News Willy Moon: ‘I Get Bored Quickly’

Willy Moon is a potential icon of cool, with a fetish for smart suits and fashion shoots. One of those shoots shows him looking particularly dapper, old-fashioned telephone in hand, sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by attractive women and extravagant pleasures. DIY can’t help but ask whether that’s a routine he indulges in for all phone interviews, like this one. He cheekily replies; “That’s what I’m doing right now, sitting next to a blonde girl, holding a glass of champagne as we speak.”

Moon comes across like a visual star, just as much as a musical one. Sporting a love for Naomi Campbell and “seeing people who look incredible,” his fans are marvelling just as much at his striking appearance as they are with his music. “I grew up in the MTV generation… A good video adds something, it brings it into stereo.”

Said fans of Willy Moon’s early work however are in danger of being sent to a rehabilitation clinic due to clicking the “repeat” button so many times, such is the immediacy and above all else, addictiveness of his tracks, all of which seem to span no more than 120 seconds. “They felt like punk songs to me,” says Moon, “I don’t want to sit there and go, ‘Okay, how am I going to tease this out for four minutes,’ you know?”

So far, these punk songs have taken shape as odes to 50s pop, Buddy Holly and the like. But while much of his appeal stems from a unique take on a classic sound, Moon doesn’t seem cosy with the idea of sticking to the same nostalgic feel; “If you extricate yourself from genre boundaries, it gives you a lot of freedom to move about. I like to create collisions between retro music and more modern hip-hop inspired production. But I get bored quickly. I like to move about.”

A self-confessed “escapist,” Moon has been moving about for most of his adult life. His dream consists of purchasing a bus with a built-in studio; “so I can just go anywhere.” He’s certainly unlikely to stick to one place: “I like to escape from reality,” he tells us, “I like things to be fresh.” For Moon to be able to continue recording one song a day - as he achieved for a few months - and remain prolific and fresh, it would do wonders for pop. Already, he seems to be bringing something refreshingly new. And for a guy who describes his songwriting approach as “scattergun,” long may that continue.

Willy Moon’s debut single ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ is out now via Luv Luv Luv.

Taken from the March 2012 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.