Drive your punk rock desire home with Danny Wright and his newest creation, American Dream. It is an energetic, fulfilling track with great references to his favorite bands through the years and the music shows. Filled with passion, purpose and desire- American Dream asks you the reason for this rat race, with a blistering pop-punk track.
I had the pleasure to ask Danny about his music, dreams and style of music. Read the interesting dialogue I had with Danny Wright about American Dream and his future projects below:
About the genre and music
1) You’re making your voice heard with pop-punk, and American Dream is a testament to that. What are the themes you like to tackle?
Thank you, The different themes I like to tackle and have tackled in my music are, mental health, self-belief, pursuit of dreams, and more recently social stratification which ‘American Dream’ touches on. These are all topics I feel strongly about and feel I can speak about passionately through my music.
2) From Green Day to blink-182, your songs have a little bit of everything punk. What drew you to this genre?
I think it is just the high energy, I’m quite a restless person myself, I always need to be doing something and I feel punk music is exactly that. It’s always doing something and it’s turned up to 100! I resonate with it a lot and it’s a great outlet for that excess energy.
Danny is right. Polemic messages and social questions that challenge the norms of society are part of the story. Genre classification is just for us, al music means the same for the individual creating it.
American Dream and the message it carries
3) Papa Roach had a song with the same title, talking about the challenges of being a child of war. How is your track different?
My track American Dream is talking about the reality of achieving social mobility through any pursuit, in my case music, and the fact that the Millennial and Gen-Z generations are sold the philosophy of – work hard and grind and you will gain success based on your own merit. The reality of this is, the hard work in most cases isn’t the key to success. A lot of people are starting off in very privileged positions, with all the resources, comfort, time, and tools needed to help their pursuit while some other people are just trying to survive in life. The idea that anyone can achieve whatever they want no matter what is quite a romantic idea, and of course, an inspiring one!
I myself am a big believer in striving for what you want in life, but my song ‘American Dream’ just takes a quick look at another angle and touches on the raw truth of the sacrifices and consequences of pursuing a dream when you don’t have that comfortable starting point.
4) Do Danny Wright fans see an EP in the coming months or just singles?
I have got some plans for more releases, it has been a weird time the last year and a half because I released a bunch of songs that I never got to play live. So I was in this limbo of, should I write more? or should I wait? what do I do?!
In the end, the creative side won the internal dialogue and I have had a bit of a writing spree over the last few months, so more songs will be coming soon!
The change in the audio sphere-for artists and listeners
5) What are your opinions on the slow fadeaway of live instruments and preference of digitized audio?
Well, I’m in two minds about it, on one hand, I’m so attached to live instruments because I’m a guitar player myself, so I can’t bear to see it go. On the other hand, I think it’s great that music, in general, is evolving this way and I have also been hoping it would for a long time. As a solo ‘rock’ artist, in the past, it hasn’t been easy playing live. Initially, I started playing shows acoustically, but it wasn’t really representing my sound in the right way. I used to tell people at shows – ‘My music is a full production, but I can’t perform it on my own’.
It was annoying that they wouldn’t hear or see me for the first time the way I wanted, I also did the whole band thing, getting live musicians to play the parts and this is ultimately the best set up, but the logistics of organizing this as an independent solo artist is a whole other job in itself, especially when you’re well into adulthood!. It was different when I was younger, everyone is up for playing shows, everyone has more time, etc. Now people have their own lives and own bills to pay. Think about it, if I get booked for a last-minute show, then I need to organize four-five other musician’s diaries and logistics.
As an independent solo artist, it doesn’t really make sense, in my opinion.
Balancing it out as an artist
I have loads of experience of this from years of being in a band, organizing everyone’s availability was sometimes the hard part of being in a band. The music industry is extremely faced paced, things can change quickly, offers can come the day before. So to have five people be ready at the drop of a hat is quite a lot to ask.
So this is where I have really embraced digitized audio, I now have a set up which means I can present my music in the way its suppose to be heard when performing live. A lot more artists are doing this and I think it’s great and it’s the new and acceptable way for a lot of musicians. You have to remember, a lot of up-and-coming artists are sat in their bedrooms making music and a lot of them don’t have the privileges to pay musicians so they can perform that music with a full live setup. We have to be adaptable.
Danny is taking new steps towards making music more accessible, as a creator and even as a listener. He understands the plight of the modern listener, and as a performer he empathizes. As long as the message gets across, all Danny has to do is produce rocking tracks like American Dream.
A message for aspiring musicians
6) Any messages to aspiring pop-punk artists who want to take their music to the next level?
I’d say go for it and make some memories while doing it, I’d hate to be someone who had that niggling voice in the back of my head saying ‘Maybe if I just tried a bit more, I would have achieved more of what I wanted to do’.
I’d also say try not to have your ego attached to it so much, this is something I wish I knew when starting out. You’re not thinking that profoundly as a teen, well I wasn’t!
Sound advice from a young mind and artist who is out to change the music game, genre by genre. I wish Danny the best and hope to see him rock out at the world’s biggest music festivals. The way this music was supposed to be heard.
Listen to his blistering energetic track here:
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Discovered via http://musosoup.com
Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
