Saintz
Interview conducted on July 13, 2022
By Dan Locke
Saintz, a pop/dance group from the UK have had a great start to their music journey. A year and a half in, Saintz have just released their first album, “Goosebumps”.
Saintz released their latest single, “Goosebumps”, with the music video reaching over 108,000 views already! Saintz want to continue to use their music to speak life, positivity, and good mental health over the young people of this generation.
Beautiful World has been Saintz most popular song so far, reaching over 232,000 streams on Spotify and 82,000 views for the music video.
Not only that, Saintz have already done their first international gig in Norway! They’ve also
performed across the UK at different music events with more scheduled in the near future.
This year you can see Saintz at several summer festivals throughout 2022. Don’t miss it!
Coming from the Light Music family, Saintz are definitely set up for a big future ahead.
For the last year throughout the quarantine the duo of Danny Stephenson and Destiny Owen aka Saintz have been working quietly putting together new music. The first taste fans got from Saintz was
a 2020 feature on Light Label mates LZ7’s high energy hit single “Getting Wild” that premiered with Ground Sounds. Since then, Saintz has been creating a lot of buzz with singles “You’ll Always Find A Way,” “Beautiful World,” “Undertow,” and title track “Goosebumps” which are all featured on their debut album released last week.
What was your upbring like?
Destiny: I grew up in South Manchester with my parents and siblings. My upbringing was full of sports, music, dance and attending Church on a Sunday. Overall a loving and community filled environment!
Danny: I grew up in Africa in a tiny village miles from anywhere so my upbringing was out of the ordinary. My parents were working out there so music was all we really had. When we came back to the UK my love of music grew and grew and i never lost that passion for it.
How did you discover music?
Destiny: As soon as I was born! My parents were also in a band, so when I came along I joined them touring all over the world. Meaning I was exposed to the music industry from a very young age. I then grew to love it for myself and started writing my own songs, alongside learning to play the piano.
Danny: I had two older brothers who were into very different kinds of music so i loved exploring different genres as i was growing up. Someone offered to teach me how to play drums and i jumped at the chance. I then learned other instruments just off youtube videos and started to perform as soon as i could.
How did you start to write music?
As a band, we started writing our first song at our office in Manchester, Northern Quarter. We both had a desire to use our lyrics to bring positivity and life changing meaning to our songs, so we bounced off each other’s ideas and it all rolled on from there!
You are a Manchester pop Dance Duo. How did you get together?
Light music label, home of LZ7, were dreaming up the idea to start a new in-house band. Both of us were then approached individually by the label and asked to join. We loved their vision to use music as a universal language to connect with this generation and to bring a message of hope and purpose. So we accepted! Saintz was created!
What was your first performance like?
Saintz was launched during the COVID pandemic, therefore as we all know live gigs were not a thing then! Due to this, our first official performance was actually live streamed. So a mix of feelings really? On one hand, AMAZING to perform our brand new music for the first time, yet also weird because no one was in the room.. haha!
Describe your music.
Saintz creates pop/dance music, pure feel good songs with a heavy drop to get everyone bouncing. As a band we want our music to brighten up someone’s day. Our heart is to bring light to an often dark world, with a positive message of hope and purpose.
What makes a good songwriter?
Passion and creativity! Writing content that really relates personally to your listeners.
What was the title of your first original song? Did you record it?
‘You’ll Always Find A Way’ – yes, we recorded it in one of our home studios.
What is the process of writing your music?
It totally varies. We worked closely with our producer Jimmy James to create our debut album.
Tell me about your single “You’ll Always Find a Way”?
The meaning behind the lyrics are simple, you WILL find a way! No matter what you’re facing, we believe you’ll find a way through. As Saintz, we like to share some of our faith within our lyrics, so for us on a personal level we know that God’s got us and is helping us on our journey. Overall, the song has quite a chilled vibe to it, however we also decided to get Kelvin Wood to remix it – which our listeners seem to love!
How was it to work with Pete Wall of Light Media?
Where to start! Pete is great. He always has a clear vision for the media product and executes it to a very high standard. We love working with him and the team.
Tell me about the debut album “Goosebumps”?
Goosebumps was named after our latest single release. The album overall encourages the message that life is worth living! Poor mental health has really taken a toll on our generation, especially after experiencing lockdown, so this album goes on the journey of getting caught in the undertow of life, but believing that you are an overcomer. Don’t let go!
Your second single “Beautiful World” reached 170,000. What are you feeling about streaming music?
We just want to put our music out there where the people are.
The symbol # is known as the number sign, hash, pound sign and a sharp sign in music. The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes Since 2007, widespread usage of the symbol to introduce metadata tags on social media platforms has led to such tags being known as “hashtags”, and from that, the symbol itself is sometimes called a hashtag.
Are people forgetting that the # is a part of music?
Like you said, it has multiple meanings! We just need to know what it means within the right context. The sharp sign will never be forgotten!
Digital vs. vinyl?
Digital has definitely supported us as a new band.
If “Video Killed the Radio Star” do you think that the Covid-19 virus has killed live music? Do you feel the Covid-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?
As Saintz, we launched within COVID so we can’t say it killed live music as it was the making of us! We found our way around by performing on live streams and now we’ve performed at multiple summer festivals in person since everything has reopened. We are very blessed and grateful for all the opportunities we have had to perform live music.
Do you think that Covid-19 has been a plus to an artist career?
There’s a mixture of pros and cons. Whilst we saw our friends really struggle for work during the pandemic, we also saw an increase with online interaction.
How do you stay healthy during the lockdown?
A lot of fitness online, family bike rides and constantly being nominated for different running challenges. Haha!
Have you discovered or rediscovered any new hobbies?
Danny: Definitely running. I love it!
Destiny: Dance has been and always will be!
How can bands keep their fans if they cannot play live in front of the fans and sell merchandise to them at the show?
This was something we encountered launching our band during covid. We had to resort to live stream gigs with nobody in the room and social media. That engagement has really begun to build us a very loyal fanbase.
What about Holographic concerts in our living room?
That would be sick!
In the past if a musician stop doing music they find a new career. For example David Lee Roth from Van Halen became a licensed EMT in NY for 6 years, San Spitz (guitarist for Anthrax) became a master watchmaker, Dee Snider (Twister Sister) voice over work for SpongeBob SquarePants.. If you can’t do music, what would you like to be doing?
Anything creative! We both love design and media. Maybe something within graphic design.
What is your happy place?
A sunny holiday with unlimited food and drink!
What is your feeling about TikTok? With Sony Music and Warner Music strucking an “expanded” global licensing agreement with Universal Music Group. Now that TikTok is now fully licensed by all three major record companies, will you start using TikTok more?
We use Tiktok to connect with our listeners. We think it’s a great way to interact and show our personalities as well as our music.
Anything you would like to say in closing.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. We’re so grateful for our opportunities and our amazing Light family! Go check out Goosebumps! Peace and love! – Saintz
