You don’t become the World’s Sexiest Boy Band by playing it safe, Austin Medrano and Skyler Molina of Mickey Darling know this. From the minute the band stepped into the music scene, they knew they didn’t want to sound like everything else out there.
Back in 2018, Molina challenged Medrano to make a bedroom pop-song, and within two hours the boys had the instrumental for ‘Shane Dawson’. When you listen to the evolution of their music, the poetry of their origin story shines through. Sure, the music is fun and allows cathartic avenues of screaming and dancing. But, the artistry runs deep.
Now, in 2024, the band has released their most serious album yet. Let’s Dance Until We Get Scared, the boys’ latest release, feels like a natural evolution into a more curated body of music. However, the boys made sure to not lose themselves or the essence of their music in the process. How? By doing what they want.
"Something I have always lived by is 'If you want their attention, just do it your way. Do it differently' and I forever stand by that."
For all their albums, the boys find ways to make the creative process deeply collaborative. From ‘demo-a-day’ with their prior albums, to ‘creative stretches’ for this one. “This was the first time that we’ve actually sat in a room together and hashed out a song from beginning to the end,” Medrano told me. “With all of our prior stuff, we’d have a thing called demo-a-day and we’d just challenge ourselves to make as many demos as possible to pick out the next single for.”
“But, for this album, Skyler was pretty adamant about having us create songs in the moment together. He coined them as ‘creative stretches’ which, essentially, was when we’d just throw music together in a matter of, like, an hour to four hours and whatever came out was, typically, the gist of the song.”
“For me personally,” he explained deeper. “I like to really sit with it and question us with ‘Is this really the best we can do for this song?’ And it can be a very blurry line to walk because we could either self-sabotage and never put music out or just hate everything we make. I feel like this album and the process of creating this album made me trust my ability in music making and I have Sky to thank for that.”
But, that process wasn’t their original plan. “The majority of the album came in a two-week frenzy,” Molina admitted. “We had an album decently ready, that was definitely leaning more into our older sound. So, in a moment of revelation, we decided to scrap everything and start completely fresh.”
“So we met up everyday for two weeks, where we would do, what we call, ‘creative stretches’. Austin would make a demo and I would search for melodies and lyrics while he’s making the demo. We’d usually have a solid rough draft of the finished song in a few hours. Two weeks of doing that and we had the majority of Let’s Dance Until We Get Scared!”
With a new album, created with an entirely new process for the band, it feels inevitable that the album would lead to a new sound. But, Mickey Darling is no stranger to trying something new. Still, new is scary.
“At first, when Skyler said let’s put out this album, it put so much discomfort into my headspace,” Medrano explained to me, detailing the process of making music that is new and unique. “This album was so different than what we’ve ever done. On top of that, I hadn’t done the ‘artist’ thing and sat on this music for weeks at a time, working endlessly and tirelessly on it.”
“It was a cathartic process of making music and letting it go. And letting it go was maybe the hardest thing for me. I actually had a ton of anxiety over it,” he explained honestly. “It was pretty sucky. But, I think when something makes you feel like that, it might be doing you a favor. Now, I have come to the other side that this sh*t isn’t as deep as it might seem. The comfort in going against the grain is that you can literally always make more music and keep on going. This life is fleeting, make whatever makes you happy. Trust in yourself. Make art.”
"[Making the album] showed me that Mickey Darling isn’t only this indie-pop entity but it’s whatever Skyler and I put out into the world together."
“Something I have always lived by is ‘If you want their attention, just do it your way. Do it differently’ and I forever stand by that,” Molina told me. “It can seem a bit scary to the untrained eye, but there is truly nothing to fear. The sun will rise again. The birds will keep flying. The scariest thing to me is trying to fit into a world and never finding out who you truly are, or what you truly want to say, or what you’re truly capable of. The possibility of endlessness takes away all possible fear in me.”
Growth inevitably follows fear, one way or another. And the ‘fear’ the boys had making this album benefited them greatly. With a new sound, they found themselves musically and individually, realizing that their music is about who they want to be, not who they think they have to be.
“It’s kind of funny,” Medrano said. “Because i feel like my sound as a producer has definitely been evolving away from the ‘traditional’ Mickey Darling sound which is, like, upbeat-indie-pop. But before [Let’s Dance Until We Get Scared] I’d make these weird demos but discard them because in my head I’d be like ‘This isn’t the Mickey Darling sound though.. It’ll be too different and not what people expect so let me just make an upbeat-indie-pop beat and boom.'”
“This album finally rips that bandaid off and lets me say ‘Whatever I make today is what defines Mickey Darling.’ It showed me that Mickey Darling isn’t only this indie-pop entity but it’s whatever Skyler and I put out into the world together.”
Molina, simply in agreement, explained to me: “It feels amazing to change everything for the sake of growth and self expression! We always want to make sure we stay excited about the process and the songs, so it has been an incredible bandaid to rip off and just free ourselves from any & all preconceived notions of what we’re supposed to sound like or what we’re supposed to create. We steer the ship and that feels amazing.”
It is easy to listen to music for the sake of enjoying it, and it is easy to put out music for the sake of having people enjoy it. And, despite or alongside the growth Molina and Medrano experienced creating their masterpiece, they still understand the beauty of enjoying music.
“I think the main takeaway for this album is to just simply have fun with your life and don’t take things too seriously,” Medrano told me. “The album represents a care-freeness that I think we lose as we get older and more calloused to the world around us. It’s about relearning to be excited about everything rather than being numb to it.”
“I literally want then to dance until they get scared. And I mean that in every regard,” Molina explained. “I use the term dancing lightly, because everything is dancing. Drawing on a piece of paper is dancing for your hands – same with playing an instrument. Running is a different type of dance. It’s all dancing. And because social media & technology has stoled pretty much every good aspect of what it means to be human, I hope the album reminds the humans of the world that its okay to be in the real world and have fun and let loose and dance until you get scared. And then once you’re scared, keep dancing.”
I didn’t think Let’s Dance Until We Get Scared could get any better for me until I heard the band explain what it meant to them. Hearing the evolution of an artist is one of the best things as a fan because it reminds you that they are human. They grow just as you do.
While the new album feels like a new direction for the band, it really isn’t. Mickey Darling will always be Mickey Darling. There isn’t a new sound or direction because, at the end of the day, it is always going to be Skyler Molina and Austin Medrano, the World’s Sexiest Boy Band.
