Words and Interview by Rob Lucchesi
Welcome back to Small Talks! It’s not every day we have repeat offenders- I mean, returning guests! 17 Letters is back with their latest single, “the best year of our lives.” The duo’s new track pulls from all corners of the pop spectrum, little rock, little country, little hip, all under their clean lyricism and professional production. “the best years of our lives” dives down with that put fall feeling you get in your stomach when you’re thinking about the future, that funny little voice in the back of your head telling you it may not work out the way you think, and to enjoy all the fun you got in your youth while you can.
Last we spoke with 17 Letters, made up of partners Jack Danger and Cye, they had just released their single “starlight.” These guys are nothing if not adventurous, and every new song gets closer and closer to a completely new genre. Since “starlight,” they’ve released another single, “die young,” a hyperpop ballad far outside their usual sound, but a welcome change and a new breath into the developing 17 Letters story.
Ahead of the release of their new single, I had a chance to have a quick chat with the two and talk about the track, artistic authenticity, and all things music.
Welcome in guys, welcome to the small talks! We've got 17 letters with us, you guys mind going ahead and introducing yourselves real quick for us?
Cye: My name’s Cye
Jack Danger: I’m Jack- well that’s our stage names, I should probably change the name on here, but whatever, it’s my school email.
Well, let's just jump right into it, talk to me about “the best years of our lives”, how did it come about, what inspired the new single, anything fun and zany happen while you were recording it- run me through the process!
JD: So basically, this winter break we heard this beat on this producer's instagram and we tried to find it- like we scraped his youtube for a bit, we probably went through like a hundred youtube videos. We finally found it, and we were just so pumped to record on it. Maybe you can explain the theme a little bit?
Cye: Yeah, I think we were kind of thinking about youth and kind of this perception of what are supposed to be your best years, and I guess you could say the myth around that, and the idea that you have a point where you peak and it kinda goes down from there. And if you don't make use of that peak, then you’re just screwed, yknow? I think that was kind of the basis for the idea.
You do hear a lot of people making jokes about “I peaked in high school,” “I peaked after blankety-blank happened,” but I don’t think you guys have reached that peak yet. I mean you’re only, what, two tapes in, seven brand new singles, and there’s plenty of room to grow.
Cye: Hopefully!
JD: So we started out in the winter, and our song creation process takes months and months, and we slowly fleshed out the rest of the song throughout the semester, and I think we finally finished it, like, a few weeks ago? And throughout the course of making the song, I think the theme also changed too. I just graduated undergrad, so it's also nostalgic, yknow, leaving something I’ve known for a good chunk of my life behind, and that kind of sad, yknow…
Cye: Melancholy.
JD: Melancholy, yeah, feeling that kind of comes with it, and we tried to channel that a little bit into song as well.
It’s actually funny you mention that, talk to me about the line in that second verse- “Lookin' back as I drive down 95/The trees fly by as the sunset dies/Feels like I'm losin' my mind/When I leave everything that I know behind”- talk to me a little bit more about that line.
JD: Yeah, actually I think that’s the first line we wrote on that song.
Cye: Yeah, I think so.
JD: We wanted to paint an image of us leaving our life behind, which turned out to be quite accurate. Cye lives in Florida, so we actually do drive down I-95 every time I go down to see him.
Just can’t get away from it!
Cye: Yeah, I think the other thing with that is that it kind of encapsulates that leaving for college thing, because me, I left on I-95 to go up to North Carolina, and it was like leaving everything that I’ve known, and starting completely fresh, so it’s nostalgia with nerves all mixed in- it’s exciting, but it’s a mixture of emotions, yknow?
Oh absolutely, and please let the record reflect that that will be the only time that anyone ever refers to I-95 in North Carolina as ‘exciting’! I’m from Charlotte, I grew up running all over that damn interstate. It's funny though, you don’t hear people describe I-95, or NC in general, in this pop, hip-hop, hip-pop scene. Usually when you talk about the genres you guys explore, you typically think Cali, New York, out West, big cities on the East Coast- how have your experiences in the South changed or helped develop your approach to writing and producing music?
