POP EVIL frontman Leigh Kakaty says bands need to ditch the “douchey rock star” attitude if they want to succeed today.
During a recent conversation with SNSmix.com, Kakaty discussed how touring has changed during POP EVIL‘s 24-year career. The singer noted that concerts are no longer just about playing songs, but about the unique experience that some with it.
“It’s an exciting thing about where shows are now,” he explained. “It’s almost like everything’s gotten more like Las Vegas. The fans now, they demand entertainment differently. Let’s be real — money for people, it’s not as abundant as it once was for us, maybe, in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s tough. People are having hard times. Groceries are through the roof. So when they actually do spend money on coming to see their favorite band or bands live, they wanna be blown away. They don’t wanna see just a jam band up there playing in front of backdrops. They wanna see the art come to life. They wanna see that band, they wanna see the people they’re seeing on social media push the boundaries, take it to another level.”
Kakaty noted that high expectations for concerts are forcing bands to eliminate some of their wild offstage antics.
“It’s an exciting time to chase that perfection, to push your boundaries live to be better, to sound better, to be healthier,” he said. “So it’s an interesting time, but it’s exciting at the same time ’cause it’s making you have no choice but to take the excess fat that is all the distraction away from the music or being that douchey rockstar or whatever that is, whether you’re getting too drunk, wasted, but it’s putting the attention where it should be on.”
Kakaty further admitted that bands maintain a rivalry with each other, even when they enjoy a mutual respect.
“To survive in this business, you have to be growing constantly, constantly taking it and raising the bar, ’cause your competition or your buddy next to you or in that same tour or in that festival is doing that next thing before you,” he explained. “And that’s what makes those festivals so fun, ’cause you’re constantly watching bands that you might not see in any other situation, but you’re seeing in them and you’re, like, ‘Oh, my gosh. That’s a sweet idea. If we tried something like that, would that work?’ And then that leads to your own idea that comes out of that. So it’s so refreshing and so exciting to see all this youthfulness and this fun energy that’s coming, ’cause we’re all in that same boat. There’s only so many opportunities for us to really get the looks and to be seen by the audience, so when we do get those opportunities, we’re making the most [of them].”
POP EVIL‘s eighth album, “What Remains”, was released on March 21 via MNRK. Leigh told Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station about the effort: “We feel like it’s one of our favorite albums that we’ve released to date. A lot of personal healing for me, with just stuff I buried, I think, with my career and where we’ve been all these years. So finally listening to my soul, letting that healing come out on this record, it’s just special. And just kind of wanting to challenge people to be positive.
“When you think about the darkest time in someone’s life, you have a choice — you wanna stay depressed, you wanna stay in that dark place or you wanna walk forward and try to be better every day?” he continued. “So this album comes from a dark place. But certainly trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, trying to still be positive and inspire people to be better, starting with ourselves, is definitely [something] that rings prominent on this album. So [I’m] definitely excited about getting it out there and finally an opportunity for our fans to start making it their own. So I’m stoked about it.”
POP EVIL first rose to international prominence with debut album “Lipstick On The Mirror”, featuring RIAA-certified-gold single “100 In A 55”. After Kakaty famously tore up the band’s major label contract onstage, POP EVIL signed with MNRK Heavy (formerly eOne Music). 2011’s “War Of Angels” debuted in the Top 10 of the Rock Albums chart and produced three Top 10 singles.
The band’s 2013 album “Onyx” put them in the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 for the first time and boasted three consecutive No. 1 rock songs, two RIAA gold singles, and one platinum single “Torn To Pieces”. POP EVIL‘s next release, “Up”, was the No. 1 Independent Album in America and made it to No. 25 on the Billboard 200. It featured several Top 5 rock songs and a chart-topper with “Footsteps”, which also went gold.
POP EVIL‘s 2018 self-titled set included the No. 1 hit and certified-gold single “Waking Lions” and two other Top 10 hits. 2020’s “Versatile”, meanwhile, scored two No. 1 rock songs: “Breathe Again” and “Survivor”. In 2023, the band released its seventh studio album “Skeletons”, which spawned their eighth and ninth No. 1 singles: “Eye Of The Storm” and “Skeletons”.
Source: blabbermouth.net
