Aussie sensation Tones and I calls Macklemore the soundtrack to her life

It seems Tones and I is still pinching herself after a year of climbing the music charts and meeting her favourite musicians. Within the past 12 months, she's gone from busking with her keyboard and not even knowing what a "music chart" to dominating them thanks to "Dance Monkey," and meeting her biggest music idol, Macklemore. What a whirlwind!The Australian artist (who's real name is Toni Watson) chatted with etalk's Liz Trinnear from her home country about all the career highs she's achieved and her not-so-distant busking past. Tones explained how she started her music career after deciding to give up working a retail job and packed up a van to start performing on the streets of Byron Bay, and how, through it all, she had rapper Macklemore playing in the background to keep her going. The fearless musician is this week's etalk Open House artist and she performs at-home renditions of her hits "Dance Monkey" and "Never Seen the Rain."Liz Trinnear: Where are you joining us from today and how is it going?Tones and I: Hi! I am in Australia at my home and everything is going good in my home. But you know, we’re all dealing with the same things so it’s good as it can be. Just staying positive and working on music and hanging out with friends. It’s my best friend’s birthday today so we’re doing nothing at all. Staying at home but we’re just being happy.It looks like you’re living your best life right now. You had a visit from your favourite artist ever, Macklemore. Can you tell me how game-changing that experience was for you?Growing up, I’ve had sad moments where I’ve listened to his music and just cried and felt like that was the shoulder to cry on. I’ve had really happy moments when I listen to his music and I feel just so empowered. I’ve had moments where I was warming up to play basketball, because I play basketball, and we’d play Macklemore’s album. I literally listened to him the whole way up in my van driving the first time to Byron Bay—17 hours sleeping in truck stops in my van, pretending there was someone else in the van so the truckies wouldn’t bother me. He was there for me, whether he knew it or not, through so many times. When I got into a car accident for the first time, my car was wrapped around a pole, my engine was still running and Macklemore The Heist was still playing.

 

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A post shared by TONES AND I (@tonesandi) on Feb 13, 2020 at 10:47pm PST

When I say that, I mean so many moments in my life, there’s like a soundtrack that plays one of his songs. So to meet him and for him to be, more to the point, to be everything that you thought he would be, is really crazy. I got to sit down with him and talk with him two days later. I got to talk to him about some of the struggles we don’t really want to admit because we want to act so tough or whatever, coming up so quickly [in the music industry]. And he fully understood it and it did kind of happen for him as well and I think that sitting down with him really reaffirmed to me that f**k off, it doesn’t matter how many number one songs you have—no artist is actually comparing, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks except for yourself.You’ve got the most streamed song by a female artist of all time—what do accomplishments like that feel like for you?They’re huge, but I only know that now. I didn’t know about charts, I didn’t know how hard it was to climb big charts like Billboard or my ARIAs [Australian Recording Industry Awards] at home, all around the world, I didn’t know. So when that started happening, I thought, 'Oh, this must just be a thing—when you release a song, you go into a chart.' No, you don’t. I didn’t know that because it was my first experience. And now I know that it doesn’t and I’m like whoa, looking back that’s so huge. But at the time I was like, 'Man this probably happens to everyone.'So where do you go from here?I’m about to release my second single—well not for Australia, but for everyone else in the world. We kind of threw “Never Seen the Rain” out there but in terms of really wanting to push a single like “Dance Monkey,” this is it. And it’s called “Ur So F**kInG cOoL.” It’s about a party I went to, which I was invited to by this big producer, who’s a very nice guy I will add, but no one really wanted to talk to me or my friends. But then we talked to each other and I just thought, 'Let’s go; let’s get an Uber, let’s go back to the hotel and watch Netflix.' And I wrote a song about it. And I’ve also got my album coming as well.  etalk Open House is a weekly series that features performances and exclusive interviews with incredible talent like The Killers, Niall Horan and more. Catch the series on Thursday night as part of etalk’s regular  broadcast at 7pm ET on CTV  and 7:30pm on CTV2.