Q&A: joan Returns With Bubbly Coming-of-Age Anthem, “don’t wanna be your friend”

Q&AMusic

Oct 28

☆ By Gomi Zhou ☆

WHILE “DON’T WANNA BE YOUR FRIEND” IS THE FIRST SINGLE FOR THE BAND — since 2021, alt-pop duo joan has had quite the year. From embarking on national and international tours to becoming dads and continuing their musical journeys as the sweet beans of the indie-pop scene, the band has been quietly working on their debut album.

As the album’s lead single, “don’t wanna be your friend” maintains joan’s signature brand of bubbly, lighthearted yet authentic sound and songwriting. A cheeky love song and friendship breakup anthem all in one, whichever way you’d like to spin it, “don’t wanna be your friend” takes on yet another layer of meaning with its extraterrestrial-themed music video. Once again, joan somehow makes wallowing in your feelings a fun experience.

Instead of winding down for the rest of 2022, joan has a bunch of fun in store. Leading up to the next single off the album, the duo will be touring all over the world. Between rehearsals and new releases, Luna caught up with Steven Rutherford and Alan Benjamin Thomas. With goodies and treats stocked in their pockets, the boys’ excitement for the upcoming year is beyond apparent in their email responses.

Read below to learn more about what they’re excited about in the upcoming future.

LUNA: Hi! How are we doing? What’s the weather like where you’re at?

JOAN: Hi! We’re great! The weather for the last week or so has been absolutely amazing here in Little Rock — 50 in the morning and then 80 at night, but today we woke up and it was 30 degrees and chillyyyyyyy. First day to wear a jacket for me and not complaining :)

LUNA: It’s been almost a year since the last joan single — what have you guys been up to since then?

JOAN: We’ve been working on an ALBUM! Our workflow last year with hi / bye [and] constantly releasing singles and working towards the next one was so busy. Busy in a great way, but we just had zero time to work on anything else. So once we got that done and released, and after we toured hi and bye in March, we immediately put our heads down to work on our debut album. It was the right time.

LUNA: So, what about not wanting to keep a friendship going led to the need to start a band? Run me through that thought process. I have my guesses but maybe also tell me how you decided on the visual treatments for the music video to represent this feeling, i.e. being pulled left and right, holographic shadows?

JOAN: One of our best buds in the world is our creative director, and he thought of the idea for the music video. When he first heard “don’t wanna be your friend,” he thought the parallels between some of the lyrics were so close to some extraterrestrial language — we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So instead of doing more of a typical love story video, we decided to go with a story line of not wanting to be friends with the aliens and being forced to play the best rock show of all time for them. We had the amazing Sawyer Skipper direct it — he did the videos for “right back,” “not over you,” and “so done” — and he crushed. So happy with it.

LUNA: “Don’t wanna be your friend” is co-written with Jon Capeci. You guys have been actively collaborating with quite a few artists in the indie-pop scene. Anyone else you’ve been eager to work with?

JOAN: Yes it is! Jon is an absolute gem, and we get on with him so well when writing songs. We’ve written mostly everything ourselves up to this point and have really felt confident in what our “voice” was as a band. We have a really great thing going between just the two of us and wanted to make sure to take our time and figure out being good songwriters and producers on our own before letting anyone else into our little world. When we started gearing up to write for this record, we knew that we wanted to bring some of our favorite writers in to help make some of these songs extra special — people like Emily Falvey, Fleurie, Carrie K, and Austin Hull. There are of course writers that are all over the place that we would love to get in the room with, even just to learn from, but getting in the room with the writers we did for this record is exactly what we needed and wanted to do for this one.

LUNA: The joan “brand” just feels so cohesive, whether it is your sound or your cover arts and music videos. If you can, how would you describe your sound using a color? How do you see the visual aspects of joan play into the music itself?

JOAN: That is extremely sweet, thank you for saying that. We work extremely hard to make sure that every piece of our artistry makes sense together. It’s so important to us that fans and anyone being introduced to joan know exactly who we are when listening to us, watching us live, watching a video, or looking at our cover art, or whatever. Everything that we put out, we make, meaning we do all the work, but that’s what we sign up for, and we absolutely love doing it. It’s super precious to us, and we feel so thankful and lucky to get to do music for our jobs. For us, the music and the visuals are equally important and always will be. Cloudy’s color is blue, hi’s color I would say is a muted yellow, bye’s color is like a nice purple, the album's going to be green.

LUNA: You have quite the national and international festival tour coming up soon. Which stop are you most excited for? Favorite tour memory from the past?

JOAN: YES — so excited. At the beginning of November we’re playing several cities we’ve never been to before, which is always so fun. One of our first shows was with Coin in this city called Ames, Iowa — we’re going back there to play our own show and we’re really pumped about that one. We’re also playing Asia the last few weeks of November and it’s always such a lovely place to be, and the people are always lovely, it’s all just lovely. Too tough to name a favorite there, but we’re doing some of our first headline shows in several places there — Singapore, Tokyo, Jakarta — and we’re out of our minds excited for those.

LUNA: Will what comes next following “don’t wanna be your friend” have a similar sound to this single? Is this track the onset of a bigger project?

JOAN: We’ll release another song before the year is over, and it is very different from “don’t wanna be your friend” in a really good way. The next one is one our absolute favorites on the record and we’re so so so stoked to share it with everyone. This next year is going to be so fun.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