It's been a wild couple of years for The Dare, who has found surreal success, launching from viral hitmaker to Charli XCX co-conspirator and Coachella standout. Before his weekend two set at the festival, Miles the DJ caught up with The Dare backstage to talk about the whirlwind of the last few years, finding inspiration in previous New York scenes, and how he found his way into the fabric of "brat summer."
LISTEN NOW: The Dare at Coachella
"It's happened quite quickly," admits The Dare on his rise, "so it's kind of a roller coaster. And it changes every day, so that kind of question of 'how did I get here?' becomes different. Whether I'm at Coachella right now or, playing a pre-show at Primavera last year, or just got off tour of Europe, last month. So there were many times when I was in random parts of the UK or Europe where Austria, for example, didn't think I would ever go there, so. Yeah, it's been a bit crazy and I'm just constantly adjusting."
"Girls" is the song that put The Dare on the radar, but it has been his work with Charli XCX that has catapulted him to new levels. And to think it all started in his apartment.
"She just hit me up, I think like a little while after 'Girls' came out, and people first started hearing about it. She was in Delaware, I think, on tour with Dua Lipa and was like, 'Can I come over to your house tomorrow? I'll take a car up.' And I said, 'sure.' So my roommates, I had to explain to them what was going on. They didn't believe me. I said you need to go stay in your room so you don't fan girl out or freak her out or something, or just take a long walk."
"She came over, we listened to a lot of music. It was very surreal for me as a fan and, yeah, we became friends after that."
Their friendship would soon spark "Guess," featuring Billie Eilish, another landmark moment in the endless vibes of Charli's "brat summer." "We had worked on a few ideas over the past year before this party, and she was excited about playing one of them. She was like, 'would you want to play one? I'll come to the party, like test it out,'" The Dare shares.
"That one we had never felt that strongly about, or it had just been kind of cast to the side, the original version, and I think the day before or the day of, I decided to make sort of like a club edit version of the demo that was in existence. So, I just made it really, really quickly and in like maybe an hour or two, sent it to her. She was really excited about the version that I had sort of made. We played it at the party. Obviously she came, people took videos of it. There was sort of like this ground swell of excitement around that song. People didn't know if it was her song, or my song, or what was going on. Then over the course of the Met Gala weekend we went to the studio and sort of put the finishing touches on it, so it came together very, very quickly and then she put it on the deluxe, which the rest is history."
To hear much more from The Dare, check out our full interview from Coachella above.