Incubus' Brandon Boyd

RJ here, hanging out at the Young Hollywood Studio with Brandon Boyd, who you all know as the lead singer at Incubus, and now you are out on your own doing your your solo album. Yes. So what what was the pressure like when you were talking to the guys, I'm assuming you played some of the songs for him for it came out. Were you were you nervous?

Yeah, all the guys in my band are really great musicians, like they're sort of musicians first and um I sometimes I feel like I'm I'm like on borrowed time like playing with them, you know because I'm I'm a more of a lyricist and a singer and but um so it's always been a lot of fun being in a band with them because they've always challenged me that way. So I was super nervous to play them my music on my own because it's much more lyrically based and melodically based and less musically based, you know what I mean? Um but they've been very gracious about it so far.

Take us to the process though. How is it different when, you know, all these years you've been with a group and now you're sort of on your own. You're in your own little world. And you're doing everything. You played all the instruments. You don't have a, you know, a group to rely on for that.

Right. There's there's um there's a lot of good and a lot of bad about it. The bad part. I wouldn't say it's bad, it's just more it's more frightening, it's more intimidating. Um if there's always the possibility in any creative process that you do it and you follow whims and you and you make something in this case music. There's always the possibility that um it's just not very good. There's that's just a thing that just is out there. And obviously that's, you know, it's subjective. It's up to the you know, to the to the ear of the beholder, I guess you could say but um when you're in a band, you have like your buddies, the guys you grew up with, ah, we made a that wasn't really good. Oh well, and you like and you know, knock each other, like that sucks, whatever, but at least we're all like in this together. When you do it by yourself, you're kind of like, oh, I blew it. Right. The good part though, getting to the other side of it, is that if I want to write a song on a on a whim like in my living room with my acoustic guitar, it's just as simple as that.

So you know Brandon Boyd the singer, but you might not know Brandon Boyd the artist. Yes. So let's talk about painting pictures. It's become more than a hobby. It started out as a a young kid you were painting pictures and now like it's pretty serious.

It's been interesting getting to know the art world, you know, as something separate and unique from the music world or um there are a lot of similarities, but there are

What are some of those out of curiosity, you know, what are the comparisons in the two worlds?

Um, the massive sort of clash that you experience between um art and what art is, but then um the sort of the commercial side of it. So there's always that fundamental clash between art and commerce.

The struggle.

Yeah. Which is sort of the inherent struggle in all of entertainment because you're dealing with um people who like making things and then people who want to sell those things. Right.

So actually, speaking of that, last thing we want to do now, a little Young Hollywood quiz. We'd love to to play with people and see your pop culture knowledge of what's going out there in the world.

Play me.

Play you. Let's see how you're doing. All right, here we go. Can you name any Justin Bieber songs?

I don't Who is Justin

Justin Bieber is the kid with the hair. Yes, the kid with the hair. That's good. He's got really good hair.

He does now. I don't know any of his songs though, I'm sorry.

But that's good enough. You know the kid with the hair. That's all you know one time.

You know, I know I know that he's given a lot of uh sort of pre-teens their first feelings of teen and agerness.

All right, there's a TV show called Hannah Montana. Okay. Have you heard of it?

I have.

Do you know who plays Hannah Montana?

Isn't it uh, it's Billy Ray Cyrus in a wig, right?

He's good. This guy knows his stuff. It's Billy Ray Cyrus?

Yeah, Billy Ray Cyrus. He's in a wig. And he just changed his name to Miley.

Yeah, so. But it really is Billy Ray. Okay, okay. All right, so two for two. He's pretty good here. We're we're almost done here. All right, one of the Jonas brothers recently got married.

Really?

Do you know which one? Or do you know any of their names? Let's just make it simpler.

I don't. Can you name any of the Jonas brothers? I just hope there's one named Jonah. Is there not?

There is no Jonah. That'll be really funny if his name was Jonah Jonas. Wait, he got married. That means he's having sex, huh?

Whoa, no, they can't do that. They've got those little promise rings. I don't know if they were.

But he got married, he there. Yeah, so. Right. That that's an interesting one. But they're on they're on contract with Disney, so they're not allowed to have sex ever, right?

We can't tell anyone else.

Okay. That's all right. That was good. All right, last question and we're going to get serious now. No more of the the fun stuff. Okay.

No more fun stuff.

You have been in the music business for almost two decades.

Yeah.

And that's crazy to be doing it that long.

I know.

So there are a lot of people out there that just want to make it once. They want to even be a one hit wonder. Like

Right, right.

What's your advice of just how to break through all the clutter?

I I do know for a fact that there's not one way to do it. Um and I think I may have just demonstrated how I have been doing it by not knowing who anybody's pop culture

That's the key. Don't know anything about pop culture and you're ahead of. Brandon Boyd. Wild Trapeze. Go check it out.