Having a No. 1 single is supposed to be fun. But fun.'s Andrew Dost says he hasn't been able to enjoy the success of the band's monster smash "We Are Young," which has been No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart for five weeks.
"It's really surreal and really strange, but we don't see the fruits of a lot of it," says Dost, the indie-pop group's Traverse City-raised multi-instrumentalist, on the phone last month from Los Angeles.
"We're on tour, so our schedule is the same as it's always been. I'll get calls from my parents now that are like, 'Hey, we heard your song four times on the radio today!' That's my only real sense of what's happened."
Everywhere outside Dost's bubble, "We Are Young" has gone thermo-nuclear. The rousing song, which builds to an anthemic, hands-in-the-air chorus ("tonight, we are young/ so let's set the world on fire, make it burn brighter than the sun"), is the year's top-selling digital single, nearing the 3 million mark. It was featured on "Glee" in December, but didn't hit the stratosphere until it was used in a Super Bowl commercial touting the Chevy Sonic.
That's when things got really big.
Following the spot, the band released its second album "Some Nights," which debuted at No. 3 on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart; and "We Are Young" rose to No. 1 on the Hot 100, where last week it held Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" from the top spot (and thereby angered a nation of Beliebers).
Dost, who now lives in Royal Oak — the band's show Sunday at Saint Andrew's Hall will be his first visit home since before the Super Bowl — says he and his bandmates had no idea how big "We Are Young" would become.
"We've all been doing this for so long that the concept of a hit song wasn't something that we anticipated at all, or even wanted to try for," he says. "I guess we just thought we're going to do what we do, we're going to make songs that we like, and that's just how we do it. It's all just been a shock to us; we didn't prepare for it, we didn't expect it, and it didn't feel like we were trying for it when we were writing it."
Dost joined fun. after breaking off from Anathallo, the indie rock outfit he joined while attending Central Michigan University from 2000-05. Following his exit from the group, he moved back to his parents' house in Traverse City, where he holed up writing music and watching "Full House" reruns, unsure of his next move.
Hope arrived in the form of a phone call from Nate Reuss, with whom Dost had toured in the band the Format. Reuss, who had broken up with the Format, asked Dost to join his new band, alongside Jack Antonoff, formerly of New Jersey indie rockers Steel Train. Dost bought a one way ticket to New York, and fun. was born.
That was 2008. Following the group's 2009 debut "Aim and Ignite," which earned fun. a spot on the 2011 Coachella festival lineup (Dost also played the fest in 2007 with Anathallo), the band started working on "Some Nights" at a cabin in upstate New York in January 2011. The trio lived there, ate there, and even staved off a power outage there, huddling together to stay warm and write music.
"We Are Young" came at the end of that trip. When Reuss sang the hook to producer Jeff Bhasker (Beyoncé's "4," Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"), Bhasker agreed to produce "Some Nights," and helped lend the album its hip-hop overtones.
The group landed a cameo from Janelle Monae on the song and later toured with the singer — a highlight for Dost, a huge fan of the electrifying singer. Going forward, he says the band doesn't feel pressure to top the success of "We Are Young" — although follow-up "Some Nights" is already a Top 10 hit on Spotify — thanks to the full support of its record label, Fueled by Ramen.
"We are proud of the album we made, and so is our label," says Dost. "They know we're in this for the long haul and we're going to keep making albums. Maybe we'll have hit singles here or there, I don't have any idea but we are going to keep doing what we do. They are in full support of that, which takes away a lot of stress and is really nice."
Nice, yes. And also fun.
agraham@detnews.com
(313) 222-2284
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