Hooray! Today is finally here Our new single ‘Just Be’ is out NOW on iTunes and other digital retailers!! Click here to link to iTunes!
Eeeeek! We are very excited as we’ve had such an amazing response from you all regarding the song and of course the video (which has had over 200,000 views now!!). Its been really inspiring to see how you have all reacted to the subject matter. We’ve heard all sorts of exciting bits of feedback. We’ve had mothers sharing it with their kids who have eating issues, famous singers/artistes/inspirational speakers/sports stars posting the video, and of course hundreds of comments on youtube which are so lovely to read. The song has been played on the radio all over the world including the USA, Australia, Canada, all over Europe, Africa, Mexico, Israel, and of course all over the UK too.
So if you like the song please do buy it, it would mean such a lot to us and help towards our chart position too!
‘What else can I do to help?’we hear you ask….
Lots of people have been wanting to get involved to spread the message and we’d love your help!! The most important thing is to spread the word, so anything you can do to share either the youtube link or the iTunes link would be incredibly helpful.
We’re also open to ideas – so if you have any sparks of genius as to how we can get this message out to the world, please do get in touch with us either on Facebook, twitter or via email enquiries@unsunglillyofficial.com
Wish us luck!! And incase you haven’t seen the video yet, here it is again below!
Ahh, the video has been going crazy! Nearly 200,000 views and its only been online just over a week! Eeek! Thank you so much to all of you who have shared the video, and left lovely comments on it etc. It means such a lot to us and wowee has it helped to spread the word! Due to all your wonderful enthusiasm, we’ve had not only new music websites and groups sharing the video, but also life coaches, inspirational websites, professional sports stars, and famous singers and musicians!
If you haven’t seen it yet, here is the video!
And here’s some awesome comments we’ve had:
‘Unsung Lilly delivers exhilarating sounds with a modern message of independence which is wonderfully absorbing! In a word, Supreme!!!’Carleen Anderson, vocalist & artiste (Brand New Heavies,Young Disciples)
‘Just Be’ is an inspiring track performed by great musicians and vocalists. The message in the song rings true to any woman or man; I especially love the lyric “be yourself: everyone else is taken” beautiful words and music from a great act.’ Tigerlight, vocalist & artiste
‘Love the sentiment of Unsung Lilly’s latest song Just Be. The world is obsessed with image, fifteen minutes of fame and being part of the in-crowd. Mostly we are far more interesting when we are simply ourselves…’Kezi Silverstone, vocalist, and sister of actress Alicia Silverstone
‘I really like your vibe and your music!’Kerwin Rae, international inspirational speaker
We have decided that today is the PERFECT day to release our newest iPhone video, and announce that this will be our next single, out in May! The song is called ‘Just Be’, and I’d say lyrically its probably the one that represents us the best and the one we are most proud of, out of all the songs we’ve written.
When Frankie joined the band, we found ourselves quite often (usually during drunken ramblings) talking about how we both felt so strongly about how people (including us) constantly feel the pressure from society and the media about how they should be, whether it should be how they live their lives, what they should prioritise, and most strongly, how they should look. Very early on in our career as a band, we decided that at some point we would write a song about it, and this is how ‘Just Be’ came about. In fact the word ‘be’ as a verb to ‘be’ plays quite a big part in a few of our songs, and will be a bit of a theme of the album when it is finished.
I always thought it was so ridiculous that when we first formed the band, and decided to have myself and Frankie fronting it, one of the biggest things in my head was ‘Oh no, its not going to work because I’m so much shorter than her!’ That is honestly the first thought that was in my head, which is shameful – surely I should be thinking more about whether our voices would work together or if we could write songs together! But no… I was just well aware that every mainstream band in the world is put together based on things like that. I think thats one of the reasons why I really love Fleetwood Mac, as they too were a bit of a mismatch of people – half from the US and half from the UK, all different heights etc… but thats why people loved them. They were real! And thats something that we’ve always tried to put across too. But I always think back to that time and think how sad it is that we are all so influenced by these things.
