As the leaves change and cuffing season begins, we all need more love songs in our lives, and Boys Like Girls is filling this void with their hopelessly romantic new single, “NEW LOVE.” Marking the band’s fourth single off their forthcoming record, SUNDAY AT FOXWOODS, “NEW LOVE” highlights Boys Like Girls’ unique brand of shimmering pop-rock with traces of country twang. It’s an endearing and bright-eyed picture of what it’s like to find your other half and the lengths you go to treasure it.
Frontman and creative visionary Martin Johnson explains the song’s origins in a statement and the experience working with Ryland Blackinton of Cobra Starship on the track. It all started when Johnson was in LA working on his solo project, The Night Game.
“In early 2019, I was living in Los Feliz, California, renting out a studio in Burbank from the guys in Chromeo,” he begins. “My room was across from Vaughn Oliver, who was busy creating the Power Tools 1 Sample Pack, and backed up right on Ryland Blackinton’s room. We knew each other well from days of touring together as early as 2006, supporting Cartel in different bands, and more recently, on the OP tour in 2009 with Cobra Starship and Boys Like Girls. We finally did some work together touring and writing under my moniker The Night Game.'”
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“Ryland seems to always have an eerie pulse on my musical taste,” Johnson continues. “It’s one of those relationships where you musically finish each other sentences. I remember one day, Brandon Paddock and I were in the studio working on a record when I heard a beat coming through the wall from Ryland’s room. It almost sounded like a Garth Brooks country shuffle from where I sat. I realized I was paying more attention to what I was hearing through the wall than what we were listening to out of the speakers. I stood up and stormed in there, Kramer-style, to see what he was cooking up. ‘You like that?,’ he asked.”
From there, “NEW LOVE” went from a creative spark to a fully arranged love song.
“The first verse came about five minutes later,” he adds. “What Ryland didn’t know is that I was two or three weeks deep into the relationship with my now-wife and had plenty to talk about. It had been a really really long time since I had written a love song, maybe five years or so, and frankly, almost every song written for The Night Game had an undertone of darkness, desperation, and resentment towards the music industry. I knew I was about to chase her across the country to Nashville, and these would be my final days in LA and likely the last song I would write on the West Coast for some time. A couple years later at Blackbird Studio in Nashville with the boys, Brandon Paddock and Dannen Rector, we started to assemble the big crashes and arrangement that you hear today.”
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Johnson also shares that fans will get to hear an alternate version of “NEW LOVE” on the Target version of SUNDAY AT FOXWOODS. The arrangement will feature many of the demo’s original components, including drums and keys.
For fans who want to hear songs off of the new record live, Boys Like Girls is currently on a headlining tour with support from some scene heavy-fitters, including Four Year Strong, State Champs, The Ready Set, and 3OH!3.
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Take a listen to the new single here, as well as a peak at the band’s upcoming tour dates. Grab your tickets before they’re gone!
Tour Dates:
- Sept. 23—Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution*
- Sept. 24—Lake Buena Vista, FL @ House of Blues Orlando*
- Sept. 26—Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater*
- Sept. 27—Houston, TX @ Bayou Music Center*
- Sept. 28—Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory*x
- Sept. 30—Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren^
- Oct. 1—Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium^+
- Oct. 2—Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues Las Vegas^+
- Oct. 4—San Diego, CA @ Soma^
- Oct. 6—San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic#
- Oct. 8—Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom#
- Oct. 10—Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom#
- Oct. 11—Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre#
- Oct. 13—Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot#
- Oct. 14—Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium#
- Oct. 16—Minneapolis, MN @ The Fillmore Minneapolis#
- Oct. 18—Madison, WI @ The Sylvee#
- Oct. 19—Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom#
- Oct. 21—Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues Cleveland#-
- Oct. 22—Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore Detroit#-
- Oct. 23—Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxan Theatre#
- Oct. 24—Toronto, ON @ History#$
- Oct. 26—Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall At Fenway#
- Oct. 27—New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom#
- Oct. 30—Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia#
- Oct. 31—Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring#
- Nov. 1—Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz#
*With Four Year Strong as support.
xWith Max Bemis as support.
^With 3OH!3 as support.
+With The Ready Set as support.
#With The Summer Set as support.
-With Every Avenue as support.
$With SayWeCanFly as support
