Spotlight: Waterparks - Pop Punk's Rebel Child Signed To Fueled By Ramen and Released Newest Single
WITH A PLAQUE OF PARAMORE’S LAST FULL-LENGTH AFTER LAUGHTER, and for some reason, Grateful Dead’s From The Mars Hotel, and three Fueled By Ramen logo plaques hung on the wall behind him, Awsten Knight is seen sitting on a sleek black couch with bright red hair that matches with his red socks. So this is it, in true Waterparks fashion, with a not-so-official announcement photo across the band’s social media at 12 pm Pacific Standard Time on May 10th, 2022, at last–the most anticipated pop punk’s rebel child, Awsten Knight and his band Waterparks find their new home at the beloved and fundamental pop-punk label Fueled By Ramen.
“I just felt like it was supposed to happen,” Knight explains the choice of red, “The songs all had a very red energy. I have pretty strong synesthesia, so when I'm choosing color palettes for things, it's kind of based on that. And I started putting red in the album arts, which I always like making different album arts and putting them on demos just to live with visuals and see how they feel over time. Everything was just always read so I felt like it made sense.”
As of “FUNERAL GREY,” the name for their newest single, it’s a lot less intentional. “I was walking around a neighborhood and telling my friend,” says Knight, “I was like, ‘Dude, this place is so fucking creepy.’ It looks so scary, the street looks very windy… It looks like something out of ‘The Ring.’ I was just making fun of it–it's a very nice neighborhood by the way–I was like, ‘It's so haunted-looking. If this is an Instagram filter, this would just be funeral gray.’ And he was like, you should make a song called that. It sounds like a bad song title but then it wound up being really good. So here we are.”
It can be the subject matter of “FUNERAL GREY,” how Awsten Knight is once again singing about a one-time appearance of a mysterious stranger that lingers on his mind; or how the track’s bright acoustic guitar strumming somewhat resembles the repeating piano chords on “Telephone–” Regardless, something draws an unintentional connection between this new single with a 3-year-old predecessor, which recently finds renewed love from fans of the show, “Heartstopper,” through its placement on the show.
“See, a lot of people were saying that [“FUNERAL GREY” and “Telephone” sounding similar to each other]!” Knight reacts, “I haven’t considered ‘Telephone’ in a while because it hasn’t been brought up–until recently with ‘Heartstopper’ and everything. But they kind of go at the same time rhythmically. I think that was easier for people to draw the comparisons. I guess it was a similar energy too…” He pauses in thoughts briefly, “Interesting. I don't think I would have connected the dots myself.”
It makes sense that Awsten Knight out of everyone can not pinpoint the connection, as the very thing that connects the two tracks, perhaps all of Waterparks’ discography, is the way he thinks and delivers his ideas. For him, “FUNERAL GREY” and album 5 are both sonic new territories for Waterparks. While he thinks the single’s bright energy and slightly sarcastic, angsty intention can resemble other tracks from Fandom, and given that Fandom had a lot more synth than the last album, Greatest Hits, he hints that album 5 would take the same twist-and-turn form as the band’s last project.
“I was doing one of those Q&A things on Instagram and someone asked if ‘FUNERAL GREY’ was representative of the album, I didn't know if I wanted to answer it or not,” says Knight, “Because truthfully, yes in a way, but with all of our releases I try to have everything with different feels. If we already did a sound, you just pick the best one and then do something else, because I like to try and keep everything very genre fluid. So not to give a bullshit answer but, yes and no.”
When asked whether his bandmates, Geoff Wigington and Otto Wood, had ever strongly disagreed with any of his artistic approach, Knight answers: “At the end of the day, everything's gonna be fucking fine. They are definitely just great at what they do. And it's always fun to have cool and new perspectives. Like if I'm working on a demo, Otto would be like, It'd be cool if you went more full band right there. We were talking about that in one of the new songs and I was just like, You're right. He went and recorded the drums and I was like, Yeah, that's it.”
