Interview: Beauty School Dropout Drops Insight Into Their Converging Music Journeys
Being the first band signed to Verswire — a label backed in part by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus — is no small feat, and neither was sitting down to ask the newest darlings of grunge and pop punk, Beauty School Dropout, about where they’ve been, where they’re at, and where they’re going.
Written by Arundhati Ghosh
Photo courtesy of Out Here Visuals
From being fully self-produced to becoming the princes of Verswire, the boys of Beauty School Dropout are no strangers to the rigorous climb towards fame and recognition in the music industry. Cole Hutzler, Brent Burdett, and Bardo came together to bring BSD to life in the late 2010s and today, they each embody the kind of grunge, sort of punk, comparatively pop music that fans know and love their band for. Their hard work and unique sound has brought them to where they are now: Members of a label backed by Sherry Saeedi, Mark Hoppus, and Pete Wentz. Never ones to settle, their next big move is opening for pop-punk casanova Jaden Hossler, better known as jxdn, on the “I Hope This Never Ends” Tour, which kicks off February 24.
Afterglow: Thanks for sitting down with me! You guys go on tour with jxdn in a month, honestly, a little less than a month. How are y’all feeling about that, and what are you looking forward to?
Beepus: I’m just excited to play that many shows in a row and go on tour that long. Plus, jxdn’s our boy and we love him to death, so it’s sick.
Colie: Also, to give you context for [Beepus], he’s — am I allowed to say it?
Beepus: Yeah.
Colie: He’s playing with jxdn too, so he’s playing two times a night for the whole tour.
Bardo: But as a dancer though. He’s an interpretive dancer on stage.
Colie: An interpretive bassist.
Bardo: I think we’re gassed, it’s gonna be really fun. We already tour with our best friends, but getting to tour with the second degree of our best friends is really, really cool.
Colie: I think this one will be extremely fun for us too because our transportation situation is gonna be a lot different from our last tour. Last time, we took a 15-passenger. This time we secured a — it’s kind of an RV, kind of a bus. It’s a really solid space for us to be able to not have to worry about hotel rooms, keep all of our stuff in one place, and just actively do other things that are productive while we’re on the road. But yeah, we fucking love playing shows and that’s really all we care about, and there’s a lot of new music that we’re trying to let everybody know that we have.
Do you think you’ll be performing newer songs throughout the tour while you open? Or will y’all keep it to Boys Do Cry and We Made Plans & God Laughed?
Bardo: Both. We’re gonna be doing a lot of the old stuff, but we’re writing an album right now, and it’s really dope. It’s gonna be a good opportunity for us to test some songs. We’re definitely going to be playing the song we have with jxdn that’s coming out.
Kind of leading into that, mostly on creative control: You guys were the first band signed under Verswire, and I have heard you guys talk about how they ended up choosing to work with you, but how did y’all end up choosing them? How did they seem like a good choice of label after coming off of being fully self-produced?
Colie: It’s pretty fun because, by the time we met Sherry [Saeedi], we had become a little bit jaded to people offering us deals, because they were just so not what we were looking for in the past. Then, we got word of what she was doing and how she was doing it, and it just kind of opened our eyes a little bit. Of course, the Mark and Pete thing was just the biggest cherry on top we could’ve possibly imagined.
That wasn’t even how we were introduced to it. We met Sherry first at dinner one night and she gave us the whole spiel. It’s funny because Bardo was sitting next to her, and I didn’t even catch most of it. We went home that night and he was like, “Bro, this is like, a really cool thing she’s got going on.” I think it just all fell into place organically, like a lot of the things we say yes to, and it’s been a synergetic relationship from the jump. We’ve been able to really knock doors open together. It's been great.
Beepus: The power of “no” was our best friend until we got the best deal.
That’s a nice way of putting it. It definitely seems like y’all have a good relationship with the label, with Sherry, Pete, and Mark. You had Mark feature on a song on your recent album: How was that, working with him? Because of course, it’s Mark Hoppus of Blink-182, that’s crazy.
Beepus: It’s crazy, but also it feels like he’s just a friend now. It’s not weird once you get that close to them. You realize they’re human. Even though [Blink-182 is] my favorite band, like, ever, it still feels super cool to have that kind of closeness with him. He’s just another dude. He’s funny and immature like us.
Kind of leaning into that, since you mentioned Blink-182 being your favorite band, who are your sonic inspirations and influences? How do we see them in your music?
