Interview: Getting to know Willing
Melbourne duo Willing have just released their new single, Hungry. We asked them to tell us about themselves:
We are... Willing. But then again everyone is, well a lot of people are. Either you are or you’re not really. The name of the band comes from that Rihanna song, Kiss It Better (we j’adore badgal). What are you willing to do? It’s a question we ask ourselves all the time. The annoying part is that Spotify presumes we are a part of the Coalition of the Willing. Our similar artists are all audiobooks by the worst of the neocons – George Bush et al. It’s really quite horrific.
But if you wanna know about the music, well we’re a non-stop, shop-til-you-drop, avant pop project, with Will on vocals and Charlie on guitar and production. We make slutty bangers to get the party started and devastating ballads to ruin it.
Hungry is… a horny jam about Will’s 2 vices: boys and food. The funny thing is, in it’s very first iteration, which was some time back, it was more of an emo party banger. Now it’s a downbeat trap-rock bop. We were going for relatable. Most people like food or sex or a combo of the two, so that’s what we’re serving.
It also comes with a dazzling music video, which we’re really quite proud of. Our directorial debut, we’re calling it a queercore fever dream! We were going for Paris Texas meets Wicked the Musical – but with a side of Robbie Williams Rock DJ era. Subscribe to our Youtube lol.
Home is… wherever mates are. There is no greater comfort than friendship. To invert the Drag Race paradigm: If you can’t love somebody else, how in the hell are you going to love yourself!
We’ve never… been in a hot air balloon. And that’s because we are the hot air balloon.
We spend too much time… sending each other stupid voice memos with hardly discernible hooks. Honestly this is how we practically wrote the whole album we’re working on. Our Insta message feed is really quite a mess, but we’re hoping one day to publish it as a coffee table book.
It might surprise people to learn that… we used to do high school musicals together – actually that’s not surprising at all.
In the future… What future? This planet’s fucked.
But we’re trying not to be cynical. Nothing incites inertia quite like cynicism. Instead we’re going for hope. We’re romantics. But romanticism is also deadly, because romantics are complicit. Complicit in structures that probably need to be torn down. Structures that are fundamentally mendacious. The reason everyone is so ‘post-truth’ these days is that lies are actually more authentic. You’ve got some stake in upholding them. And people like to have a stake in things. It allows you to navigate the torpor with a little more ease. That’s why we make music. Because you can’t lie in song. Well you probably can, but people see straight through it.
Ok sorry for the rant. We’ll keep it brief. In the future, all the twinky thots on TikTok will do cute little lip-syncs to our songs and we’ll know we’ve made it.
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Keep up to date with Willing on Facebook and stream the new single here.
Interview by Bobby Townsend.