Cye: For me, this is the only area I’ve ever been in. I’ve actually never gone further north than Washington, D.C., never further west than New Orleans. My whole life has basically been concentrated in this area, and I think it definitely shapes the way you look at things. It definitely gives you a unique perspective on the culture inside, but also the culture outside, and gives you that ‘outside look’ that I think a lot of people won’t get. I guess that’s a benefit of being not as traveled as some people.
JD: I’ve been around. I’ve lived in Wisconsin, which is probably even less glamorous than North Carolina. I lived in California for a while, but with my experience out in Cali, yknow, the glamor of the big city, it’s really not all that. A lot of songs I know really emphasize and talk about that, but from my experience, it’s not that noteworthy, I guess.
Yeah, you get out there and you’ve got this big Disney Channel view of moving out there to these big places. It’s that Hallmark effect, you get out there and it’s not what you thought it was going to be. In that same vein, Cye, I want to ask you about your verse- “Yeah, I just wanna make a difference no matter what it is/But I can't get past myself, I can't get past myself”- run me through that line a little bit and let me know what was going through your heads when you put that together.
Cye: That whole verse was a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing, it’s one of those where you just start writing and it all just happens, and it touches on self doubt. I do think one of the big goals I have personally is I want to make some sort of positive impact with what I do, whether it's through music or whether it’s what I do with my profession when I finish school, or something, I want to do something that helps people. But when you start doubting yourself, you really start to wonder if it's possible to help people, if you can do enough on your own to do that. I think that line is kind of grappling with that, or coming to terms with it, and if you doubt yourself, how can you ever help people, yknow?
Absolutely! I think we all want to do something a little bit more to help the culture, help the people around us with everything we do. Just chipping away at whatever we can do makes more difference than I think we care to admit.
Cye: Definitely.
So! Like we talked about earlier, this is the seventh single since you announced the EP a little bit ago- what’s going on? Do we have the EP coming, is this going to be like a Fall Tape 2, or do we have a completely new EP in our back pockets?
JD: This will be our debut album actually, we're going to try to release a 17-song album by the end of this year. I think we have two more singles and then we’re rolling out the rest of the album, which I think will be, like, eight songs? Well, eight songs in addition to the other nine songs we have out. But yeah, this’ll be our first full-length album. Our EP’s before it only had six [songs], so we wanted to distinguish it a little bit, because I feel like our sound especially, and our songwriting process, and I think our mentality has changed since our EP days, so we wanted it to reflect that. But hopefully, it’ll be out by the end of the year.
Can you give us a lil’ sneak peek? What’s the title, is there album art, can we expect anything on the Instagram?
JD: Uh, yeah, so we’re actually not very good at social media, but we will definitely try to start posting more on the Instagram. The title right now, tentative title, is Wasted Youth, it’s a recurring theme on a lot of our songs on this album, especially in “the best years” as well. It was also the title of the song that kicked off this whole era of our music.
Cye: In terms of what's coming up for the rest of the album, one of the singles leans in a pop-punk direction I'd say, the other is sort of in a hyper-pop vein.
JD: Like an acoustic hyper-pop track.
Cye: The rest of the non-singles fall either in the more hyper-pop or acoustic vein. Like acoustic acoustic.
Something more in that “december” acoustic vein, or something we haven’t seen just yet?
Cye: I think it’s in that “december” vein, but a little bit more… there's, I think, three or four acoustic songs?
JD: At least three.
Cye: But they all have a different take on an acoustic sound, while “december” had that reverb, washed-out sound, I think the others are a little more forward in where the inspiration’s coming in.
And speaking of inspirations, you guys pull from a lot of different directions. It feels like towards the beginning there was a lot more pop-punk influence, I think there was a little bit of country-pop in there, but I think that just comes with the territory you guys are in- it’s impossible not to get that little bit of twang, that rhythm and blues- but the last thing you guys put out in July, “die young”, was very hyperpop, which was a big step away from “starlight” last we spoke. What other influences are we looking at, what have you been listening to that helped put together the rest of the singles and the non-singles as well?
