Force of habit
THE SKY IS THE LIMIT FOR BRITISH ROCKERS REVELLING IN A LITTLE ED SHEERAN MAGIC
t was the “mental” moment that changed the course of the year for British rock band Bring Me The Horizon.
In one of the most shocking and unpredictable collaborations in the pop world in 2022, the hard rock chart-toppers were enlisted by global pop superstar Ed Sheeran to open the Brit Awards in February, performing his smash hit Bad Habits.
The pop hit was given a searing rock remake courtesy of BMTH, and the band braced for the backlash from those who would not countenance such a polarising melding of musical muscle.
“It was Ed’s idea and his manager came to ours to ask, ‘Is this a crazy idea?’” frontman Oli Sykes says. “We were like ‘It sounds mental, let’s do it!’
“It felt like it was going to be a good year anyway because we finally were getting to properly tour, but I feel like it changed the course of our year. It put us into this spotlight and it was just a wild thing.
“I think it’s a testament how far we’ve come that we can get away with doing a rock cover of an Ed Sheeran song and not lose our fanbase. They’ve come with us and they get it.”
Sheeran returned the favour, joining the band to perform their version of Bad Habits when they
headlined the Reading Festival in August.
Among the tens of thousands of fans were not only the BMTH diehards who have stayed the course over their 18-year history, but also a fresh contingent of young fans who discovered the alternative rockers in the most Gen Z fashion.
Their 2013 emo hit Can You Feel My Heart inexplicably blew up on TikTok last year; a producer’s remix is thought to have started its viral spread on the platform.
That ripple effect has been seismic, with a song originally released before streaming was the dominant music format now the band’s most played track on Spotify with almost half a billion streams.
“One side of us was like ‘Why the f--- is this song from 10 years ago just suddenly going crazy?’
The other side was trying to understand that this is a whole new generation of kids hearing music like that for the first time, and the lyrics are speaking to their emotions,” Sykes says.
“Our sound has changed over almost 20 years and we’ve got albums people love and others people have not loved as much – everyone’s got an opinion on our band – but it is a real community.”
That community is particularly strong in Australia, the country that gave Bring Me The Horizon their first ever No.1 record in 2010, the first of four albums to land on the top of the ARIA charts over nine years.
They return to these shores in December to headline the Good Things Festival, a rock-centric event which is one of a few major outdoor gigs this year to sell more than 90 per cent of its tickets in advance of the gates opening, and is likely to sell out this week. Rock may be the underdog when it comes to commercial radio airplay and the popular playlists, but the genre’s fans are loyal at the box office, even as the promoters of Good Things remain equal parts relieved and intrigued as to why their festival is close to selling out while other big marquee brands are struggling. Sykes’ theory about why rock enthusiasts are buying tickets in big numbers comes down to the emotional connection between band and fan.
On their recent American tour, one of their team went out the front of venues to film fans talking about why they had come to see Bring Me The Horizon.
Their answers almost brought him to tears, ranging from how the music had “saved my life”, to the
fact they had been their favourite band since they were 13 and could only now afford to buy a ticket.
“On the last American tour, our video guy was making these short episodes and he would show me the clips and I was like, welling up, watching a kid talk about what the band has done for him and stuff,” he says.
“Coming back after lockdown, it means more to me than it ever has and that is what drives me now, what we do for people and how we make people feel, and that has put me in a good place.
“I just want to make music that feels true to me and I’m not worried about anything else. Music has saved my life and it’s been a light-bulb moment for me to realise we are a band that does that for people.”
For Sykes, coming to Australia to headline for the first time is a homecoming. His parents, Ian and Carol Sykes, moved from the UK and lived between Adelaide and Perth for six years when he was an infant until he was eight.
“I feel like it’s been f---ing forever since we’ve been there and I used to live in Australia. We’ve always wondered about why our band, why is it so crazy for us there, why we got our first No.1 record there, it’s just that we’ve always had such a strong connection to Australia.”
Good Things Festival, featuring Bring Me The Horizon, Deftones, Amity Affliction, NoFX, TISM and more is at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne on December 2, Centennial Park, Sydney on December 3, and Brisbane Showgrounds on December 4. Tickets oztix.com.au