Wednesday, July 2, 2014 11:36am ET by  
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Only The Young banter with Pressparty about The Vamps' advice, cyberbullying and their success so far

Kent-based rising stars Only The Young recently sat down for a chat with Pressparty and opened up about being chosen to perform in front of 80,000 people at the Capital FM Summertime Ball, how to deal with bullying, and their impressive collective career to date. 

Vodafone recently launched its #First initiative program, which connects people with technology to empower them to do amazing things for the first time, and through a fan vote Only The Young were chosen to perform at the Summertime Ball in front of 80,000 gig goers. Vodafone also worked with the band to shoot exclusive footage at the event, which can be seen below. 

The band is comprised of Parisa Tarjomani, Charlie George, Mikey Bromley, and Betsy-Blue English, and they explained how their sound is a mixture of everything they love musically as individuals: "Well, individually we all enjoy different genres of music. We kind of have developed our own style with music. It’s quite acoustic based and we’ve taken a lot of influence from The Beatles and Supergrass. It’s like this new wave of music we’ve developed – it’s really cool." 

You were recently picked via a huge fan vote to take the stage at Capital FM's Summertime Ball alongside the likes of 5 Seconds Of Summer, Miley Cyrus and The Vamps. How was it? 

It was amazing. It was awesome. For us, it’s the highlight of our career so far. It’s the most exciting thing we’ve done and it was such a great day, we met loads of incredible acts. The food was amazing. They had everything – I had a chili hot dog with chili con carne, beef lasagna, macaroni cheese, and jelly and strawberries. Oh, and there was a fish dish of clams, mussels and oysters… yeah, it was good fun. Lots of good food… good food makes happy bands!

There was a bit where there was a catwalk on the stage in the audience and while we were walking under that we could hear everything going on. We were more nervous than we’ve ever been before and our hands were shaking. But as soon as we stepped onto the stage the nerves completely disappeared and turned into a massive adrenaline rush.

Did you meet any of the other acts backstage?

Yeah, we met 5 Seconds Of Summer, Rita Ora, Pharrell, Cheryl Cole, Miley, Jessie J… everyone! We’re really good friends with The Vamps and they spoke to us and told us to really enjoy it. Cheryl Cole said to enjoy it… Union J told us not to be nervous whatever happened. It was a nice environment, as everyone gets nervous no matter if it’s your first show or your hundredth show, but everyone was there to support each other.

 

 

 

Describe your sound and style

Sound-wise, there’s not really anything out there like us. We haven’t found anything to compare ourselves to yet. There are a lot of influences, but we all have our individual styles of country, pop-rock, R&B… We’re teenagers and listen to music all the time, but when we listened back to our stuff recently that we just recorded, we were jumping around the room and were really excited. 

Unique is what we’re going for. We want to be unique enough that there’s nothing else like us out there, but mainstream enough that people can still recognise it and that’s a big selling point for us. We’re all about being young and really fun, and having loads of energy and that’s what we want to come across.

We’re a pop band that’s mainstream, edgy, and acoustic… quite fun, but still appropriate for all ages. Our mums love our music, but so do our brothers and sisters!

Are you working on a debut album at the moment? 

We’re recording lots of things and writing lots of songs. This is a very important time for us. We know our sound, but it’s always changing and it’s vital for us to hit the nail on the head the first time around. We’re in the studio and in writing sessions a lot, and it’s really fun to be able to write our own material, as not a lot of bands like us are able to do that.

We’ve got a couple of serious songs about love, but we’ve got a song about going out and having a really good time – and there’s a song about the end of the world! It’s really fun. We like to get really engrossed in writing something and get our feelings out, but also we’ll write together or write with other people. The best kind of music comes across when it’s natural.

What is the best thing about touring? 

The banter. I enjoy being in hotels, I love a shower in a hotel – we get a bit hyperactive. We sleep in the car, then when we get to the hotel we’re so hyperactive we end up just mucking about. That’s what it’s about, enjoying it! 

We’re all like brothers and sisters - we’ll have the odd argument although we get on really well and always have a good laugh.

 

 

 

Have you had any memorable fan moments yet?  

Before we went onstage at Wembley, I got a text from my dad and there were fans waiting outside of our hotel at 4am in the morning. We got swarmed when we went outside. Coming off the stage at Wembley, we had to run past the crowd barrier and people were slapping us on the back and giving us high-fives. It was amazing. People have been supporting us from day one, they’re loyal and they come to all our different shows. It’s really enjoyable to have that interaction with them.

It was recently 'Stop Cyberbullying Week', do you have any advice for fans who might be experiencing negativity online?

We haven’t had any negative or nasty tweets about ourselves, but our fans and followers send us messages telling us they’ve had a bad day. We’re ambassadors for Beat Bullying and we like to show that on our social network pages. If people send us a message, we do our best to cheer them up and advise them.

Talk to someone – everything inside gets built up to something worse than it is. Sharing things is important. We just tell them smile, we love you lots and look forward to the good things. We’re teenagers ourselves – we go through bad days so we know how it is. Our fans are so young and we like to give back to them as much as we can. 

You can follow Only The Young on their official Twitter page at @otyofficial, and you can follow us at @Pressparty on Twitter Pressparty on Facebook.

Watch official coverage of Only The Young's first ever stadium show here: