The Monitor
Five best friends are too many best friends. Right?
Who could possibly have so many best friends? If I had five best friends, which I don’t, I could organize a full-court basketball team with an alternate player. I could construct a human pyramid with a left over guy acting as spotter. I could organize an improv comedy group.
And besides, at the end of the day one friend is better than the rest. Doesn’t that make him my lone best friend?
These questions have bugged me since I first heard Cobra Starship’s infectious pop-dance track “Good Girls Gone Bad.” The song hit heavy radio rotation in August, eventually going platinum. Leighton Meester, who plays Blair Waldorf on the TV show Gossip Girl, guest stars on the lead single from the New York City-based band’s new album Hot Mess.
“I was hanging in the corner with my five best friends,” she sings. “I heard that you were trouble, but I couldn’t resist.”
This song has catapulted the group to mainstream stardom, landing them on a national tour with Boys Like Girls. That tour stops Oct. 30 at Mission’s Las Palmas Race Park. To preview the show, the band’s bass player Alex Suarez granted me a phone interview. Finally, a chance for answers….
Q: Here in McAllen, everyone’s really excited to see you guys. There’s a lot of buzz about the show. What can we expect to see?
A: The whole tour has been really fun. In our show we just try to hit it really hard. It’s an awesome live rock show that’s synth driven. You can expect a lot of sassitude from Gabe Saporta.
Q: There’s one specific lyric from “Good Girls Go Bad” that I want to ask about. It’s the “hanging in the corner with my five best friends.” Is that an unrealistic amount of best friends to have?
A: Well, when you’re a girl you have all your best friends. That lyric is from the perspective of the girl’s part. You know usually when girls go out in groups like that, it’s with five or six girls and they’re all in the pack as best friends and they’re all BFFs.
Q: Ok good, because I don’t have anywhere close to that many best friends…
A: I don’t either, but I guess some people do. I guess if you’re really fortunate you can have five best friends, but then somebody is still going to come out on top at the end of the day.
Q: I also wanted to ask about the collaboration in that song with Leighton. How did that come about?
A: Basically we were writing our third album Hot Mess. We took the keys to the studio so we’d have it all to ourselves, and the producer called us up one day and said ‘hey guys, we’re really sorry but we’re going to have to interrupt you. It’s really wrong or whatever, but we have an opportunity to do a song with one of the Gossip Girls. She wants to start a music career.’
And Gabe was like ‘No way! Is it Blair Waldorf?’ He’s a huge Gossip Girls fan. He said ‘Hey, it’s totally cool, but she has to sing on one of our songs and we’ll say it’s ok.’ Sure enough, our people talked to her people and we figured it all out. The song “Good Girls Go Bad” was going to get canned and this turned it around.
Q: Why was it going to get canned?
A: We had the song, and we thought it was good but not great. It didn’t totally sound like us yet. We were trying to figure out how we could Cobrify it more. It sounded like somebody else’s song. So then we got Kevin Rudolf to help us with it and Kara DioGuardi, and then we got Leighton to sing on it and it just kind of came together. We were able to put our own little seasonings on there and give it our own vibe, but at first it just wasn’t there.
Q: Did you guys know when you heard the first cut that it would be a hit? It went platinum, didn’t it?
A: Yeah, it went platinum. After we got Leighton and everybody on it yes. Right off the bat, definitely not, which is why we were going to can it. Once it all came together, we knew this was awesome. We weren’t expecting it to take off, because we’ve never really had a hit song before that was as big as Good Girls.
Q: Do you think this song has blown up your audience and brought in a lot of new fans?
A: Absolutely. We had never really been on the radio before, and there are so many people that only really learn about music from listening to the radio at work and in their cars. Living in New York, we don’t get to experience a lot of that because we don’t have cars. We take the train everywhere and everyone listens to their iPods. We learn about music through the Internet. As far as the country y in general, there’s a good amount of people that just hear songs on the radio and that’s where they get all their knowledge from. That’s totally ok, and we’re lucky to have that exposure and gain these people as fans.
Q: It seems to me like a lot of new radio hits are more danceable than they’ve ever been before. Do you think kids and fans want to dance more?
A: I totally think so. One of my favorite quotes from Donald Trump is “music is the most popular thing in the world.” I feel the fun and pleasure that people get out of music generates dancing, which is something people do all over the world as well. People just want to move to music, especially with the state of our country and the rest of the world right now. People need that kind of outlet. It gets their mind off the rest of the problems people are having.
Q: I really like your other band This is Ivy League. Are you going to keep doing that?
A: Yeah we are actually. It’s unfortunate because we so rarely get to play because we’re so busy with Cobra. But we are. We’re working on another album right now. We don’t really have a record label or anything. We just want it to be really good when we’re done with it. We’re not rushing it by any means. We start with the music and then do the melody and lyrics after it. Right now we have more than enough for an album as far as music goes. We’re just going to start going through it, picking our favorites and then recording the whole thing. Hopefully it won’t be too long. I think we have some time off in January.
Q: Have you filmed a video for the song “Hot Mess” yet?
A: We already filmed it. We’ve had the most insane schedule. We just got back from a week and a half long European press run. The day after we got back from France, we had a video shoot from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. We should have a cut of it soon.
Q: Can you talk about it ahead of time?
A: I don’t know if I can give away the concept yet, but I will tell you that it involves us in these janitorial, Ghost Buster-esque costumes. There are a lot of hot messes in the video.
Q: What exactly is a hot mess?
A: Here’s a really good example. We were touring in Japan over the summer. Being severely jet lagged when we got there, I would wake up at 4 in the morning every day. Ryland and I, who were sharing a room, went out to see if we could find some coffee. So we’re walking around in downtown Tokyo and all the bars are still raging at 6 a.m. on a Saturday. They rage so hard on a Friday night. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. We were just trying to find coffee and there were wasted people everywhere, and we’re in Japan so it’s especially insane.
We see this girl, and she’s an attractive girl. She definitely got decked out to go out that night. There she is, kind of half passed out on the sidewalk, a pile of puke next to her and the top button on her pants undone to let her gut hang out. She was probably really hot at the beginning of the night, but now she’s just totally trashed and done. That’s kind of like a hot mess. It was 6 a.m., totally gone, on the street. From her best to her worst all in one night.