Bardo: They were all very different ones, which I think adds to our sauce, because we pull from different things. I definitely grew up on a lot of alt-rock, like Cage The Elephant, The Strokes, and then got really into EDM music, Skrillex, and dubstep. That’s actually how I learned to produce: producing EDM music. And then, obviously, I love folk music too. I play folk music 80% of the time when I’m alone.
Colie: Pretty similar, same but different. I grew up super deep in the rock and punk scene, that world. My dad was super into rock music and kind of bred me in that space from a very early age, and the rest is history. It was like pageant dad for rock, but not in an abusive way.
Beepus: I had the same exact upbringing as Cole. My dad was like, “You’re gonna start a band,” and I started a band when I was, like, eight. He was super supportive.
Colie: Wow, I just had a flashback. We went to EPCOT when I was in fourth grade. I remember Aerosmith was playing, and I don’t even know what song, but my dad was like, “You’re gonna learn this song by the end of the summer, and if you do, I’ll get you a guitar,” and then I was like, “Fuck that!” Then the next year, I picked up guitar.
Beepus: Bardo hilariously said that everything I write sounds like 30 Seconds to Mars, Blink-182, or Fall Out Boy.
Bardo: It’s a perfect combo!
You found yourself in the right place, evidently.
Bardo: It’s good! I think we all have these little superpowers that we bring. Beepus takes us in a funky direction, I try to take us in the pop direction.
I think we can definitely see your influences meld! The first song I heard from you guys was “Starphucker,” and you can definitely hear the grunge and punk rock concepts, but also the pop themes. Y’all are doing a great job.
Colie: Thank you! It’s like we all have these influences but somehow, we’re all so rooted in pop. If you pick apart all the stuff we’re writing, before we decorate it with all the rock or make it BSD, it’s so rooted in pop melody and pop dynamics.
Bardo: This next album too, we’re basically just writing pop music.
Beepus: We’re trying to be the next Justin Bieber, times three.
Bardo: It’s 11:11, we have to make a wish!
Yes! Let’s take a second.
Bardo: Did everyone make a wish? Did [Arundhati] make a wish? I guess it’s probably not 11:11 your time.
It’s 1:11, it’s still an angel number! It works. I made a wish.
Bardo: 1:11, there you go! That’s a great vibe.
Y’all mentioned pop being the base of your music before you BSD-ify it. That’s interesting, because I feel like a lot of people have preconceived notions of pop. How do you guys fit into the pop sphere that already exists, while simultaneously keeping your own image?
Colie: Pop melodies with heavy sonics.
Beepus: It’s all in the structure of it. We write our songs in a very pop-formulaic way, and then decorate it to be cool.
Colie: If you play any of our songs on acoustic guitar and slow it down by 5 BPM, it’s a pop song.
Bardo: We often do that while we’re writing. We call it our campfire test. We just write it on acoustic first, and then if it translates well we’ll put other stuff on it.
Do you think the lyrics come first, and then melodies?
Beepus: Not entirely. We’ll write a full song, and then decorate it with all the craziness: the heavy guitars, the weird sounds, and the production.
Colie: It’s a very simultaneous combustion. We’re all combusting at once.
When you first listen to a new song, not necessarily one of y’all’s, do you first notice the beat, the melodies, or the lyrics — or is it a combination of them? How does this play into how you make music?
Bardo: I listen to the beat. I don’t ever hear the lyrics.
Colie: I’m big on lyrics. I’m a massive lyrics guy, but very much so in the space of sonics. I like when sonics are immediately out of pocket or weird.
Beepus: I’m just a vibe guy.
Photo courtesy of Hunter Moreno
That makes sense, honestly — like, Bardo, you produce, right?
Bardo: Yeah, exactly. That’s why, growing up, I was always just really listening to the beat. I hyper-focused on how they created sounds, like, “How did they get it to sound like that, with those tones? How did they get the bass to make that weird swirl sound?” You just kind of dive in. There are so many more variables to production versus lyrics. Now, I’ve been trying to listen to more lyrics because I think they’re important.
Colie: It’s funny to think about, just the ways we grew up and how they influenced the particular things about our music. I had a similar experience in that I would sit with my dad and step-mom and we’d pull up songs and just read lyrics and pick them apart. It was cool, because they were into it too, so we were always talking about the meaning of things or trying to break it apart. Also, my mom always showed me cool poetry and was very influential in that way, too.
