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Albuquerque emo-alt-rockers Right On, Kid! have been attacking the stage with loud music and an optimistic message for ten years. Lead singer Zach Rose tells The Paper. that the band was writing in producer Seth Henderson’s basement when one of their guitarists started “humming a melody,” which led to the band’s latest single “Bad Feeling.”
“He said the words, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’” Rose says. “It just took off.”
The band would go on to record Carry What You Need, a five-track album filled with the band’s signature pop-punk sound, which is yet to be released.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Paper.: How would you describe your sound?
Zach Rose: I’ve always been a big fan of really in-your-face high-energy [music] but we’re also really introspective. [The music] deals with a lot of personal emotions and delivers that in a really accessible, fun way.
How would you feel if someone were to describe your music as emo?
I think Emo is good. We say [the music is] kind of like pop-rock, maybe not entirely alt-rock, but “emo-alt-rock” is a good way to describe it for sure.
The word “emo” has become a celebrated term these days. People are undeniably embracing it.
I think there are a lot of waves of different emo that people grow up with. My sister, for example, turned me on to Taking Back Sunday and Fall Out Boy, all those bands from the Midwest and East Coast. As I grew up, I was more about the next wave of emo bands. “Pop punk” might be a good way to put that, like The Story So Far. That band is super influential. I was a hip-hop guy and I liked heavier music. I know that doesn’t reflect in the product, but in high school, I was really big into hardcore. That’s where I learned to love live music.
“Bad Feeling” has been described as “raw and unapologetic.”
When we were younger, we were definitely writing music to please ourselves and we were trying to find our sound, but when you’re 18 or 19, it’s really hard to do things without thinking about what other people are gonna say or think. I use that adjective [unapologetic] because this is one of the first songs we wrote that we knew was gonna be really good. We knew that we were gonna be really proud of it and we knew that the message was very clear: That things are always gonna work out. You’re always gonna be looking over your shoulder but we still have to put our head down and keep going. The apology doesn’t need to be said until afterward.