“A lot like the album is a lot brighter than Greatest Hits. I posted this before, Greatest Hits is a very indoor, nighttime album. It's all very dark and conceptually, it takes place over the course of the night. I pictured it all being in my apartment and stuff like that. But with this one, it's like a reintroduction into the world and it's a lot brighter. It's more of like a daytime, outside album in my opinion.”
Regarding the whole genre-fluid aspect of Waterparks, from day 1, he’s been the rebel child. Right when the band’s second LP, Entertainment, started to receive critical acclaim from the pop punk community, he deliberately announces a sonic turn for Waterparks and ventures on a more genre-less route, making the band’s 3rd and 4th projects, Fandom and Greatest Hits, two distinct but equally as adventurous kaleidoscopic experiences.
For someone who appreciates the art of album making as much as Awsten Knight, he has to figure out a way to combat the playlisting age. Though, challenging genres might not be the most efficient way to succeed in the music industry in a fiscal sense, it seems to be the perfect middle ground he is willing to settle with. Plus, it makes Waterparks a pioneer of many things. Lately, Awsten Knight is noticing a trend of some of their songs taking off a year or two after its initial buzz. It could be a sign of the time, but it’s also undeniable that tracks like “Turbulent” really pivot to sound radical and unconventional.
He explains the thoughts that went into creating albums that mesh and melt genres, “I write in very specific ways so it [a given song] will still feel like us. I didn't want to feel like they are chameleons, or they don't have an identity. I want to be able to do everything, but make it us.”
It’s a blessing and a curse to be the poster child of an alternative genre in a playlisting age, but it seems like Waterparks has succeeded to make it mostly a blessing as of today. Managed by MDDN, the company founded by the Madden brothers from Good Charlotte, Waterparks is set to open for several My Chemical Romance sets later this year, not to mention that Awsten Knight’s hair transformation is sponsored by Hayley Williams’ Good Dye Young.
“All of those bands [Good Charlotte, MCR, Paramore, etc.] that you listed, they all like other kinds of music,” says Knight, in response to the choice to go genre-less while being supported by so many pop punk legends who came before Waterparks, “I literally just got dinner with Mikey [Way] the other night. He was talking about some electronic shit. I think those people were all the most active and operated in a time where people wanted to know what to expect on a CD. And it was kind of like, Oh, we're a rock band, we're gonna make rock songs. And I think we are operating in this time that's more like where everybody can openly like everything. It’s the playlist age where everybody just splices together shit. They have shuffle on anyone's phone now. There's everything. I want our albums to feel like cohesive versions of that.”
Despite going on an unorthodox path and being supported by musical predecessors, the rise of Waterparks follows the authentic pop punk trail. They were the local kids that dropped out of college to play in different cities of the home state. They passed along CDs and posters that are now being sold for ungodly amount of money on Depop. They were too young to reject the first deals that came in their way and ended up signing away their own foundational records. But it’s the years of building genuine connections with fans and the scene that led them to this moment, in 2022, with a new project incoming and finally signing to the ultimate pop punk label of them all.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” after quite a brief hesitation, in true Awsten Knight fashion, he reveals, “One time in 2015, before we announced our first deal–with, that label–a Fueled By Ramen person came to one of the local Houston shows, and that was actually the first initial connection.”
“It honestly just makes sense,” he says, regarding finally signing to Fueled By Ramen after exploring deals with various labels almost on a project-by-project basis, “They just have a great team. All the bands I’ve watched them handle are fucking awesome. I look at their shit and it’s like their rollout was amazing, this album is amazing. I mean, Twenty One Pilots, Fall Out Boy, Paramore… They [FBR] have everybody. Fueled By Ramen is so good with helping cultivate and push up these moments for everybody. I think they handle bands better than anyone, really. I can't think of another label that I've seen boost a band [like FBR] and the artists also seem happy… I haven't seen anybody do that.”
At the moment, Awsten Knight is feeling the usual nervous but exciting anticipation with a new era on the horizon. “I think it's gonna be good,” says Knight, “I try to not have crazy expectations. It's weird. Releasing stuff always makes me feel a little sad. But I don't know, I don't I don't fully get the psychology. I'm not here to unpack it necessarily. It's like, you hold on to this thing, and it's gone. But at the same time, I certainly hope people like it.”
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