Returning with his first music of 2024 – THOM SOUTHERN – is releasing a new single, “HEY WHAT’S HAPPENIN?” this Friday, 26th January. The enigmatic Irish songsmith has been busy in 2023 writing and producing new material in his Belfast home studio and now he is back with his explosive Indie Rock banger ‘HEY WHAT’S HAPPENIN?’ via his indie label ‘Mighty Good Leader’.
Right from the get-go, this new track has an immediate infectious bang of urgency; with absolutely no holding back; it delivers pulsating looped drums, audacious fuzzy guitars and ear-worm hook vocal chants that leave you feeling completely electric.
Speaking about the meaning behind ‘Hey What’s Happein?’, Thom Southern explains:
“For me, this song creates a raw picture of two people who have never met before, who see each other and feel an overwhelming instantaneous connection. I wanted to present the song in a quirky, loud way that felt humorous but at the same time applied in-your-face, fierce production to the music and kept the song short in length to capture that moment. Growing up in Belfast I’ve always loved people from here’s unique way of saying things like ‘What’s the craic?’ and ‘Hey what’s happenin? So putting a bit of Belfast inside the tune was a lot of fun, too.”
‘Hey What’s Happenin’?’ began its journey co-written with long-time friend and critically acclaimed musician Stevie Scullion (a.k.a Malojian) in his Antrim Town home studio. Along with a few other tracks the two have collaborated on together, ‘Hey What’s Happenin’?’ was, in fact, a happy accident.
Thom remembers of writing with Stevie:
“When I headed over to Stevie’s place, we didn’t plan on writing any music for anything in particular; it was more of a casual catch-up because I hadn’t seen him in a long time. It’s not surprising the first thing we did was pick up the guitars and start showing each other new tunes we’d been working on. We ended up tracking cool ideas for about five tracks that day, one of them was ‘Hey What’s Happenin?’. I showed Stevie a riff I wrote on the acoustic guitar that reminded me of Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish, and we pretty much acted like teenagers laughing for a couple of hours, and the song was done. It reminded me of being 13 years old, jamming with mates in my parent’s garage after seeing the movie School of Rock and being obsessed with Angus Young from ACDC. You’d say to your mate, “ok, I’ll solo first, and then you can”. ‘Hey What’s Happenin?’ is probably the first and last song I’ll produce that has a guitar solo in the first 25 seconds of the track.”
Aptly joining the dots between the likes of Dinosaur Jr’s sprawling rock and roll and Beck’s alt-rock pop expressionism, “HEY WHAT’S HAPPENIN?” is an uncut indie rock gem that will ensnare listeners in its animated and distorted energy.
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