Another issue with me was the fact that I (Sera) am always up and down with my weight, and it took me ages to even start to believe that I could try and be in a band and people wouldn’t laugh me off the stage. Sad but true!! But I’ve decided now, I’m pretty cool with it. Why should it make a difference? I know it shouldn’t but in my irrational ‘tainted by the media’ brain, I thought it was a problem. There are a billion people out there who struggle with the same issue and I’d like to hope that maybe as a result of us releasing this song they can be inspired to do all those things they haven’t done yet because they are ‘waiting til they have lost that extra stone.’ I think this is an issue especially common with women and so i’m really pleased we can launch this song on ‘International Womens day’.
The song uses one of my favourite quotes ‘Be Yourself, everyone else is taken’, which I absolutely love as a saying! Its so true! I think its really important to always be true to yourself, and if you do that, you can’t go far wrong.
So… I hope you enjoy! We are looking forward to launching into the next stage of our band-career and promoting this song – its going to be fun and I hope will make even just a few people feel better about accepting themselves as they are and doing the things they want to do.
We’ve been travelling across the UK and doing these ‘takeover’ promo days, and I swear they keep getting better and better! We had a really fun day on Saturday!
We started off performing acoustically just as a 3 piece with myself (Sera), Frankie and Allan (just as there was restricted space), at the awesome Jack Wills. I must say as much as we love performing
and playing music, it was HARD not to just do a bit of shopping!! Hehe
We were joined by Jill from our label Bentlys Records, and two amazing & lovely fans Kelly & Amy, who saw us playing in Guildford a few months back and offered to come and help, all giving out flyers to passers by, and two fantastic volunteer photographers Will Goodwin and Pam Dawn, who snapped away all day and got some amazing shots!
We then headed over to House of Fraser, met the staff there and got to watch Alex Louise perform her own set (which was amazing!). The sound in House of Fraser was just awesome – we were set up right at the bottom of the escalators, so the sound travelled all the way up 4 floors and it just sounded beautiful wherever you stood.
We performed a 25mins set or so, and it was great! People were peering over the barriers on all the different floors, and we caught sight of young families shopping but dancing while they shopped! We really enjoyed it!
Big thanks to all our helpers, Will, Pam, Kelly, Amy & Jill! Check out some of the pics! (Videos to come soon too hopefully, put together by the awesome Matt Pereira who popped down to say hello too!)
Oooh we have been having sooo much fun promoting the single!! We’ve been touring all over the UK, doing all sorts of radio interviews and I’ve even found time to pop over to Cannes, France for a few days to go to industry event Midem and meet with all sorts of music industry guru’s from around the world (lots of whom are currently now trying to get ‘Happy’ placed in adverts around the globe). Its been a fun few weeks, and it doesn’t stop here…lots more to come. This week we’ve got all sorts coming up – gigs, rehearsals….and even writing some new tunes! (YAY).
‘Happy’ is now being played all over the world – we’ve had people sending in videos of their baby and dog dancing to it in the USA, cafe’s playing it in Serbia, and all sorts of other exciting stories of it playing in weird and wonderful places
Anyway I thought I’d post up this rather entertaining radio interview we did with Jonjo Cosgrove on Krystal Radio. We were supposed to be going into the studio but we were completely snowed in so ended up figuring out how to do a 5-way Skype call for the interview…
There’s also a bit of an extra at the end – about 3 or 4 minutes when we were off air and didn’t know he was recording – just a little insight into the wonderful world of Unsung Lilly
EXCITING TIMES! Our debut single ‘Happy’ is now released! Its being played on radio stations all over the world, and you guys have all been so amazing spreading the word! We’ve even had an email in from our good friend David Durant of Brooklands radio this morning, who said he pulled up at a petrol station to hear the song blasting out of the next door car!!! WOWWW! Its all very exciting!
So, a lot of you have been in touch to say you would love to do more to help us spread the word – lets get everyone loving and buying Happy!!! We have decided to launch a ‘Lets Make The World Happy’ competition, to run alongside this week and we are going award 5 signed special edition EPS which feature a brand new bonus track!
