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Awsten Knight of Waterparks breaks down our 5 fave lyrics from Double Dare
Waterparks is having what we like to call a *moment*.
The Houston band—made up of lead singer and guitarist Awsten Knight, backing vocalist and guitarist Geoff Wigington and drummer Otto Wood—is about to release their first ever full-length album, Double Dare, on Nov. 4. No longer are they wading in the kiddie pool of EPs and singles. Now, Waterparks is hitting the big time, ready to show off their unique brand of rock—it's a sound that's too varied to put into a box, Awsten says.
"We're really trying to get it out there that we're capable of being more than a pop-punk band," Awsten explained to GL. "And it's 2016—I think you can really do whatever you want sound-wise. It doesn't have to have a label on it."
He shared that Double Dare has bits of punk, trap, indie, alt-rock and electronic on it, but here's the deal: If 5 Seconds of Summer, Good Charlotte (the Madden brothers manage the band) and Fall Out Boy are up your alley, you'll definitely want to press play on their new album. If not for just their sound, but for their lyrics, too. Awsten toys with an intricate mix of deep diving details and nuanced simplicities, something that—when paired with his voice—just plain work.
The lyrics on this album probably stand out so much because they were approached differently than they have been in the past. "It's really weird—I didn't really used to write songs about girls too much...but now I'm writing way too many fuzzy things," Awsten admitted.
With the aid of Awsten himself, we're breaking down our five favorite "fuzzy" lyrics from Double Dare below.
You're a symphony,
I'm just a sour note.
—"Stupid For You"
"I wrote this song about my current girlfriend before we were dating, and that was one of my little insecure lines," Awsten says. "I don't really get how I tricked her into liking me, but I did, and [this] lyric is a representation of that."
You've painted your future,
But I'm just not in the picture.
Maybe I missed the frame.
—"Royal"
"That line was kind of about what it would've been like if I had pursued college—that version of me," he shared. "Feeling like I slightly wish I would've gone and done the "regular" thing—I don't wish I had done that, but while I was writing it was like, 'You know, maybe I missed that opportunity to go and have a more traditional route of growing up.'"
I wanna make my way into your kiss.
I wanna live inside your mind,
Next to your favorite songs.
I won't slow my pace until you walk away.
I wanna lose my mood inside a late night phone call with you.
—"Take Her to the Moon"
"[Your favorite songs] are in a really happy, cool place in your brain. When I wrote that, it's like, 'I want to be there.' Because I want to be looked at or thought of the way that you love your favorite songs."
But I was thinking we could get away sometime,
Yeah, let's call it a date
And you can devastate my personal space,
I never liked it anyway.
—"Powerless"
"'Powerless' is definitely a "before I finally got her" song," Awsten spilled—"her" being his girlfriend. "That part of the bridge specifically is like a turn around in the mood and everything, because the lines before that are more sad."
My mood's dictated by our conversations,
And if you don't text I get too frustrated.
—"21 Questions".
"I actually wrote that two or three days after I started talking to her," Awsten says. "Before, in other relationships and stuff like that, I was never remotely clingy. In fact, most of them would say, 'You only care about the band!' But with this, I literally started putting my phone on ring so that I would know if texts were coming in."
The band will hit the road this Thursday, Nov. 3 to open up for Sleeping with Sirens on the End the Madness Tour alongside State Champs and Tonight Alive. Pre-order a physical copy of Double Dare here or on iTunes here before it's released this Friday, Nov. 4.
Have you ever heard of Waterparks before? What do you think of their new album Double Dare so far? Sound off in the comments!
Photo credit: Jonathan Weiner