Hollywood Undead Won’t Be Releasing a New Album, Says Johnny 3 Tears
If we’re being honest, he’s not wrong. Johnny 3 Tears, co-founder of that rap-rock-metal mess we all love, Hollywood Undead, did a new interview with one Skratch N’ Sniff and SNSMix.com about the current state of music and how it’s affecting the album-making game. He went on about how the whole process is basically rubbish now with streaming and social media clips, and he wasn’t making any bad points.
“We have a bunch of songs lined up — we’re gonna release songs,” he shared with the ol’ Sniff. “At one point we’ll probably package them with some other songs and put out a record for those who want ’em. But dude, cars don’t even have fucking CD players in ’em anymore. What are we gonna release a record for? No one buys ’em. Except for people who like vinyl. And now, it’s funny ’cause outside of the artwork, there’s almost no incentive to make an album anymore. So we’ll see what happens. But as of now, we’re just gonna release songs and videos and all the other stuff, and eventually maybe package it into a record for people who want physical product or tangible product. But yeah, as far as releasing an actual album, I have no idea. I don’t even know if anybody’s gonna do that anymore.”
It’s really quite sad how streaming has changed everything, and that’s some Johnny 3 Tears certainly had something to say about.
“In the streaming era, it’s a bummer. I used to love buying an album and you read the liner notes and the thank yous. It was like an event. But then again, I didn’t have access to the back catalog of the world either. So it was, like, I spent 20 bucks. I’m gonna go through this and listen to every word and da, da, da, da. Now it’s, like, dude, you’re lucky if people listen to the first 30 seconds of every song on your album. And no one wants the physical product. So it’s been negated by the streaming world. And if you don’t adapt to that, it really is just kind of wasteful. And then the back half of your record no one listens to anyway, so you’re getting bummed out ’cause you might have some really good stuff that you care about, and now you’re, like, ‘Well, no one’s listening to those songs.’
“It’s a different world, dude. Honestly, it’s hard to adapt to. I can’t stand the whole TikTok, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta have snippets. You need these 15-second videos.’ It’s not my world. I’m just living in it. But as far as music goes, I love it, because I write music all of the time — every day, that’s pretty much what we all do. And it sucks ’cause you write music all day every day, and you get every two years you’ve gotta put up 14 songs out of the hundreds you’ve worked on. So that’s always been very, like, ‘Eh, that that part kind of stinks.’ So now we just write songs, we send them in and they’ll be, like, ‘Yeah, let’s put it out in a couple weeks. What the hell?’ That’s a lot more fun. There’s not so much weight on it: ‘Oh, how did it do? Did it sell a gazillion copies?’ It’s more like it goes away with the next song that you put out. So there’s less pressure on the song. We get to put out whatever we want, whenever we want. It’s kind of cool — artistically speaking. But everything has its wins and losses.”
“It’s a different world, dude. We’re just living in it, bro.”
Hollywood Undead released their single “Hollywood Forever” last year. It was the band’s first release under their new label home, Sumerian Records.