Excited? Wanna know what you need to do?Of course you do!
All you have to do is find any ingenious way you like to promote our song ‘Happy’, take a photo or video of what you’ve done, and post it on our Facebook or twitter with the hashtag #UnsungLillyHappy
Want some ideas?
How about videoing you and friends all doing the ‘Happy’ feet dance, as in our video, and post it on youtube?
Or what about driving round town with the song pumping and a sign in your window saying ‘Buy Unsung Lilly’s song ‘Happy’ NOW’
How about posting a photo of you with a big sign saying ‘Unsung Lilly’s new single makes me happy’
Or…any other ideas?
Hehe – there are all sorts of things you could do – we are open to anything as long as it helps get the song out to as many people as possible. We’ve had people mention all sorts of ideas! And as anything you do will be amazing for us, we’ll put all the entrants names into a hat and pick out 5 winners at random one week from today on Tuesday 29th Jan. The winners names will be posted on the blog, Facebook and twitter!
First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all! I hope 2013 is treating you well? (Wow 2013 sounds so futuristic – I could have sworn there was meant to be flying cars by now?!) I am pleased to say that our last blog post attracted the most readers EVER in the history of the blog, so YAY, thanks for reading my soppy end of year sentimental run-down of what we’d been up to!
And now, for the Liverpool Music Takeover…On 15th Jan 2013, we all jumped in a van along with our good friend, singer-songwriter Alex Louise, and made our way up to Liverpool! I must say it was touch and go as to whether we’d make it, as in the UK there have been severe snow warnings all week. But…determined as we are, we got there, and we LOVED it! Liverpool was such a great city… everyone was so friendly, and seemed to think and feel about music in a different way to anywhere else we’ve ever been. I guess it because they were responsible for the most successful bands in the world, The Beatles – but music seemed to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
We performed outside, busking at all sorts of locations around Liverpool – a few different spots at Liverpool ONE (which was an amazing place, I wish we’d had more time for shopping!), and inside the hub at The Bluecoat.
We also visited the most amazing place – The Cake Shop, which had some mind-blowing cakes! Our favourite one was this Keith Lemon cake – we watch his show Celebrity Juice all the time and LOVE him (in fact my dream is to one day be on that show, and me and Keith Lemon will become best friends forever. Hehe).
It was freezing cold! I have no idea why it seems like everything we do as a band ends up in us being very very cold. Not sure we’re made for this UK climate!! But it was great fun!
We had some lovely local students who followed us around filming, taking photos and handing out flyers – so big thanks to them all – Jack Maxwell, Adam Shaw and Nkechi Onuora – they all did a great job! We also had a fantastic photography team called ‘Noiso’ who joined us in the evening and provided some amazing pics!
We were also asked to go down to BBC Merseyside, which was so exciting as apparently its the biggest regional BBC radio station outside of London. Myself, Frankie and Allan were interviewed, and performed on the Billy Butler show. It was great fun, and Billy was so lovely. Again, like a lot of the people we met in Liverpool, he seemed so much more musically minded than most DJs – you could tell by the questions he asked. It was a big honour for us to be on the show, so THANK YOU so much BBC Merseyside
Our gig in the evening was at Lomax, which was also great fun and we played alongside Alex Louise, and local acts Danny Gruff and Paper Castles, who were all excellent! Big thanks to our lovely Liverpudlian hair & makeup artistes Gemma and Amber – thank God for them as Frankie and I looked like we’d been dragged through a hedge backwards after busking outdoors all day! Here’s a pic of our onstage look:
All in all it was a great day! Check out the lovely review we got from Sam Spencer of the Liverpool Tab magazine: click here
Big thanks to everyone who made the day possible – hope we come back to Liverpool one day soon!
