“Dig a little deeper than the top of the charts!” Bonnie urges. She does offer up some advice, though, for fans to stop buying into it… I’m a pussy! I just don’t want the backlash I’m such a scared little peanut ( laughs).” “Yeah, I really am tip-toeing around saying some annoying things,” she laughs when this is pointed out, “but I’m not gonna do it, I’m sorry. While she hastens to add that she’s not bitter in any way, you get a sense that Bonnie feels a little more strongly about people play acting 'rock star’ than she makes out… “Like, pop-punk was big 10 years ago and now it’s big again, and I feel like the only way that happens is by bigger artists doing it, but it just sucks that the smaller artists in the scene just never get to be there.” “I do think that music will always have trends,” she adds of the resurgence in general. His music’s a bit fart in a box, but if it shines a light on alternative music and rock, I’m here for it. “It is what it is, but I do think a lot of that Hollywood version of rock is very over-glamourised, and a bit fake. “I’m really not a fan of old mate on a musical level,” she says when quizzed about MGK.
Although the latter announced last week that he’s hanging up his Vans, and returning to whence he came: the rap scene.īonnie won’t be too sad about his departure, since when you’re a band making music for the right reasons, it can be irksome to look at the charts and see them clogged up with Hollywood nonsense. It’s a comparison that won’t be going away any time soon, since Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro are back in the studio – further strengthening the argument that we’re experiencing a pop-punk renaissance, buoyed by the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly who've dominated the charts this past year. It doesn’t bother me, you just gotta deal with it, but also ( puts on mock angry voice) fuck ’em!” "I try and make it make sense in my head from their perspective – people will always make a comparison because they want to relate it to something they already know and Paramore is usually the go to. “People hear boobs and a guitar and they’re just like, ‘Paramore! Wahhh!’” she laughs. A lazy comparison that YouTube users still pipe up with regularly. When we point out that we don’t, Bonnie seems pleased, because the band she’s referring to are Paramore. “You can read a comment that’s like, ‘Sounds like rah-rah-rah…’” Bonnie says, before adding: “You know exactly who I’m talking about.” The competitiveness, Bonnie says, comes from people comparing the Aussie pop-punks to other bands, which “can make you feel like you have to be better than X, Y or Z”. I hate ! It’s so stupidly competitive and I was just throwing a tantrum, basically. “I just felt like I couldn’t really trust anyone. “I didn’t know what to believe – people were telling me good things just because they want to make something from me? I was like, ‘I don’t even know if you’re being real right now because you make money off me…’” she says. “I was so sick of seeing all the fake crap,” she explains, “but then I also fell into the trap of believing it and thinking that’s what everyone wanted from me.”Īnd it wasn’t just fan opinions that troubled her, Bonnie wasn't even sure she could trust those of the band's inner circle. While perhaps not the healthiest pastime, it did blow the cobwebs out (figuratively speaking) and inspired two new songs: Van Gogh (because she felt like the only way to silence people’s opinions was to cut her ears off) and Dumb (because buying into people’s comments left her feeling just that). And the only distraction for the most part was her phone, on which she’d sit furiously scrolling through the band’s negative social media comments, often for hours at a time. I felt like someone had just shot me in the back.”Īcknowledging how dramatic that sounds, Bonnie says that’s genuinely how she felt. I didn’t want people to be like, ‘How are you?’ Then be like, ‘I’m shit!’ My whole life felt like it was taken away from me I couldn’t do the one thing I love to do. “I didn’t want anyone to look at me or talk to me because I didn’t know what to say. “I was just in a fucking hole, man,” she remembers. Usually sat in her underwear and holey socks, either on her bed, or with her feet up on the desk, holding her guitar, frustrated at her situation, anxious about the future and unable to write anything. Ask Bonnie how many hours a day she spent down there and she’ll say “almost all of them”.