Teamwork. is a pop music making group originating in the UK, now based in LA, who have produced hits with major artists like The Chainsmokers, Christina Aguilera, Fetty Wap, Nick Jonas, Lady Antebellum, Seal and Echosmith. Over the course of their new careers, they’ve amassed over 1.5 billion streams. Nina Nesbitt and AJ Mitchell are rising pop stars who teamed up with Teamwork. to produce the hit, “Afterhours.” The song is a dance hit all about late nights and rocky relationships. I had the chance to interview Teamwork. and talk about making “Afterhours” and what’s to come for them.
How has working with mega-star artists like Christina Aguilera and The Chainsmokers, impacted you both as artists?
Image courtesy of Get In! PR
I think it gives you a lot more experience and an advantage when you’ve been behind the scenes in the music industry before releasing your own material as an artist. The music industry is unique in that when you release your product you’re instantly competing with the best in the business, so working with huge artists like Christina Aguilera and the Chainsmokers massively helped shape us as writers and producers and prepare us for starting our own project.
How does production style differ between countries, considering the US/UK relationship of your sounds?
I do writing trips back to the UK a couple of times a year and there’s a definite difference in writing styles and production sounds, and we try to incorporate a bit of both in our songs. Afterhours was originally written in the UK and then finished off in America and now it seems to be connecting in both places which is awesome.
What, or who, inspired “Afterhours?”
Afterhours was a title I’d had written down for a few weeks before the session. I tend to have a list of titles with a rough concept next to them and then when I’m in a session listening to a track I’ll think what the track sounds like it wants to be about and look through my list of titles and see if I have anything that feels like it fits. We actually wrote that song late on a Friday night and so it kinda felt like the right title for that moment and track vibe.
What was the creative process like for making the “Afterhours” music video?
Even though we’ve both been making records for a while, this was our first time being involved in making a video. It was a little tricky trying to find a day when everyone was free and when we did it was pretty short notice, but thankfully we had a director and producer who were on top of everything and we gave them some ideas which they ran with and also put some of their own ideas in there as well – it was very collaborative.
This is your first single, and it’s surpassed a million streams, what’s coming next for you both?
We have some big plans for the future – including a lot of upcoming music and features and we’re working on building a crazy teamwork live show. We’ll be posting announcements soon – you can follow us at Instagram and on Twitter for updates!
You can stream “Afterhours” across all streaming platforms now.
Featured image: Nina Nesbitt and AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Get In! PR.
