On their newest release, Been Stellar’s Sam Slocum and Skyler Knapp take inspiration from the city of New York after moving from Michigan in 2017 to start college. “Everyone Smokes in the City” comes from an observation the two made about the prevalence of smokers in New York compared to their previous, more midwestern home. The single takes clear inspiration from bands at the forefront of New York’s music scene in the early aughts—The Strokes and Interpol, in particular, are cited as influences by the group—and keeps a naïve sort of charm with observations on the city like choosing between a smelly subway car or the unknown of catching a cab.
“Where we came from, everything was so safe and upstanding,” Knapp says. “Even though we still were in a really nice part of the city, we noticed that the people were a bit more jagged. The song is about this new type of personality we started to see: falsely jaded, pretentiously unpretentious. It’s about dudes who talk way too much about zines and Bushwick (both of which are cool for the record). The goal of it was to try to make the least hypocritical observation of these new people we found ourselves surrounded with.”
You can stream “Everyone Smokes in the City” below. – Cameron Carr