SGA’s
Blockton Brothers Score Over
One Million YouTube Hits In Three Days! Jesse and Adam Blockton have been playing music since they were very young -- both writing, playing and singing in separate rock bands since junior high school. More recently (and to the delight of their mother) they had an opportunity to finally join forces and take a stab at writing a pop hit. Being huge pop fans, the collaboration felt unusually right to them. A friend of theirs was working in A&R at Columbia Records and told them that Steve Greenberg (then Columbia president) was looking for a single for Jessica Simpson's new album and he didn't care where it came from, as long as it was a hit. So, their first collaboration was a song called "Dreams." It was a song about how strong her love was and how devoted to her husband. Steve Greenberg loved it. He put it in the "singles pile." Unfortunately, Simpson announced her divorce a week later and the single was placed into the garbage pile. They also had a friend who had worked closely with Britney Spears'' people at Jive Records. They heard she was making an album and knew that she had just dumped her husband "K-Fed." Jesse thought it would be a good idea to try to write a song called "Fed-Up" about Britney. They wrote it, had a friend sing the demo and e-mailed the song to anyone they thought might have a loose connection to Spears or Jive. Somewhere along the way, somebody got hold of the song, made a crude video for it and posted it on YouTube, claiming that it was Britney's "leaked" new single. The video shot straight to number one on YouTube, with over a million views in under 3 days, and was featured on all of the entertainment blogs. It eventually made its way to FM radio. The song was being played on Z100 with listener polls asking, "Is it Britney or not?" The brothers were told that it was being played on the FM airwaves from New York to Australia. Stories ran about it on NBC's "Extra," Fox News and in magazines like "In Touch" and "US Weekly". There was even a "Fed-Up" ringtone for sale. Finally, Britney's camp at Jive had to make a statement to dispel the rumors and put an end to the madness. |
The photo that Adam and Jesse Blockton supplied is, they say, the 'most recent' they could find. Maybe they're looking for a Michael Jackson cut, now. |
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Adam and Jesse also gave an interview (at the advice of, according to the Blocktons, “some very smart people at the SGA”) to Variety Magazine. No one knew who wrote the song after all. That article got picked up by the New York Post and the next thing they knew they were a Page Six item. Then their phones started ringing. Since then, they've met with all the major publishing houses in New York and have gotten the opportunity to work with and collaborate with people who they may have never had the chance to work with otherwise. And they still feel like it's only the beginning. “We're still learning about the pop songwriting craft. We're still overjoyed every time we find the hook in a song (or at least when we think we do). We still appreciate and value the criticism from our peers and our mentors and we can't wait for what happens next," say the brothers. Congratulations to Adam and Jesse for an ingenious way to get their names out there. And, this isn’t their only great piece of work. To find out more about Adam and Jesse Blockton, visit http://www.myspace.com/blocktonblockton. |
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