Toronto rock duo Goodnight Sunrise (Vanessa Vakharia and David Kochberg) have just released their latest single, “Jealous (Of My Friends)” – a catchy and all-too-relatable track about the envious feelings we all get. We caught up with the band to chat about the new music, their non-musical hobbies, and the advice they’d give to their younger selves.
From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Jealous (Of My Friends)”.
Goodnight Sunrise: “Jealous” is about a feeling literally everyone with a phone can relate to, our modern reality of going online and immediately feeling less than, feeling in competition, feeling guilt/shame for feeling jealous … of our own friends! This friend got a huge promotion, that friend’s on a beach vacation, everyone else is more attractive, successful, they all must be so much HAPPIER, right?! The irony is we all feel it about each other, so we decided to make fun of it all and wrote this song.
From The Strait: I remember a social post back when you were recording the new songs, and you said that this collection of tracks were the songs you wanted to put out. Not what you thought would make others happy, not songs specifically made to be mainstream… but the songs and sounds that spoke to you. (I’m paraphrasing, of course!) In what ways would you say the new songs are different from previous releases, and what was the general feeling to essentially say “fuck it, we’re doing things our way”?
Goodnight Sunrise: In some past releases we’ve chased certain sounds or styles, based on what was popular on the radio or bands we liked and wanted to emulate. We weren’t doing anything fake or inauthentic with those recordings, but with this batch of songs we tried hard not to filter what came out of us – and especially lyrically we’ve been a lot more honest and literal with what we’re writing about instead of playing with fancy metaphors and trying to write creatively. With this song Jealous, for example, we had long been feeling guilty for being jealous of our friends’ accomplishments anytime we open up Instagram or TikTok, so we decided to just write an honest song making fun of ourselves and a world that’s been kind of irreparably broken by social media.
From The Strait: What are some of your non-musical hobbies?
Goodnight Sunrise: Vanessa is big into witchy stuff like astrology, tarot, and crystals. Before starting each new song in the studio she’d actually pull a tarot card to guide the session, and we even had a cleansing new moon ceremony in the studio control room one day which actually helped clear some creative blocks! David is addicted to podcasts and listens to them on at least 1.5 speed because he’s always anxious about how long his queue is, which he is very well aware is not healthy in any way.
From The Strait: You’ve played a lot of shows over the years, and I’m sure you have some stories. What was the coolest (and/or weirdest) live show you’ve ever played?
Goodnight Sunrise: Coolest show remains when we opened up for Bon Jovi in an arena in Toronto, and met the man himself and he was just as kind and charming as one could hope. We’ve played a lot of weird ones over the years … first that comes to mind is when we played a small bar in Moncton NB on the eve of a lunar eclipse or something like that, and at the peak of when the moon was doing whatever it was doing, everyone (which was just a couple people and the bartender) left the bar to go look at it … so we stopped playing and joined everyone and the moon was indeed quite spooky and beautiful. Then we went back inside and finished our set.
From The Strait: What are some Canadian bands you’ve been listening to lately?
Goodnight Sunrise: Skye Wallace, The OBGMs, Altered By Mom, Cassie Noble, Shred Kelly
From The Strait: What would 2024 Goodnight Sunrise say to 2011 Goodnight Sunrise as they were just starting out?
Goodnight Sunrise: Buckle your emotional seatbelts for a wild ride from the highest highs to the lowest lows and back and forth until you don’t know what’s up or down anymore but you’ve had the adventures of many lifetimes that are well worth all the money you’ve blown on it (but maybe don’t blow so much money on it).
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Check out “Jealous (Of My Friends),” the new single from Goodnight Sunrise!
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 have just released their latest single, "Jealous (Of My Friends)" - a catchy and all-too-relatable track about the envious feelings we all get. We caught up with the band to chat about the new music, their non-musical hobbies, and the advice they'd give to their younger selves.){kind=link}