fun. Perform Live Set, Discuss Band Name, Songwriting & Sound
fun. performed a concert at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, available to watch at Walmart Soundcheck. The four-song set from the trio includes ‘Why Am I The One’, ‘Carry On’, ‘We Are Young’, and ‘Barlights’. Plus, group members Nate Ruess, Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost sat down with Walmart Soundcheck to discuss fans, the importance of playing live, and why they almost called their band ‘Ice Cream’.
On the band name’s origin, Nate said:
We were at a comedy club with a friend, Mike Babliglia, and we sat around the table after his set and tried to come up with some names and someone said Ice Cream. It conjures up a good feeling so Jack said fun, and we were like, ‘Yeah that’s cool. Let’s keep this name’. A few months later another band called fun, a noise rock band, they contacted us and asked if we could do something to change it up, so we added the full stop to the end of it.
On songwriting, Nate said:
When we write songs it usually starts with, I’ll hear a song in my head then I’ll bring it to these guys and sing it and we’ll start to figure it out from there. This album, it’s interesting because it has this high level of production with a lot of the hip hop stuff with a lot more modern sounds. Something that the last album didn’t have as much of… There’s actually a very big live aspect to the album.
On the title track ‘Some Nights’, Nate said:
When I first was figuring out how ‘Some Nights’ was gonna go, we all were in Phoenix for a college show and we made our way into one of their rehearsal rooms. I remember Andrew started playing the Piano and I was singing and Jack was playing the drums. And it was just amazing because the song goes in so many different directions. We all just took that leap of faith for this album, where we all trusted one another with all those different things and there wasn’t any sort of questioning period about why this was happening, it was like we were all so excited to do it and it really started in that room. Some Nights is such a crazy song, and yet we were able to figure it out between the three of us, with a student piano and feet and hands.
On their sound, Jack said:
The sound of the band is whatever the sound of the band is, which sounds annoying but we’ve all been in lots of bands, and when you have less confidence, you want to be the bridge between Green Day and Fugazi or something. The meat and potatoes of the whole project, the set list and the lyrics is the one part that never gets a comparison, it’s just because it’s us. Bringing that concept back to the fans, back when we had a hundred people come to our show, up until having dozens of people come to the shows, I think what connects all of us is the amount of respect we have for our fans. our goal in record making and this band is to sort of create a place for everyone by having it come from the heart. We hope that’s what a lot of the kids outside get from it.
The live set and interview at see.walmart.com/rock4g/fun has since been removed. Check out additional pictures from their appearance after the cut.
