Different Kinds Of Love: Glades On The Inspiration Behind Their Debut Album

Sydney 3-piece Glades is a project by Karina Wykes, Cam Robertson and Joey Wenceslao, who combines elements of indie pop and electronica.

In 2016, Glades’ single ‘Drive’ gained widespread attention clocking up over millions of streams. 2017 follow up single ‘Do Right’ followed suit reaching the 60 million stream threshold and scoring itself an ARIA Gold certification.

This year, the band released their debut album To Love You which, according to vocalist Karina Wykes, “explores the idea that there’s more to love than pure romance.”

Music Feeds caught up with Karina and Cam to have a chat about To Love You, the inspiration behind the album, and their upcoming Australian tour.

MF: What inspired you to write an album exploring the different kinds of love we experience as humans?

KW: I think people write a lot about romantic love but the other aspect of love like, loving your friends, loving the people around you on the street, loving yourself as well, is just as important. You need to love yourself and you need to love your friends and it’s something that you need to hear about. I think, you know, it’s not heard about enough and it’s important to us so it kind of naturally happened that we ended up writing about that. It’s exploring all different kinds of love because I think it’s all important.

Music Feeds: What are your favourite tracks off of To Love You?

Karina Wykes: I think I’m gonna say two because I can’t decide right now! The first one is called ‘Sweetheart’. It’s got a lot of attitude to it, it’s got a little bit of a different vibe so I’m really excited for people to hear it. The second one is the last track on the album, and its really emotional and I cry every time I listen to it, so I’m excited for people to hear that one too.

Cam Robertson: What one’s that? You never said the title.

KW: Oh [laughs]. It’s called ‘Through To You’, sorry!

MF: How do you approach writing as a 3-piece?

CR: Right from the start we’ve been really collaborative between all three of us, so we all sing melodies in and all write the lyrics. I generally work on the production of it. But I guess it’s kind of developed over the last two years, like, there was a point I think at the end of 2016 where we were just struggling to kind of find our voice. Struggling to, I guess musically develop what we were already doing. A period of writer’s block.

So, our management were like “you should just go over to LA and do a writing trip” or something like that. At that point we were a bit apprehensive of letting other people in on the project because up until that point it’d just been us three doing everything, essentially.

We did our first writing trip to LA in 2017. That kind of opened a whole other door for our project with collaboration and stuff. I think our process is a bit of both at the moment – we work with other songwriters and we also still write between all three of us in the band.

MF: The success of ‘Drive’ was crazy cool. What are your thoughts on all the remixes and people using it for fan edits online?

KW: I think it’s really cool!

CR: Yeah!

KW: Any response to something that we release is so special, and to see how people have loved that song and used it in fan edit or whatever they’ve done, it’s just really cool to see. We would never have imagined that that song would resonate with people how it has, and it’s just crazy to see what has happened!

CR: I just remember coming across a YouTube video and Logan Paul had it in one of his videos and I was just like ‘whoa, that’s pretty crazy!’. One of the biggest YouTubers in the world!

MF: Who are your main influences as artists?

CR: Of recent, I really love the whole Charlie Puth record. I think that was one of the best pop records this year. We all love artists like The 1975, Oh Wonder, LANY, as well.

MF: What are you most keen to see during your Australian tour?

KW: I think it’s something really special when people that you don’t know are singing you lyrics back to you. I’m so excited to just have the album be released and people be able to know every song that we’ve written on that album. It’s gonna be so special to see faces you don’t recognise singing together with you, and that’s what I’m most excited to see.

CR: Yeah, I think we always like, meet the people that come to our concerts after the shows and stuff and there’s just been a whole heap of stories that people tell us. Like how our music has helped them in whatever situation they’re going through. I think that’s a big part of it as well – meeting the fans and showing our support back to them.

MF: Are you planning on doing any collabs with other artists in the future?

CR: Definitely something we’re open to. There’s nothing in the works as of yet, but yeah, that would be something that we’d really wanna look to do next year.

MF: Who would you love to collab with if you could pick?

KW: Well, we love Charlie Puth – that’d be cool. Umm, who else?

CR: Like, Khalid and Billy Eilish would be really cool. Or Lorde. We all love Lorde as well.

MF: What made you want to pursue music as a career?

KW: I kind of think we just fell into it, in a sense. We’d finished high school and we decided to start a band just ’cause like, we love music. We released three songs and it came to a point where we could do it as a full-time career. When Drive came out it kind of like, changed the game for us and it was kind of crazy ’cause it just happened – we’re not even quite sure how! It’s been crazy, but the best thing ever!

CR: Yeah, especially when you’re starting a band, you kind of don’t ever really believe that you could do it. But yeah, within like three releases we were able to do it full time, so that’s been like, the best thing for us. It feels like we’re living the dream, every day.

MF: What’s been the best moment so far? Was there a moment where it really hit you?

CR: I think for us it would be the completion of this album.

KW: Yeah

CR: We’ve released one EP and the rest have been single releases, which feels cool and we love seeing people react to what we put out, but it feels like we really put our hearts out there with this album. It feels really special.

MF: What are your favourite albums and songs from 2018?

KW: I think the Charlie Puth album has been really cool, like, we all like that album. I also am a little bit obsessed with the Bazzi album. He has that song…

CR: ‘Mine’.

KW: Yeah, ‘Mine’.

CR: Yeah, Joey (Wenceslao) actually put it in a playlist before it even blew up – probably about three months before it blew up, and we were like ‘that song’s gonna be big’, and it turns out it was huge [laughs].

MF: That’s the song that had all the meme edits, right?

KW: Oh, yes! [sings] “when you… smile”

KW: Yeah, and that whole album that he released after that single is so good, you should listen to that!

MF: I’ll check it out!

KW: And the LANY album as well, we love LANY!

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Glades’ debut album ‘To Love You’ is out now. Listen here.