Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Ghostryder is set to drop his sophomore single ’10 Roommates’ this Friday.
The single is a moody, ethereal and nostalgic romp through early adulthood – the ups, the downs and the share houses. It kicks off with an echoing guitar riff before building through a rousing first verse, ultimately culminating in an earworm hook.
’10 Roommates’ feels reminiscent of pop artists like Conan Gray and Troye Sivan, but the dreamy feel of the song allows it to truly stand alone. It feels like the natural evolution of Ghost’s debut single ‘Indie Alt Boys’, which recently hit 100,000 streams on Spotify – no small feat for an emerging artist.
I had a chat with Ghost about all of the exciting things we can expect from his new release, the inspiration behind the song and of course, all things Mariah Carey.
Hi Ghost, thanks for chatting with me. Congratulations on hitting 100,00 Spotify streams on ‘Indie Alt Boys!’ That’s pretty awesome. Did you ever expect your song to resonate with that many people?
Definitely not that quickly! Thanks to TikTok it was a pretty quick growth. It was definitely unexpected in such a short amount of time.
What sort of marketing did you do on TikTok that you think made it blow up?
Definitely the mash-up [with Charli XCX] – that was actually one of my friend’s ideas. But I think the most amount of traction definitely came from pairing it along with trends. Some people were doing transitions, doing transformations – I feel like it was a versatile sound. Very ‘TikTok-y’.
What – or who – was the inspiration behind Indie Alt Boys?
The inspo came from a session that I did as a writer – and you definitely come across these classic guitar boys a lot in sessions – especially in SoCal. I feel like my friends always knew that I loved an alt-boy. So it was just this one session – and this other writer, he was just the epitome of an indie alt-boy. And I thought that kind of had a ring to it, and I hummed the hook into my phone when I got home at like 11 at night and did the rest of the song with a producer.
So it was inspired by one person in particular?
Yeah, actually. I’m not even super good friends with this person, but there is a specific person that catapulted the vision. I don’t know if we’re close enough that I could tell him either, which is really funny – he might be totally weirded out by it!
There’s not that much weight on it being specifically about him, but he was the catalyst.
That’s gold! So moving along, let’s talk about your new single coming out on Friday. Can you tell me a bit about ’10 Roommates’?
’10 Roommates’ is a nostalgic, homey-feeling type of song. It was inspired by true events – I moved into this house a year ago with a bunch of my best friends and we’re all musicians. So far living in LA, I’ve always had one or two roommates but this was the first time it was a big musician house. So there were people in and out all of the time. It was very suburban too. We moved to this part of LA that’s much more of a family vibe.
So I really wanted to write this song about having this big full house on the corner. Like, the first line of the hook is ‘One big house right on the corner.’ So it’s kind of capturing the nostalgia of childhood big houses but we’re all adults, and poor, and have our mattresses on the floor.
I hope that people feel nostalgic for it, but also can rock out with the windows down.
Is that experience one that you think a lot of people will resonate with?
I think more than I was expecting. The first snippet I posted, a lot of people were commenting “I’m in London and I agree with this,” or “I’m in New York and I agree with this.” I don’t think I was expecting people to resonate on a literal level – I was expecting people to love the vibe and the cheeky concept. So I was actually surprised by how many people were like “Oh no, I have so many roommates, it’s actually a joke.”
What do you hope people take away from the song?
I hope people feel a sense of community in the poor striving artist identity. I hope people can hear that and think we’re all in the same boat – all we want to do is make art, and if it means living with ten people in a big creative house, that’s fulfilling – it’s all good.
Speaking of making art, who are your general musical inspirations?
It’s funny – I feel like my inspirations don’t necessarily correlate to the music I make. Mariah Carey is my absolute icon, her pen-game, her vocals, she is a huge part of who shaped me. But I feel like you don’t necessarily hear that in my music. But other contemporaries – Kid Bloom is a big inspiration, a lot of the classic sounding bands like Coldplay or Glass Animals. Those sorts of bands are definitely my inspiration for this project particularly.
Will we be expecting whistle tones in your next single?
That’s the thing! It doesn’t quite carry over into my music.
How do you think the Mariah influence manifests itself in your music?
Well, I’m a song-writer – that’s my ‘day job’. So, it definitely manifests there. I’d just say the soulful melodies – I’m big on melodies, which is definitely her influence.
What can we expect from your upcoming EP set to drop in September?
Feel-good Summer bops. I talked a bit about it on social media, but I totally redid the whole EP a couple of months ago. Originally it had a mix of more rock stuff, anthemic stuff – it was rock, it was pop, it was alt. Now I’m kind of saving the rock for my next project.
So I took those out and put in three songs that are much more aligned with the ‘indie Alt Boys’ and the ’10 Roommates’ and it’s more of a nostalgic, ‘lake vibes’, ‘road-trip vibes’. It’s more cohesive – like a ‘dream-world’ kind of vibe.
It’s six songs. And – there’s one more single coming after this one!
Can’t wait! So one more question – where do you see your music taking you five years in the future?
Touring. For sure.
’10 Roommates’ will be available to stream Friday 22 July.