The last time we spoke to twin singers, Billy & Louie, they were releasing a single, this time, they are preparing for the release of their debut EP. The six-song body of work was produced in the early part of 2023, co-written and produced by singer-songwriter and producer, Darren Martyn. Billy & Louie have chosen a more contemporary sound for their new music but with older soul and R&B influences, taking inspiration from early Craig David and TLC. The EP is complete and the lead single of the EP ‘No good for each other’ is set to release on the 24th August. We found out from Billy & Louie about their debut EP and what they’ve been up to since their last interview with us.
We are really excited and even a little apprehensive for everyone to hear what we have been working really hard to create. We hope everyone likes it as much as we do. The whole project has been such a long time in the making, from writing and recording to filming and releasing. It’s been a really fun project to work on and we are really grateful to have worked with some talented people that we’ve recently connected with and also reignite previous connections. Years ago we began dreaming of creating a larger body of work and we are incredibly pleased that we have successfully ticked this goal off our musical bucket list.
On the EP you can expect lots of harmonies. In fact, the harmonies and our passion for arranging might be the most significant part of the music. Above writing and even performing live, arranging music and delving into harmonies is the thing we love the most. It’s the reason we love to cover songs and add harmonies and adapt the arrangement of them. It’s also the reason for us creating two choirs and forming a girl band. When we wrote ‘No good for each other’, we kept hearing this repeated melody which Darren pushed us to elaborate on. On the train home from our studio session, we arranged a whole gospel-inspired choir section which we roughly recorded on our phones and took it back to record the following week in our home studio with our close harmony groups we run. It was fun to incorporate that side of our career into the song and that’s possibly why it’s the most personal song to us. The melody is exceptionally catchy and we can’t wait to sing it live.
We find taking parts of our lives to inspire our songwriting doesn’t always work for us as there are two of us and we don’t share the same experiences all the time. We often take inspiration from film and TV, other music and sometimes even our own too. It was such a relaxing experience to work with Darren to produce this EP. There was a really creative vibe in the studio and we found it easy to bounce off each other. We seemed to piece together relatable narratives that we collectively related to on different levels, which in turn has resulted in a really relatable EP that everyone can connect with. The songs are ambiguous enough for you to connect them to your life and experiences which isn’t something we have necessarily achieved before. One of our songs on the EP is loosely based around one of our favourite films, Practical Magic. We took inspiration from the scene where Sally Owens manifests her ideal partner. It’s such a relatable scene and we thought it was a simple yet responsive theme to play with.
When we perform at festivals and concerts, even our smaller, more intimate gigs, the songs we look forward to performing the most are our original ones. So, we are really excited to be able to sing these songs live. To see the reaction from the audience when they hear these songs will be really interesting to us! We can’t wait to begin thinking about choreography, different arrangements and outfits for when we perform the EP live! All the small details that go alongside a project like this really interest us. We have a music video stashed away for one of our songs. The smaller details like finding a venue that suits the vibe of the song and video and the small details in the narrative were the bits that really intrigued us and have actually inspired music we are writing now.
We chose some close friends to act in the music video and watching the filming was a great experience. We collaborated with Light-up Media to bring this vision to life. We really got involved in the process and loved adding a little bit of our own direction in and bringing those smaller details across. Although we didn’t act in the music video, we did dabble in the acting world last year. We got cast in our first feature film where we play lovable twins in a rural English village. It was such a surreal experience, working with a huge team of people and acting alongside some very talented actors.
It’s safe to say we’ve been very busy but all the hard work will pay off when everything is out there and we can share all the projects we’ve been working on. We can’t wait to start future projects too. We already have lots of ideas!
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