An interview with John from swedish boy band - JTR

A Swedish boy band made up of three brothers John Andreasson (born 1990), Tom Lundbäck (born 1993) and Robin Lundbäck (born 1994). The band's name is made up of the first letters of their given names John, Tom and Robin. We caught up with John and prepare to get to know who the J in JTR. 25-year-old John, oldest of the three brothers that form JTR. 

This year JTR released the track “Oh My My”, could you tell us what the track is about and how it came to be.

It’s a fun & energetic song, about this girl who takes polaroid pictures instead of instagramming and wears the 90s stuff. It’s just a fun song and we wanted to catch that. Really energetic vibe in the song and we listen to a lot to Jackson 5.

Who are your musical inspirations?

A lot of em’. I’m a little bit of John Mayer, Ed Sheeran. Guys with guitars and such. Tom and Robin are more of Top 100 pop songs. Robin likes rap as well. We got a bit of different influences.

What is music to you?

Music is life, what would life be without music, it will be so boring.

How do you balance your music with other obligations?

I think you have to balance everything you do, there’s a lot of music for different times in your life like I would not probably put hard rock stuff in the morning. I would probably put on some chill out music in the morning and I balance it out like that. When you listen to a lot of music, you can find different music for different situations. But when we are working on music and we’re touring, we find ourselves not listening to much music because we play it so much. That’s our balance.

How do you think JTR would appeal to the masses?

I hope people can relate to our songs and relate to us. We write our own songs and play it for people and seeing their reaction, I hope we will be received well.

What song from JTR would you first recommend to people who may not have been expose to your music and why?

I think “Oh My My” as it is the first single out in Asia. It has a fun vibe to it. The second, “Centre of Everywhere” We’ve got a video on YouTube for that one. We filmed it up in the mountains in Norway.

What’s next for JTR?

We’re actually going to have an Asian tour, promo tour. We’re going to lots of different countries this fall. It’s really exciting, we can’t really tell you what the dates are, because it’s not completely locked in but we’re definitely be going to lots of countries. Promote, play and have fun.

Do you favour on specific genre of music over any other genre? If so, what genre and why?

I think I favour the singing and song writing genre. Maybe John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Ed Sheeran. Cause I like that because they create stories from their life. I like that.

What has been the biggest challenge for your group?

The biggest challenge for our group is that we’ve worked a long time now, and without getting the recognition that you want. You have all these goals and you have to work so hard and so long to reach it. Now we’re finally starting to see that our dreams are sort of coming true but it’s been a long journey so that journey is probably the hardest thing but we stayed in it and work, we overcome it.

How do you keep focus?

I think it’s all about the music, that’s what we love to do. When we write our songs, we write as good of a song as possible. That keeps us focus, we always want to write better and better song. Of course, coming home to friends and family. That’s always important too.

Have you ever had to deal with the haters or negative publicity, if so how do you handle it?

There’s always negative stuff, at least on the internet. While we were in X Factor Australia, there were lots of people hating on the internet. Just because they wanted to say bad stuff. You just learned after a while that you can’t go and read it cause its unnecessary, it doesn’t do you any good.

If given an opportunity to collaborate with an Asian artist, who would it be?

Our mother wrote a song for Girls’ Generation. I think it would be cool to do something with a K-pop Group. There are so many groups.

Have you sung a cover of a Korean song before?

We’ve covered mostly Japanese songs. We haven’t covered a Korean song yet.

How would you describe yourself in 5 words?

Positive, Happy, Guitar-freak, surfing and JTR. 

Special thanks to Sony Music Malaysia for the opportunity for the interview.