Sometimes they come back: Tones and I don’t dream of another “Dance monkey”

If she could go back in time, she would erase from her life the hit that catapulted her to the top of the international charts, making her win 74 Platinum Discs, 8 Diamond Discs and 8 Gold Discs globally, for the equivalent of 15 million copies sold. Tones And I puts it bluntly: “I happened to do sessions in Los Angeles with different people. They usually said, ‘You had success with this kind of song, let’s do it again.’ And I thought, ‘I really don’t think about it.’ I wrote that song on my own, without ambition. Then it became a hit. But I don’t want to spend my life chasing that song. In fact, I hate it most of the time. And I refuse to sing it”.

Toni Elizabeth Watson, this is the real name of the Australian singer-songwriter who rose to prominence in 2019 with “Dance Monkey”, is not ungrateful and does not spit on the plate she ate from. Simply, he developed the same syndrome as many colleagues who for one reason or another repudiate the hits that brought them success, asking to no longer be identified with those songs: “I will never write another similar piece”, he promised the singer-songwriter in an interview last year. That five years after that catchphrase she tries to erase “Dance monkey” with “Dreaming“, another potential – at least on paper – hit.

“Dreaming” is however a “Dance monkey” encore: pounding rhythm, irresistible refrain, a video that is preparing to become the subject of memes on social media and imitations on TikTok. “It’s hard to release music and it’s hard to share because the internet feels increasingly alien to me and I’ve found myself becoming more of a consumer rather than a creator,” says Tones And I. E never mind if with “Dreaming” the singer-songwriter risks feeding the machine, rather than trying to make it jam: “I maintain my integrity in my stories which always come from an authentic place of love, loss and hope.

I found myself subconsciously writing about things I had never written about before. I let my music go where it wants to go, and I never try to force it in one direction to fit a trend or style.”

Does the story of the busker who started from the streets of Mornington, before finding herself collecting platinum records everywhere, from Denmark to Sweden, from Finland to Germany, from Norway to Chile, passing through Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, continue? For now, it seems so. After having contributed last year to the soundtrack of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”, the film by James Wan starring the DC Comics character of the same name, there is a new album of unreleased songs on the horizon, the second after debut of 2021 with “Welcome to the madhouse”. “I don’t know what genre it belongs to yet, but I hope you like it.”