Love Drunk: Max and Bianca chat about their debut single

Max and Bianca’s debut single Love Drunk has been a long time in the making, as the duo tells us below, and this week it has been soundtracking commercial radio stations across the country. With their natural chemistry, pop smarts, and a fun new video for the track, we expect this week’s widespread radio love to only be the beginning for Max and Bianca.

How did you the two of you first meet?

Max: We were at a music course called the Talent Development Program at high school – they offer it to public school kids – and B was in the year below me and we heard each other singing, and a couple of friends thought we should work together, so we did.

We recorded some of the originals she’d written at her house, and she sent it to the management she was already with, they liked it – and I just kinda held on.

How early did you focus on working together in a more professional manner?

Bianca: Pretty much straight away. I guess when we first heard the recordings we did, we really liked the sound of that, and liked our voices together, so we thought we’d may as well work hard on it.

And how far along did the record deal occur?

Max: We had a year-and-a-half to two years of writing a whole lot of stuff by ourselves and with various other writers [including Lindsay Rimes]. We over to the US and met some people, made more connections and did some stuff over there, and continued writing.

Bianca: Our manager’s actually signed a joint venture with Sony: we’re part of their label Wonderlick.

Which is a smart place to be. How have you found the promotion side of things so far?

Max: It’s been pretty cool so far. I’m getting texts from Melbourne saying, “You’re on the cover of MX” That’s pretty awesome.

Bianca: After so much time in the studio to finally be putting stuff out there – it’s been such a long time. Now finally we’re being able to show people.

Will you read about yourselves?

Bianca: Yup. For starters. I know that I will.

Max: It’s exciting.

Bianca: And it’s good. Even if it’s bad criticism, they’re always something you can take constructively.

Max: Unless there isn’t. “Max is stupid”. How is that constructive? What am I going to take away from that? (laughs).

How do you feel about Love Drunk now, after having lived with it for so long?

Max: It has been a slow process, and there have been times where I’ve gone, “I’ve heard this so many times. I just don’t know what sounds good anymore.”

Bianca: It goes to the back of your mind, and you just live with it, and now I don’t care about that anymore.

Max: We have just had the song remixed, so even though it’s been a long process, you hear it again, and go, “Oh, that does sound new”, and the film clip is only a few months ago, so it’s not like we’ve been singing the one song all this time.

In terms of influences, what kinds of music were you listening to while writing, and what were you trying to emulate?

Bianca: It’s mainly pop, but then we take influences from some indie songs, if we hear a cool beat or something.

Max: Ghetto hip hop is really cool with its production, and so we take stuff like that and put it into what we’re making. Essentially we want to be played on the Top 40 charts, so we pretty much immerse ourselves in all that.

That world moves so quickly though. Are you afraid that by the time you release things, the sound of the day will have moved on?

Max: Songs are songs. If it’s a good song, it will break through. It’s just the production that often changes, so to make something sound cool, and relevant and new, you can just change a few things around.

And what do you hope people get from Love Drunk?

Max: I just hope they wanna dance. I just want them to be jumping up and down.

Bianca: And that they are not ashamed to have the windows down while they have it blaring in the car.

Love Drunk is at commercial radio now.