For our special Christmas edition of Track of the Week, we caught up with BIMM Institute alumni heavyweights Fickle Friends.
They’ve just dropped a Christmas banger titled My Favourite Day.
We caught up with them about the track.
Describe your new track in three words…
Warm, fuzzy and nostalgic
What inspired you when writing this track?
We were finding it hard to think of an original concept for a Christmas song. We started chatting about what each other’s families did every Christmas, the funny little traditions, any memorable stories from year’s past. I thought a song about these things could be super cute and feel good, so we asked our fans the same question, and they sent in their Christmas Day stories. There were so many lovely, visual things to include in a song. My favourite was this girls dad, who always poured flour on the floor and stomped his boots on it to make it look like footsteps in the snow.
Are there any artists that inspire you when writing?
So many artists inspire us. We have been delving a little more into the back catalogues of people like Prince, Fleetwood Mac and Sheryl Crow recently. But in the case of this Christmas song, we just trawled through our favourite festive tunes and tried to get in the spirit (in July) ha!
What would you say makes your music unique?
I think we do quite a good job with this hybrid indie/alt-pop thing. This next record is all over the place genre-wise. But I think because of my voice and the stuff we tend to write about, it always ends up being Fickle Friends. I believe our niche is the coming of age movie song, if that’s even a thing, haha.
Do you have a process you follow when writing a song?
Not really. We try to change things up these days because you can sometimes hit a wall if you work in a disciplined way. It usually starts with a word or concept, or Jack has a beat he has dreamed up. Before the Christmas song, we set ourselves an hour challenge to go away, come up with a bit of idea, come back and show each other. It was quite a fun way of getting us out of our usual rhythm!
How did studying at BIMM help you develop as an artist?
I mean, there was no artist to speak of before BIMM Institute. I knew I wanted to start a project, and being at BIMM allowed me to meet like-minded, creative people. As a band, we were fortunate. Being invited to play in schools and colleges as part of the BIMM promotions team meant we could afford rehearsal studios and record our first EP. It was especially significant for us to be getting touring and gig experience so early on.
What’s next for you?
Our second record, “Are We Gonna Be Alright?” drops on January 14th 2022! And the night before that, we kick off our UK tour in Brighton. It will be a crazy start to the year, and it feels like we haven’t stopped during Covid, so I think we might have earned a bit of a rest after that! Hopefully see some BIMM students on tour 😉