JD: I think when we first started making Wasted Youth we were looking at a lot of pop punk and hyperpop, specifically, and you can kind of hear it in “WASTED YOUTH”, because that’s basically a pop-punk, hyperloop fusion track. The rest of our songs, “writing on the wall”- we used to make a lot of hip hop and rap songs so that was kind of in that style. I feel like for us, we both have our own separate influences, but we both listen to a lot of pop punk, hyperpop, emorap, so I think those three genres kind of shape our music.
Cye: Yeah, it’s interesting, we have really different music tastes actually. Jack leans a little more towards Chelsea Cutler type pop, Gracie Abrams, stuff like that, while I’ve always been a little more hip hop focused, and hyperpop has that kind of hip hop blend in it, and I’ve been really into that lately. I think a lot of our songs are blending those two together, our musical influences, and so it comes out with something unique becuase we’re coming at it from two different angles.
JD: We do have kind of a basic three, we listen to a lot of Juice WRLD, Charlie XCX, glaive, ericdoa, those kinds of hyperpop stuff.
Cye: The more acoustic tracks as well, Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, those are artists that I really like, and they play a big part in tracks like that.
I was gonna say, you strike me as a Father John Misty kind of guy!
Cye: Oh, definitely.
Let's talk a little bit about social media, because you guys are mysterious as all get out! I can’t find a damn thing about you guys on the internet, it’s incredible. You said you’re not too great at it, but what goes into everything you do? What’s with the masks, is it part of a greater 17 Letters narrative, is it still for safety? What can you tell us?
JD: Well, when we first started off, I feel like the songs we were making weren’t exactly indicative of who we are, and the masks, and also the pseudonyms, were a part of not letting people we know find out who we are.
Cye: It was like a distancing thing, like a way to put on a new persona.
No pun intended.
Cye, JD: Yes.
JD: We actually started that before COVID, I think.
Cye: Yeah, we did. The COVID kind of almost made it blend in, so it didn’t even seem like a thing.
You guys were trendsetters, ahead of the curve!
JD: Exactly.
Cye: I think for me though, I’ve always wanted to be kind of low-key and under the radar, keeping my personal identity separate from this, so the masks were a big part of that for me. Because they way the algorithms work on social media, if one person I know that I clue in on this stuff follows me, then immediately everyone I know, acquaintances, will start getting recommended, and that’s way more people than I want knowing.
Ugh, I hate that! That stupid little bar in the middle, “Woot, woot, here’s 37 accounts for you to follow that you’ve never heard of!”
Cye: Yeah! And it makes it so much more difficult, because the music that we make, I think especially now, we really aim to speak personally and authentically, and the topics we go into depth on, it’s tough if you know you have someone who’s an acquaintance from back home who might stumble on it. It’s a lot easier when you know you can keep it in a way that’s for you and the people you want to see it, and I think that was always the thought with the masks.
JD: Yeah, especially nowadays, because we talk a lot about self worth, and insecurities, and all that. It really feels like I’m revealing a lot, and I don't think I want everyone to see it. And because the masks are a part of our identity, it’s hard for us to emulate. Like on TikTok, you can find all sorts of pictures of artists, and we could try to do that, but I think it would hamper our social media presence a little bit, because we don’t know what it is that we should be posting, all our pictures have masks in them.
Cye: It’s hard to follow trends when you can only see this much of someone's face, because so many trends are based around lip-synching or some sort of expression, something where it’s important to convey an emotion while you do it. So I think we have been kind of mysterious on the internet, and it’s been kind of intentional to a point. We’re almost mysterious because we kind of have to be in a way, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
JD: Also, at least for me, I’ve started to embrace it a little more. Now my writing credits are under my real name, which is something most people know me by, so I feel like I’m more ready now to embrace what my artistry is.