As we sit here having feasted upon one (or two) too many mince pies, and praying that someone else will come and finish off the box of Quality Streets that is sitting here staring at us tauntingly, we thought it might be a nice idea to do our ‘top 10 moments of 2012′ – its been such an amazing year! We didn’t really realise just how quickly and smoothly this whole thing has come together – but this time last year the band was just a glint in an eye… we had been writing, but we hadn’t even had a rehearsal playing the songs yet! It been a bit of a whirlwind really…
Here we go, counting down from 10….in no particular order really but just because its fun to be dramatic…
10. London Rocks – June - this was our first ever live performance, and it was one of London’s top charity events, London Rocks. We performed ‘Happy’ as part of the main concert, and it went down really well! AND…Sera got snapped by the paps and featured in OK magazine A very proud moment, hehe
9. Various fantastic interviews (I’m cheating and going to put these into one!)-
US Jammin Jukebox interview – October : We’ve never been to the US but would love to go, and when we got approached by Dawn about doing a Skype interview we were really excited! We had to stay up til midnight to do it, because of the time difference – and, lets be honest, we had a glass or two of wine while we waited. Perhaps a bit of a mistake but we think it was the best interview we’d ever done to date, because we were so much more relaxed. It was an hour long interview and it was hilarious – some great banter and funny moments. We love Dawn, she’s been so supportive of us. Apparently the interview had over 3600 downloads just in the first 8 hours or so that it went out! You can hear the interview here
Under the radar with David Durant -November - David has been an amazing support to us – we’ve gained more fans from his radio show than anything else we have done. Doing the ‘Under the radar’ session was amazing fun – we had such a giggle and its great to do a radio show which is solely dedicated to up and coming music, and the listeners are all so passionate about it too. David is like the angel of unsigned music
Listen to the whole session and see more pics etc here
Eagle radio interviews – we’ve done a few at Eagle this year and the EP review was our favourite with Stuart Provan. It was lovely to be able to talk in depth about what each song was about and how we wrote them etc! Check it out here
8. Guilfest – July – believe it or not, this was our first proper gig as Unsung Lilly (playing a full set anyway!) and we were on the second stage, alongside bands like ABC and heaven 17. The gig was great fun, and we also had a great time hanging around later that day watching some other amazing acts, including Alex Louise, Jools Holland and The Straights (Dire Straights without Mark Knopfler) – which we got far too excited about!
7. Norwich Music Takeover and gig at Epic Studios – November - We did a full on day of performing around the streets of Norwich, being followed by local students who filmed and photographed us. It was great fun! We then went to Epic TV Studios and performed in the evening – which was just AMAZING! By far, one of the best venues we have ever been to! When it was over we were all a little sad and just wanted to do it again! The live footage should be with you in the new year, but below is our video blog from earlier in the day!
6. Weyfest (on the eagle radio stage) – September - We did this gig right at the end of our EP recording week, and because of that it just felt really good to be playing together. It was a really great, tight gig, and also we could really see in people’s faces how they were reacting to our music. It was lovely to see people who had been walking past, take a divert to come and listen and end up staying for the whole gig. We were voted best band of that stage which was also a real honour! It was great to get to know the guys from the Eagle too, they have become great friends!
5. The ‘Time Changes Minds’ EP Launch – October - We launched our EP at top music venue The Bedford, and it was a brilliant evening! We packed the place out and also streamed world-wide live! It was a great feeling Here’s a bit of live footage from the day from our lovely videographer Phil (there’s LOADS more online!)
