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Alongside creating music videos for Run The Jewels, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Odd Future, Sean Solomon dedicated his twenties to the Sub Pop-signed trio Moaning but when they parted ways, diving head-first into animation just made sense.
On a whim he wrote a song called "Car Crash" and animated a video to go alongside it. He shared the clip online in late 2024 and the song found an unexpectedly huge audience, with over six million views across platforms. “That's when it clicked and I started making this kind of music where I didn’t give a shit what anyone thinks,” Solomon explained. For too long, he was pressured into keeping his two passions separate or told that he had to choose one of them. “Finally, I listened to my own instincts. I combined them, and it worked,” he explained. Whereas "Car Crash" was written and then animated, "Shooting Star" was the first song Solomon wrote with his visuals guiding the lyrics.
Besides animating each video he releases, Solomon has also been cooking up comics with his lyrics in word balloons for each new song. He even drew his stage plot and tech rider by hand: “All the stuff that's annoying about being a musician, I'm like, ‘How can I do this in a creative way so that it doesn't feel like work, and it feels like something that's inspired?’” So that he can integrate his animated visuals into his live shows, Solomon has lugged a vintage TV set armed with a VHS input to each venue, the animations and backing tracks running on tape being the only bandmates he shares the stage with.
In a sense, he’s re-learning how to write and record music his way. “If I worry too much about succeeding, the music will suck. I try to write songs for fun. You have to allow yourself to act like a little kid and mess around,” he explains. “Just make whatever the fuck you want. If you don't succeed, it doesn't matter,” he says, “because you'll be proud of what you made.”
English (US) · 