he says, smiling. “Maybe it’s not the industry at all. Maybe I need to go see a therapist.” Although therapy would do most people some good, it seems the point Allday is trying to make is that there is in fact this point in time when he will sit back and realise that he and his music is a success. Maybe that will be when ‘The Penne Song’ goes viral, or when he’s booked to do a stand-up show at The Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd, or maybe it will be the moment he plays his fourth album live to a crowd who unanimously agree that his recent work is his best yet. Or, maybe, the moment that he is waiting for is happening as we speak.
But knowing that Allday will always be pushing for more and more, trying to gain as much creative ground as an artist as possible, constantly looking to better himself and his work and not stopping until he’s truly content is electrifying. As much as it hints at the cliche of the distressed artist that always struggles with their work, merged with the determination of a university student jacked up on modafinil, Allday’s ambition is admirable. What’s more, his modesty and authenticity as an artist is abundant, and they sit snugly in the gap where an inflated ego of an artist of Allday’s calibre would usually throb.
Part of me hopes that Allday isn’t quite yet at the moment that he’s been waiting for; the moment of ultimate success. Because if Drinking With My Smoking Friends is just another glimpse of the ever-growing artist, then when the day finally comes - when the moment does eventually arrive - it will be worth the wait.
Allday’s new album, Drinking With My Smoking Friends, is out now. Check it out here.