New Hope Club is a pop/rock band (not a boy band!) hailing from the UK. Unlike most bands, this band has only three members: George Smith, Blake Richardson and Reece Bibby. All of them have singing parts in every song and they are all incredibly talented. Here are just a few of the reasons this band is unique and amazing…
They all play instruments!
Unlike singers in many boy bands nowadays, every member of New Hope Club plays at least two instruments. This and the fact they write their own songs are the main reasons they don’t like being called a “boy band.” They all play the guitar. George and Blake also play the piano, and Reece plays the Cajon drum (or a guitar case) in most of their cover videos. They play their guitars for every live performance, which gives them a slight edge over other bands who just dance around the stage. The fact that they all play multiple instruments and can sing shows how talented they are and makes them stand out from the huge crowd of bands who are all trying to make it to the top.
George and Blake playing their guitars at the South Tyneside Summer Festival. Photo credits: Lauren Stewart on Instagram
Their social media presence and interaction with fans is great!
They have a band account on both Twitter and Instagram. Each member also has their own individual accounts where they showcase their personalities. They often post funny things (or in Reece’s case, pictures of adorable dogs). Over time, they have learned the best ways to promote new music on the band’s account. For example, when they were promoting “Medicine,” they added incentives to getting 5k, 7k and 10k retweets on their pinned tweet. For 5,000 retweets, the boys said they would do a follow spree; for 7,000 retweets, they would do a livestream on Instagram and if the tweet reached 10,000 retweets, fans would get a release date for the music video. This meant more people saw their tweet promoting “Medicine,” and fans felt like they were getting something back. It has proven to be an effective promotion method as “Medicine” now has 1.8 million streams on Spotify.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BotFeFtgtFx/
Speaking of Spotify, New Hope Club are very savvy at using that too – when their latest single, “Crazy,” dropped on September 13, they encouraged their fans to share it and add it to all their playlists. The song got onto the Spotify Viral Charts in the UK and Indonesia! They do regular Q&As, allowing fans to find out more about the boys such as their favourite TV shows (George’s is Friends) and their musical inspirations (The Beatles). What makes them unique from other bands is that whenever they post a picture on their individual Instagram accounts, they spend about twenty minutes replying to comments and showing their fans how much they love them.
When your favourite film gets added to Netflix 🙆🏼♂️💁🏼♂️
— George Smith (@NewHopeGeorge) October 27, 2018
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgWtYTZg2og/?taken-by=newhopereece
They use YouTube to their advantage
One of their covers even got them a record deal! The Vamps watched New Hope Club’s cover of their song, “Wake Up,” liked what they saw and signed the group to their record label, Steady Records. Their YouTube channel has 539k subscribers; most of their videos are covers and tour diaries. Each cover is a new take on the original. Sometimes, when I’m out shopping and I hear the original version of a song they have covered, I get really confused because I’m so used to the New Hope Club version! Their most successful cover is of Zayn & Sia’s song “Dusk Till Dawn”; the cover now has 2.5 million views! This cover is so successful because you can tell they’re having fun when they get to the chorus and it shows off their vocal talents. As well as making amazing covers, these boys also have a knack for making great mashups. My favourites are their Taylor Swift’s Reputation mashup because they put the songs together in such a clever way and their One Direction mashups.
Their tour diaries are incredibly funny. My favourites are the “Day in the life of __” videos as we get to see what it’s like to be on tour and they show the strong bond between these boys. At the end of most of their videos, they include a few bloopers in which the boys have started laughing or a string has broken off one of their guitars. These parts show that the boys are still humans who make mistakes. Their music videos are perhaps the only limiting factor of their YouTube. However, that is only because they do not have the huge budgets needed to make incredible music videos. So many of their songs tell a story, and it costs a lot to have the same story portrayed in the music video.
Their latest EP is fire!
New Hope Club dropped their second EP, Welcome To The Club Pt. 2, on October 30th. Some fans were unimpressed with the lack of creativity that went into the title of it. However, it works as it is a natural continuation from their first EP. Welcome To The Club, is about a budding romance, and the second EP is about a relationship that has gone sour as the two people began to drive each other crazy. “Fixed” (on their first EP) is about one person becoming obsessed with the other, and “Crazy” (the first track on their second EP) continues on nicely from that as infatuation can easily make a relationship too intense and the relationship can implode. The theme of romance gone bad continues across the EP. The next song is “Medicine,” which they have been playing on tour for over a year and a half; fans finally got the studio version in the form of a single on June 22nd. It is my favourite song on the EP because of the message behind it – getting out of a toxic relationship can make you stronger than before and you can finally start living again. Also, the production on this song is their best yet.
Next comes “Karma,” the first song that the boys have fully written and produced themselves and the result is a bop and perhaps a dig at that toxic ex?! In April, George, Blake and Reece treated small crowds of fans to an early viewing of their new material on a brief tour. On this tour, one of the new songs was “Let Me Down Slow.” This song proved to be a hit and they continued performing it as they supported The Vamps on their “Night and Day” tour. The last song on the EP is a live recording of them singing it at the O2. On the whole, this EP definitely has a much more mature sound with more refined and relatable lyrics, and it’s such an incredible EP.
This is a difficult time for new artists to break into the music industry, but New Hope Club is on their way as their music has now been played on Radio 1 many times, successfully making the leap from YouTube to the mainstream. When they toured the USA with The Vamps, they had the opportunity to appear and perform on some of the big talk shows, extending their fan base.
New Hope Club have been teasing their newest album for over a year. As a fan, I hope they release it soon and that more people will have the chance to enjoy their music. If their debut album is anywhere near as good as their newest EP, then it’s going to be brilliant. In a recent interview with Zack Tremblay, they said that they are hoping to release their album and go on their first headline tour in 2019. Listen to Welcome To The Club Pt. 2 and you may well have a new favourite artist!
Featured image via Hollywood Records