Yeah, authenticity is a huge conversation now in the art scene in every corner, whether it’s music, sculpting, yada yada yada, staying true to yourself is the most important thing you can do as an artist, and it’s very hard to do these days, just like you talked about, with all the trends going around and the TikTok generation that we’re stuck in. What are some things you’ve done to put yourselves out there as your truer self in the sense of being an artist?
Cye: I think the big thing that we’ve really done is we’ve really changed our writing process a significant amount. When we started, we were really kind of writing what we thought people would want to hear, or what we thought would do well or catch people’s eye. Almost like an imitation of what was popular, or what we thought was popular. As time’s gone on, we’ve been trying to quiet that noise and just go with what we like, and what we think, and what we think is authentic to us, and writing from our own experience rather than an experience that we think might resonate with people that we haven’t experienced. We’re trying to write from our own lives, and I think that’s been a big thing in manufacturing more authenticity in our music.
That’s an interesting word you used there, ‘manufacturing’- not that you’re trying to sell a truer version of yourselves, but do you think it started out as more of a ‘this is what I think sounds like the truest version of me’ and it’s more morphed into more of a ‘this is exactly how I’d write this’? Because you spoke earlier about writing this song as a “stream of consciousness.”
Cye: I think as you go you definitely learn to tap into more pieces of yourself and what you’re thinking and how to articulate that. I think that’s always the key, articulating things in a way that is both interesting and also still authentic. As you continue to do it, you come up with better ways to express yourself, and I think that has become clearer overtime as we’ve been working. It’s become easier to do as well, it’s been something that has been coming more naturally for both of us.
JD: I don’t think we ever tried to intentionally make a switch. It was more of a gradual switch, pretty much independently, I think, we both just started writing more from our own experiences and not from like a manufactured experience. I think that process actually happened pretty naturally, we’ve been doing music for a while, and it’s like a new direction hits us personally.
Amazing! Now I know we got very personal this conversation, but I want to end it on a heavier note. If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask the heaviest question we can muster up: what are you guys listening to, what’s on the top of the playlist, what’s in heavy rotation?
Cye: I’ve been listening to a lot of The 1975, they’ve got a new album coming out that I’m very hopeful for. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a very long time. I’ve been listening to a lot fo glaive, ericadoa, going back through cypress grove, that’s like one of my favorite albums. Phoebe Bridgers, going through Punisher, “Sidelines,” stuff like that.
JD: I listen to a lot of Chelsea Cutler. There’s a show around two weeks from now that I want him to come to but I don’t think he’ll be for it. I’ve also recently been listening to a lot of Loote again. Avril Lavigne also.
New Avril Lavigne or old Avril Lavigne?
JD: Actually both. I’ve been listening to her new album and a lot of her old albums, even some of her country pop albums too.
It wasn’t bad! I’ll give it to her, she can twang it out.
JD: Yeah. I’ve also been listening to some glaive, I also love cypress grove. ericdoa as well, but I’m only really into a few of his songs. Been listening to a lot of Juice WRLD again recently. The Chainsmokers as well.
It’s that time of year, getting into sad boy fall, man! Well, thank you so much guys, that’s everything I got for you today. Where can we find you, and what’s next after the album?
Cye: Well, we may not be prolific posters, but you can find us on Instagram, it should be @17.letters. We are releasing the album at the end of the year, like we said. The new single should be coming October 21st.
JD: Yah, and then probably a month in between for the next singles, and then another month, and then album.
Cye: So stay tuned for that, anything else that we’re doing?
JD: We actually have a huge backlog of songs, and we’re going to try and release our second album sometime next year. I think it’s going to have less of a pop punk influence honestly.
Cye: More electronic.
JD: Yeah, yeah, hyperpop, electronic, acoustic. But that’s a long ways away, got to focus on the current album. We actually also make pop punk beats, like new wave pop punk beats, and they’re on YouTube. It’s under 17 Letters.
17 Letters on everything. Thank you so much for coming on, guys, really appreciate having you, as always, great, great time talking to you!
JD: Thanks for having us.
Cye: Thanks, man.
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