When Andrew Wyatt, Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg started synthy pop band Miike Snow, they already had hit singles under their belts. Among others, Karlsson and Winnberg authored Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and Wyatt co-wrote Bruno Mars’ Grammy-winning “Grenade.” Then Miike Snow scored their own hits with the brilliant “Animal” and “Sylvia.”
“I don’t think we ever expected to have any hits on that first album. While we were making it, we were still working on songs for other people and I think we were in the mindset of verse chorus, verse chorus,” Wyatt tells Metro from the Coachella festival days before launching their new U.S. tour.
When it came to their March-released second album, “Happy to You,” their creative world was quite a different place. “We toured with a lot of different bands and checked out a lot of different stuff. Then when we went back into the studio to do this record what came out was different from the beginning,” says Wyatt, adding that hit singles were far from their minds.
“The goal is not to have hits at all. Hits come in the most oblique way. If it happens then it’s part of a sign to either not live your life rent check to rent check, or time to have the freedom to do something else, or time to reach a lot of different people. There’s a lot of different ways to look at the fallout from having hits, but you can’t really control how that happens.”
So, who was Wyatt checking out at Coachella?
It is important to note that Metro spoke with Wyatt before the first appearance of hologram Tupac, but it looks like he was going to witness it anyway.
“I’m a fan of SBTRKT, but he’s playing the exact same time we are. Pulp is playing tonight; I really want to see that. Mazzy Star is also playing tonight. I want to see the Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre show. The Horrors, yeah so many bands I want to check out. M83, I missed him in Stockholm so I want to catch him.”