4. Video shoot for ‘Happy’ – December - Ok, so some of you may have seen the hilarious behind the scenes video for this – what a day it was! (see below) It was shot in an old saxon church, which had no heating. Its safe to say its the coldest any of us have ever been. We all handled it well though…basically, by jumping around and dancing for about 10 hour straight… so funny. And the video is fab because of it
3. Recording our EP – September - this was an amazing week where we all stayed in a live-in studio – so not only were we making music together but we were completely living together, for the whole week. You’d think this would get a bit much at times but not at all – we had such a brilliant week and as you can imagine it was the start of a billion private jokes and a time that we really bonded. Not only did we record our EP, but there was all sorts of other unforgettable moments – a drunken dance-off that Allan and Sera won (Ok, that bit is still in discussion but as far as I’m (Sera) concerned we wiped the floor with them!), Sera and Frankie developed a new exercise regime which we plan to launch to the world once we have achieved international fame (‘Lilly-fit’ hehe), and we taught our good friend and photographer Matt Pereira how to play ‘Lets get it on’ (Marvin Gaye) on guitar and had a 45minute jam with him on that one song. It was a week we will never forget and we’re so glad that we have the EP to always remind us of it! Buy the EP here
2. Belfast Pride Gig/Weekend – August - This was just such an amazing experience! We played to 7000 in the square in front of us, and another 18000+ people who were watching around the City on big screens – and even though we were an unknown band in Belfast, everyone welcomed us and was so accepting of our music! It went down a storm! And the whole weekend was just brilliant – hanging out with some great friends, and making lots of new ones. We loved it!
1. Getting to make music with people that we LOVE. There’s nothing quite like it. Its been amazing! There was a moment where we were doing an interview for our Rockumentary (which will be posted in the new year) where we all got a little bit soppy. Russ was saying in the interview about how he met a really famous rock star musician years ago, and this guy had said to Russ about finding that ‘one person’ that you play music with and its just magical, everything just works – and this guy said that he’d found that once, years ago, in just one person, and sadly he never found it again – and he said if you ever find that in anyone, you should hold onto it because you are very lucky. When Russ was telling us this story, it was a lovely moment that made us all realise – we have all found that in each of us and thats really rare – and that is the magic ingredient that fuels everything that we do.
Sooooo… thanks for a brilliant year! And here’s to an amazing 2013 – we can’t wait!
Big thanks to everyone who has helped us this year – we love you guys
HERE’S OUR NEW VIDEO! And big thank you’s to everyone who shared it, liked it and commented on it yesterday – your support means the world to us! Please do keep up the good work – the more people we can get to hear us the better!
We had such a fun day shooting our first EVER video last week!! Our single ‘Happy’ is going to be released on 21st Jan, which has meant we’ve been working hard getting everything ready, and the video is going to be launched on YouTube in the next few days.
We decided to use the awesomely talented Sam Bond to produce the video. Having seen some of his work before we loved his quirky style and knew he would come up with something that suited us perfectly. Straight away, Sam’s ideas were brilliant! He asked us to find an old looking building, so we booked a local Saxon Church near to us. Its a beautiful venue! We overlooked one thing though….heating. Its an old stone building with no heating, and the middle of winter!! I don’t think we were quite prepared for just how cold it would be!
It was a long old day! Frankie and myself got to be proper diva’s whilst the boys set up the shoot. We had our hair and makeup done by our amazing MUA Gina Dowle. She was a fab person to have around all day and did a great job keeping us looking fresh and fabulous We then headed to the venue and embarked on 7 hours of constant filming!
Sam wanted to film each of us separately so he could focus on lighting us well, but asked that we all play alongside whoever was being filmed, so that person didn’t feel too awkward. I have no idea why we turned the ‘play alongside them’ instructions into ‘dance around like crazy people all day’ – I think the cold went to our heads! But it sure made for a fun day…. I think Sam now thinks we are actually mad…hehe.
We also had our lovely friend Phil (who’s been making a rockumentary about us) come along and document the day on film, and he’s put together this hilarious video! Big thanks to Phil – this made me laugh over and over again – I can’t stop watching it!
Anyway, lots and lots of things coming up, its all very exciting! Cant wait to share it with you all, but thats for another time
Our new single ‘Just Be’ is out NOW on iTunes and other digital retailers!! Click here to link to iTunes!
Listen to the whole session and see more pics etc 
6. Weyfest (on the eagle radio stage) – September - We did this gig right at the end of our EP recording week, and because of that it just felt really good to be playing together. It was a really great, tight gig, and also we could really see in people’s faces how they were reacting to our music. It was lovely to see people who had been walking past, take a divert to come and listen and end up staying for the whole gig. We were voted best band of that stage which was also a real honour! It was great to get to know the guys from the Eagle too, they have become great friends!
