Two Feet is more than just a viral, one-hit wonder star; he is a musician whose career is only getting started. We sat down with Two Feet, a multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/producer, who rose to fame through his viral track “Go F**k Yourself” at Gov Ball right before he was about to take the biggest stage of his career.
For the video version of this interview, play the clip below. The interview transcript follows.
How are you?
Two Feet – Doing Good. How are you?
I’m doing good. So you are about to play the biggest stage of your career so far, Gov Ball 2k18… How do you feel?
Pretty Excited! Should be fun. Yeah, it’s hometown too, so that makes it better.
Yeah, so you feel like you have that hometown advantage?
Yeah exactly.
I saw on your Twitter, you were very hyped. You were trying to get all the people out here from New York.
Yeah, well I know a ton of people who are coming. Yeah, it’s always fun to play shows where you like know people. You know you’re going to have friends, family there.
How did you get the name Two Feet?
Oh man, honestly I wrote the music first, and then I was trying to come up with a name, and every name I was looking for was taken basically. It’s not the best story. I was very drunk, just came home a bar, after work and I was kinda just looking down like this on the computer, and I was like Two Feet, and it was quick and easy to remember. And just pop it on and release the music that night. And then its kinda gone from there. It’s too late to change anything.
You reached viral fame with “Go F**k Yourself” which now has over 100 million streams on Spotify.
Yeah it has 130 on YouTube, 20 million on SoundCloud, and overall you know like 300 million streams on 1 track is pretty crazy.
Were you all prepared for what came after that?
No. No, I was not. (laugh) I am still not. It’s super random. It kinda just popped out of nowhere, you know? You post it online, then it went viral, and you get labels reaching out to you immediately within 24 hours pretty much. I had RCA hit me up and stuff like that. It was pretty interesting.
So you have turned that viral fame into a career now.
So yeah, that was a tough transition actually because there was no way. We didn’t know how to set everything up live yet, so I had to hire my friend to help me set everything up live. So we started touring, and then I, obviously, it follows up with: Can this kid write additional music? And yeah I did. I wrote, and then I wrote my second EP with “Love is a B***h” which is now one of my fan favorite songs. They cheer heavily for that one. That went viral on YouTube as well. Then ‘Drowning’ [I Feel Like I’m Drowning] came out, my first song on a major label, it’s number 6 or number 7 in the country on alternative. These things they just kinda of kept rolling, and I kinda proved myself initially that this is a real thing. So that was a tough transition, there’s a stigma, you know. It’s just an internet thing.
Definitely, there’s that huge stigma like you think one-hit wonder, just went viral, so you dealt with that?
Yeah I felt it, I mean no one ever directly said that but I could kinda feel like: Could he do another thing? Which I did, then it became much more serious. Cause then you know, I did my first headline tour sold out every show. Just came back from Europe like a day and half ago, tour sold out too. So yeah, it’s really rolling into a real thing now.
How’s tour life going? Hows performing?
I f***ing hate touring. Excuse the cursing. Uh, I hate it. I like playing in front of people. I do like being in front of people cause I feed off their energy. It’s good and feels natural. But um, on the road driving 12 hours straight, playing a show that night, then driving 3 hours, whatever. It’s very grueling. It’s super tough. There’s that aspect of that. I like playing to people.
I noticed you talking about that on your Twitter recently, and people were coming back like: Oh, why is he ungrateful?
2F – Yeah, my Twitter is a crazy place to visit. It works out though, it’s fine. They don’t understand, that the main thing. They think: Oh people are cheering for you, he’s making money, he should be happy and it’s like I came from having no money. Everything is relative, you find something in all experience whether or not. Sometimes for me, it’s not about f-ing people cheering. I wanted to be a producer. So that aspect of the job kinda don’t do much for me. In fact, it kinda stresses me out.
So for the future, what are your goals for yourself?
2F – Well, I starting to really love writing my album right now. I love releasing my music. I like being able to do whatever I want on it. There are aspects of this career as I go forward that I am starting to fall in love with, that I didn’t initially like very much. So you know as touring becomes more comfortable, play bigger rooms, I’ll probably start liking it more, and stuff. So yeah, I’m kinda going with everything as it happens for me. At the same time, I am also very grateful for everything, and I think people can misconstrue things that are said.
You perform at 2:15, any surprises on your set? Fun things we should know about?
I don’t know, we will see what happens. It all depends. Sometimes I go crazy. Sometimes, I am like f**k, why am I here? It all depends. Yeah, I don’t know myself, I am waiting to see. You never know. We’ll see.