How do you think your approach to putting out songs, EPs, and albums has evolved over time? First between the transition from Strangefaces to Beauty School Dropout, and then from Boys Do Cry to We Made Plans & God Laughed?
Colie: Oh, man. Strangefaces to BSD were two totally different worlds. With BSD, we finally hit a wall once we had enough music to where we had to do something and see what happened, so we dropped a single. We didn’t have a label or anything, so we just did it again, and at that point, people started coming at us with deals and offers. They were like “I’ll make you big, but I want 50% of your equity!” We were like, “No!” At that point we started shifting toward projects and doing focus tracks. It’s ever-changing.
This round, we’re testing out doing a single-by-single strategy because we’ve noticed that streaming works best that way. Some of our favorite songs we’ve made don’t get any love on the internet because they weren’t a focus track. They’d get more playlist adds and streams and be doing just as well [as our singles] if not better, so that’s what we’re leaning into on this next round.
Beepus: We’re becoming a well-oiled machine. Oh, we like to refer to ourselves as “the machine.”
Colie: We’re a fun bus!
In relation to that, y’all had an NFT project in the works.
Bardo: We got really into NFTs last year, as a lot of people did. We were into crypto for years. I bought bitcoin when I was a freshman or a sophomore in high school. I would’ve been far more rich had I held onto it, but I didn’t. I was an idiot and sold it. Basically, we’ve always been interested in blockchain technology and this new wave of financial technology. When NFTs came out, we thought it was an interesting thing for us to do because it was a way to create art and have it live forever. We could mold [sic] technology and art.
We really liked the community aspects of what we could do. I think it’s still very early. We’ve done a pretty cool job of just trying to provide a purpose with music NFTs. Otherwise, what’s the point? Some of them are passes or plus ones for concerts or music, or passes for life. It’s like, “Here’s a step into our world.” You get a deeper connection with us as we grow, and as we grow, your asset grows. That’s the vision, that’s my little elevator pitch for what we’ve been doing. It’s a weird time for NFTs. There’s a lot of negative stigma.
Colie: I think the ceiling is a little too low to be a world-dominating act in the Web3 space. With the approaches we’ve seen, it’s so much of feeding into our [finance-interested] audience. That’s not a big audience yet.
It’s growing, and it’s got the potential to get there, eventually. [Bardo] said it last night, that we’re so focused on becoming a household brand and name and then applying NFTs into that world and making it all merge rather than just sitting there and hoping for the best.
Bardo: The good news is that the people who have bought our stuff so far, they got in early, so they’re stoked.
Do you think that it’s beneficial to put more music out first before venturing further into what you’re doing with NFTs?
Bardo: We’re still doing it for fun right now. We put out demos. We have a song called “Die For You,” and we put out the first version of the song as an NFT. The early version of the song sounds nothing like the song that’s out. We thought it was a cool way of doing really cheap drops. It’s not cost-prohibitive to get into it, and it’s a piece of our history book that we can release. It’s verified, versus leaking it on YouTube.
You can own version one of our song. I always thought it would be cool to release the project files of our songs and be like, “You can own our project files, do whatever you want with them. Have fun.” We’re trying out different ideas. I think we’ll still do that from time to time. It’s gotta be fun for us. If it’s not fun, then what’s the point?
I was going to ask if you’re going to use NFTs to promote your music, but it seems like your approach is detailed differently.
Bardo: Yeah, it’s less on the promotion side, and more on the fun side. Realistically, the market for NFTs isn’t the market we’re going for. Our fans aren’t necessarily the people who are the NFT guys. There’s crossover once those guys find out who we are, but it’s more of a fun tool to create another step into our world for our already-existing community.
That’s a sweet way of approaching it! The relationship between fan and artist is definitely always an interesting one.
Bardo: That’s our thing, our community that we’ve built — the Dropouts — we love them. Our Discord is just us kickin’ it. It’s awesome. We want to do as much for them as they do for us.
In general, what’s next for Beauty School Dropout? What can Dropouts look forward to?
Beepus: The best music we’ve made so far.
Colie: Yep. Best music we’ve made, biggest shows we’ve played. We’re coming for you guys.
Beepus: This is still the beginning. We’re like toddlers. We’re in our terrible twos right now. We have a lot of life ahead of us! A lot of things to say, places to go. We’ve just learned how to walk.
You can follow Beauty School Dropout on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok and stream their music on Spotify and Apple Music. Catch them on tour with jxdn in Fort Worth on April 12, and San Antonio on April 14.
This interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.