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B: I’m Blaise Eldred, he/him and I’m in…guess you could say the border of Brookline and Brighton. 

U: You’ve received a lot of listens on some songs, like “Way You Walk” which has over a million listens!! So, where did you start, and how did you get to where you are now? 

B: So basically, it started with me being a kid and playing piano until I got into high school. I started playing drums around 15 or so. Then I was trying to decide what kind of music I liked the most. I was playing all sorts of different genres; classical on piano, and I was playing rock 70s stuff on drums trying to play along to songs. Then I picked up the guitar, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I tried playing that. Then I started playing in a band; the first real band I’ve ever played in it was a band called AYA. Kinda cool. 

U: Did it stand for anything?

B: It didn’t! We always got random questions about the name it didn’t mean anything hahaha. Yea, so I started playing with other guys in my hometown after that, and then eventually, when I got to college, I had already written an album. In my junior year of high school, the first album I’d ever written was “Sex Pop,” and I liked that style, so I wanted to continue that idea, but I never got the chance to really cause I was just about to go into college and then I started a new project called RVRCT (River Cat) and we used to play a bunch in Boston. We went on tour, and I was like, I should probably go back to Sex Pop cause RVRCT is a shoegaze project with some psych-rock involved, and I really wanted to go back into Sex Pop. I had long hair; I cut it off and was like, I’m switching it up. I started singing in falsetto. I wanted to go back to my roots of that. I’m glad I did; it’s been a really cool process. All last year me and my roommate Gianni who’s amazing. Love the guy. We were working on a lot of music. I wanted to work with him cause we were making these weird vaporwave songs. I realized he has really good production skills and mixing skills and I wanted to pair my stuff with his. That’s where Sex Pop 2 kinda came. And yea, that’s basically where we’re at today. The first single dropped from the new album, and there’s gonna be another one soon. 

U: Exciting, and when’s that coming out? 

B: It’s kinda undecided, either the end of this month or the beginning of June.  

U: I’d love to talk about “Way You Walk” because it’s your most successful song. When did it kick off? Why do you think it got that much success? 

B: I started Sex Pop on SoundCloud; that was where it all started. It didn’t go on Spotify until a year later or so, maybe 2. When I wrote Way You Walk, I was kinda letting myself write. Eventually, I put it out. What happened when it blew up was from Tina Woods, who’s a YouTuber. So my homies are friends with her. She heard the song and was like, “I really like this song” because my friends showed it to her somehow. Then she messaged me asking if she could use it for a YouTube video. So I said, “sure”, “yea”, use as many as you want! 

So she put it in the background of her makeup tutorial video. You could kinda hear it. Then after that she made a promo video for her merch, and the song was the basis of the video. When she used it there is when it really blew up on Instagram. 

U: I feel like there’s a nice relationship between content creators and musicians. With that said, how do you feel about TikTok? Do you feel there’s pressure to be on it as a musician? 

B: I’m not even on TikTok! I use TikTok to look at my friend’s videos. I think it’s really sad, in a good and bad way, there’s a mix. Like it works, it DOES work, but at the same time, a lot of those songs aren’t going to be as memorable in the long term where now they’re just treated as a trend. It’s cool as long as it keeps up, but that’s a strange way to weigh your success as a musician. At Berklee, I feel like we were taught about putting out as much shit as you can and I didn’t like that. I got sick of it. You lose some of the musicianship behind things. You only hear a clip of it; you don’t hear the whole song. It’s interesting.

U: Have you performed live with your own music? 

B: I have for the RVRCT band. I would play guitar and sing in that, but not for Sex Pop, no. I haven’t really performed anything Sex Pop. It takes a lot to play those songs live unless I just use a backing track. I really want to use real live instruments. I’m trying to find the resources for that. It’s a process. 

U: Can you talk about the process of making Sex Pop? What software do you use?

B: All the demos are made on my phone on Garage Band, like Summer Lovin’. The only thing that’s different on Summer Lovin’ is the mix and the vocals. Everything that you heard was programmed on my phone then I would play guitar into a microphone. I would have my phone placed in front of the amp, I’d have my headphones in, then I’d just play and try to get a good mix of that. 

U: So it’s all free software you’re using? 

B: Yea, completely free. 

The first Sex Pop album that’s all I did, it was just on my iPhone. Now I’m trying to hone in on perfecting mixing and mastering. Shoutout to Alex Wright for mastering. So I do on the stuff on Garage Band, then I’m like-this is done. Then me and Gianni go into the studio, which is his room and then we mix it to our heart’s content. We might redo the vocals with a cleaner mic and then send it to the master [Alex Wright]. Then we repeat the process 15 or so times. It’s so fun getting closer to the ending of a song. Feels really amazing. 

U: What would you say to your younger musician self? 

B: I feel like younger me didn’t care as much, like when it came to lyrics, I would write anything. Now I feel like I’m more honed in on certain themes. I’d probably tell them which chords to play hahahaha. I’m making songs now that I would not known how to do when I was younger. 

U: How do you feel about school? Do you think people need to go to college to study music? 

B: If you’re fortunate enough and want to uncover the mystery of music then I recommend going to school for music. If you’re one of those people that is doing it already, you already feel it, then you don’t need school. You could start writing music with your phone. I totally didn’t think I’d be a musician. I used to play soccer and my coach said “you can’t play jazz and soccer”. I actually didn’t end up joining the jazz band because it didn’t fit into my schedule. But, if I had I probably wouldn’t have written Sex Pop. 

U: How do you feel about the Boston music scene? 

B: The experience has been really cool. I love the Allston scene of having houses and turning them into shows. I think that’s cool. I used to live at Snake Pit and I ran the venue with my peers. But yea, that was like the place to be. I loved it there, I loved playing shows in there. We actually shot a music video in there. 

U: Last question. I named this platform you’re going to make something great with the idea in mind that everyone can be an artist. What do you think about that statement?

B: I think it’s amazing what we can do with technology now, the way we can put stuff together. And for people who don’t have access to technologies like that I think even just singing to yourself it’s so uplifting where you can really feel connected, The more people feel connected to each other, everyone else is going to make great things. I really stand by there. I’m big on people trying to be as positive to others as possible.