During an interview following their performance at this year’s KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, the members of breakout band fun. reflected on their enormously successful year and the resulting fallout of being nominated for six GRAMMY awards, including Album of the Year for Some Nights.
“It’s been a crazy year for us in general, so there have been so many people that text you or email you after something big,” said fun.’s singer, Nate Ruess, regarding the response to the band’s nominations. “Like if we played David Letterman, someone might text us. This was the straight up woodworks for me, the amount of people that were coming out.”
“I had lost my phone during the summer so I had no idea who anybody was,” Ruess chuckled. “I’d never used Google to search so many different area codes. I actually didn’t respond.”
Becoming one of the most popular and talked about bands in the world has made them the cool kids in class — including to long-forgotten about school mates. Among the onslaught of old “friends” looking to get in touch with the now-successful band members were a few who employed more roundabout methods of reaching out.
“My dad actually called Jack [Antonoff, guitarist],” Ruess recalled. “My middle school girlfriend wanted to get tickets to one of our shows. My dad knew to bypass me, so he called Jack about getting tickets for [her].”
“It was the weirdest chain of command of all time,” Antonoff laughed. “It’s like weirder than things that happened in the Bush administration with Cheney, the fact that his dad called me to get his ex-girlfriend in the show.”
Ex-girlfriends, friends and fans alike will have ample opportunity to catch fun. live in the new, as the band has set a slew of tour dates including Detroit (January 26), Boston (February 1), Houston (February 13) and Nashville (February 16) before taking on tour dates through Japan, Australia, Malaysia and the UK well into the spring.
-Scott T. Sterling, CBS Local