It's a new era for A Great Big World, the singer/songwriter duo comprised of Ian Axel and Chad King. The guys will be releasing their new self-titled album later this year, and have shared the first taste of the record via the single, "Younger."
It is the first song Axel and King wrote for the album and is "all about growing up in the '90s," King told iHeartRadio.
Axel added: "We started thinking about all of our memories. And so pretty much every line in the song is something that happened to one of us."
The nostalgia that A Great Big World packs into the song is also represented in the cover art, which shows them play Super Nintendo (Axel still has his system and just found all the games), as well as the lyric video. The visual shows an old school video game versions of King and Axel.
As for the rest of A Great Big World's third studio album, which follows 2015's When the Morning Comes, Axel explained: "We're getting back to our roots. We didn't forget why we do music, but we're kind of just getting back to why we write music and making the music that we want to make, with our friends, without outside opinions and outside noise. We kind of just shut everyone out for this record process and made the stuff that we wanted to make. We took risks and we produced it with our band."
King added: "We created our own little bubble that no one was really allowed to enter into. I remember going to LA and visiting friends, and having some of the music. And they were playing me some of their music. And I really wanted to share ours, but I couldn't. I didn't feel right. It was like, let's just keep this between us for now until it's ready. Kind of like an incubation. So that's where we're at, and now we have an album."
Before A Great Big World shared "Younger" with fans, the guys did an excellent job of teasing the song with some very nostalgic photos and videos from when they were both ... well ... younger.
They took a look back on some of these great throwbacks and shared the stories behind them:
King: "Oh man. So this is very embarrassing. But it was a moment where it's like, look, Chad. You can accept it. You can just put it out to the world."
Axel: "It's not that embarrassing.
King: "It was for me. It was like I hated this time in my life and I was like, I'd rather forget it than ever remember it. And so it's like, okay let's put it out there for the whole world to see and remember forever. What was I doing with that hair? Why did I decide ... Like, I thought that was cool to put my hair that way."
King: "Aw. Yeah. I don't even know what to say about this one. That's me as Pinocchio. I was 10 years old. I used to do a bunch of community theatre. And they put on a Pinocchio show, and I just remember wearing this nose. It was the longest nose and it was very hard to perform in, because it was this nose out to here that was wobbling."
Axel: "I had a piano teacher growing up, and we did all these piano recitals. Like classical, kid songs, whatever. But, I had a little Casio keyboard that I was writing songs on, and I had this church organ with a beat to it, and I wrote what I called, 'The Monster Song.' And, for my piano recital, I dressed up ... for some reason my parents said yes. I mean, thank you mom and dad because this was ... I'm really proud of this moment. I dressed up as Dracula, and I went out there with a cape, and I played, 'The Monster Song.'"
King: "You even bow at the end as well. And, like, the cape kind of flows. Like, it's this flowing cape as he leaves. It was beautiful."
Axel: "You can learn a lot about me from this. This is pretty much my childhood."
Axel: "So, this is me freshman year of high school in marching band. I played the trumpet. I was in marching band for two years, and then I got kicked out. Because I was just like, I had my group of friends and we kind of goofed around a little bit. But, I don't know. I shouldn't have been kicked out. But anyway, when I was kicked out of the band, my band teacher asked me back the next year."
King: "We mentioned that in 'Younger.'"
Original article by Nicole Mastrogiannis at iHeartRadio