“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“Do I call you Tones
or Toni?”
“Tones.
I can’t even believe that
this is my life sometimes.
It’s going number one
in so many countries.
“‘Dance Monkey.’”
“‘Dance Monkey.’”
“‘Dance Monkey.’”
“For anyone that thinks that
I’m, like, an overnight success
just doesn’t know about,
like, the hard yards
I’ve already put in.
I used to work at a surf
shop on Bourke Street,
which is really the busiest
part of Melbourne.
And there was like, you
could busk on Bourke Street.
I really, really
wanted to busk.
I couldn’t even play an
instrument at this point.
One of my friends was like,
you should come to Byron
because you can literally
just park up and busk out
of the side of your van.
And I was like, OK,
I’ll give it a go.
So I bought a van,
moved to Byron Bay
and started living in my van.”
“What was your impression
of Byron Bay when you first
got there?”
“I said, ‘I don’t think
I’m going to fit in here.’
There’s a lot of buskers in
Byron, but very acoustic guitar.
It’s very, like, bohemian.
So probably the
first time anyone’s
pulled out a keyboard
on the street,
let alone, like, the drum pad,
the synthesizers, and the loop
pedal and the harmonizers.”
[singing]
“I stumbled across her
when she was busking
in Byron, in September 2017.
It was the very first time
she’d tried busking.
I heard that,
and I said to my wife like,
‘Whoa. That was pretty cool.’”
“He gave me his card — said
‘entertainment lawyer’ on it.
And I said to him, ‘I don’t
have any legal issues.’”
“Tones was my first
management client.
She came in, and lived
with me and my family
for a while after there,
and worked out of my studio
a lot in that first year
while she was busking.”
“I’d go up every
Monday, Tuesday
and stay there, write music,
go busk for the week.
I was busking day, day,
day, day —
in the winter, when no one
else would busk.
In the rain, when no one
else would be busking,
I would be busking.
It wasn’t about the money.
It was about, no matter what,
being able to get more fans.
So there might be
20 people that night
that would otherwise
never know who I was.”
“When did it hit you that your
busking was becoming a thing,
that you were an attraction?”
“I know that there
was a point where
I realized if I posted on
my social media, and said
I was busking somewhere
people would come.
Other buskers started
getting angry at me.
Some started a Facebook group.
And were, like, we’re
going to run Tones out
of town — like, for no reason.
They just hated how big
the crowds were getting.”
“People don’t walk past Tones.
No one does.
By the second song there were
always like 10, 20 people.
By the fifth,
the crowd was hectic
every single time.”
“I love busking.
There’s so many good, amazing
people on the street.
It’s the reason that I’m here.
But there was one night
that was very frustrating.
And I wrote a
song about that.
People grab my hands
and be like, ‘You know you
stopped me dead in my tracks
when I was walking by.’
[singing]
‘Just sing one more song,
just one more song.’
‘I’m just going to
get my husband.’
I’m literally just repeating
what people tell me.
That’s why if you replace
‘dance’ with the word ‘sing,’
it’s just about
me busking.
[singing]
I always wanted to do a song
with a bass drop chorus.
I really like that song
that’s like,
‘You just want attention.
You don’t want my heart.’
I loved how it was like —
So I played some bass,
and I kept that loop.
I put the other loop down.
I sang what I’d
already written.
It just felt so right.
I wrote ‘Dance Monkey’
in half an hour,
and then it was done.”
[singing]
“Just watching her busk
with it, early on,
people just loved it.
And we’re like, this is
going to be a cracker.
Like a proper cracker.”
“You guys basically specialize
in buskers at this point?”
“Essentially —”
“We just like working
with buskers, that’s
the thing, we like
working with people that
want to create art, and tour
and make their life music,
and buskers do that.”
“Did Tones have original
music when you guys first
made contact with her?”
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
‘Johnny Run Away’ was
the most developed demo,
and that was the
first release we put out.
[singing]
That caught a fire real quick
in Australia, crossed
over to commercial radio,
which was huge.”
“In Australian terms, ‘Johnny’ —
it doesn’t get any better
than that for a debut.”
“Even though, like, my song
was getting high rotation
on like, all the mainstream
radios, that does nothing.
You have to keep busking,
and I didn’t want to 
work at Woolworth’s.”
“So when did you first hear
the demo for ‘Dance Monkey?’”
“I never heard a demo.
She came into the studio,
and played me the song
how she played it.
And then it was sort of our
job in the studio to make it,
I guess like, radio friendly.
Just about that bass
drop, making sure
that it was not too straight,
that it really swung.”
“We set up ‘Dance Monkey,’
and were going to release it.
I was like, ‘Look, maybe 
it’s just a live track.
Maybe it’s just a banging live.
Maybe it doesn’t do as
well as ‘Johnny,’
and I was trying
to just, I don’t know,
just keep
expectations in check.”
“Dave said to me that,
‘Don’t be upset
if this song doesn’t live
up to ‘Johnny Run Away’
because that song is probably
more of a radio hit, which
is apparently everything
that matters these days.”
“Now she forever tells a
story that, ‘This is the song
that my manager Dave said was
probably not a radio song,’
and it’s like the biggest song
in the world right now.”
[singing]
“In Australia, it’s broken the 
the record of any
female artist ever.
Any Australian artist ever,
and any song at number one,
the most consecutive weeks.”
“A lot of songs become
big in Australia.
Some of them cross
over to the U.K.,
and other European countries,
but not all of them
can make the leap
to America, like,
what does it mean for your
song to break in the U.S.?
Is that meaningful to you?”
“That is like another
whole universe in itself.
It’s like, breaking the U.S.
is like re-releasing
‘Dance Monkey’
again to the world.”
“Do you ever feel guilty
that the song that
helped you make it is
sort of complaining
about the very thing
that helped you make it?”
“No, I’m writing it
about the girl that
knocked over my keyboard,
and the guy that
tried to steal my money
and the two guys that were
literally yelling out ‘Again!
Again! Again! Again! Again!’
right in my face, and
the guy that walked past me
and said, you’re [expletive] —
all in, like, 30 minutes.”
“Have you been back to busk
since ‘Dance Monkey’
hit number one?”
“It’s very hard to do.
I want to dress
up as Old Tones
from the ‘Dance Monkey’
film clip and go busk.
People ask me 
how I feel.
I get a little bit
frustrated because I don’t
know how I feel,
but like sometimes
I have those small moments
when you’re driving
in your car on your own, and
you just think to yourself,
‘Holy [expletive],
I have the most streamed song
in the world right now.’”
[singing]
