Young Science has had its fair share of good luck. Getting played on San Francisco modern-rock station Live 105, for instance, was a big win for the synth-pop outfit. Yet even that couldn’t prepare the San Jose group, which headlines the Blank Club on Friday, for the bizarre episode that awaited them: getting mixed up with boy band One Direction.
Earlier this year, Live 105’s DJ Menace asked Young Science if they would let 99.7 NOW use their song “Chill Murray” as background music for a video interview segment with One Direction. During the interview, the members of One Direction talked about a new song coming out soon. Some of their fans assumed “Chill Murray” was the new song and quickly cut together YouTube videos with the song playing over footage of One Direction performing. These videos generated a lot of views before getting taken down a few months later.
It only gets more surreal from there. The truth of who sang “Chill Murray” eventually came out in the comments section of the YouTube videos as fans argued about which member of One Direction was singing lead. Once they realized their mistake, they happily became Young Science fans. “Our following on Facebook doubled in a month because of it,” says Young Science frontman James Melo. “People were like, ‘I came here for One Direction but ended up loving Young Science. What a joyous mistake.’”
Before this strange misunderstanding, it would seem unlikely that a group like One Direction, which caters primarily to prepubescent girls, would share fans with Young Science, which appeals more to a college-aged alternative-radio crowd, especially since “Chill Murray” is an ’80s-inspired synth-pop song about drugs, while One Direction is the epitome of the wholesome boy band.
Yet the song is really catchy. You can almost understand the confusion if you buy into the premise that One Direction would release a synth-pop number. “Our music is pop music. I guess it’s not that crazy to think we would be in the same genre as One Direction,” says Melo.
The whole thing ended up seeming like a genius prank that Young Science played, but Melo swears up and down that he had nothing to do with it. “It would have been a pretty awesome prank for me to do, but unfortunately I didn’t think of it,” Melo tells me.
Really, it’s just another example of Young Science’s penchant for good luck.
Young Science,
Anya & the Get Down,
Soft White Sixties
Friday, Nov. 9, 9pm; $10
The Blank Club,
San Jose
.Young Science Gets an Unlikely Boost From One Direction
