Kuruq is a multi-instrumentalist based in Nashville, Tennessee. They have been uploading music since 2021 and have most recently released a song with Olivia Barton titled If I Were a Fish. In addition to this viral song, Kuruq has released other singles and an EP called A Chew. If I Were a Fish has over 5 million streams on Spotify alone and is sure to make someone feel better when they are having a bad day.
I'm Ellie Sadler and I'm here with Kuruq. Kuruq can be heard on our radio and platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and TikTok. Welcome, Kuruq. Hello.
How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm great.
It's funny. I don't listen. I don't look at the numbers very often. So when you said 5 million, my eyes went like, whoa.
Yeah. I'm sure they've taken on for all the right reasons. I love the message behind this song. But before we get into talking about your music, I want to quickly ask you three quick questions because I have a music show called Broken Record and I regularly talk about concerts and my love for live music.
And so my first question for you is what has been your favorite concert you've been to? Favorite concert I've been to? Mm-hmm. Probably Pine Grove at Brooklyn Bowl here in Nashville.
Awesome. They just make such a, they just have such a good crowd and are so present. It's really cool. Yeah.
And what was your most recent concert you've been to? Probably one of my friends. Probably an Olivia, but honestly I went to C.O. Olivia in DC, she's opening Flora's in the Calcine right now.
Awesome. So I saw a week ago. That's amazing. And then do you have a favorite concert venue you like to return to?
Like just whenever you go there, it's so special. You know, probably stage A.E. in Pittsburgh. It's just a really nostalgic venue for me.
A lot of my first concerts were there. Awesome. Okay. I want to talk about your song CGI.
I love this song. The production is so cool and it makes me like smile listening to it because it's like, I don't even know what you are very relatable. So I want to know what kind of the process was like creating CGI. Yeah.
Thank you. So it was a really fun process for me. I started that one off more production based. I made the beat and then I had the synthesizers that go back and forth in the chorus that just like, done, done, done.
And I started singing over it and the first line that came out of me was that line of me on my face is so perfect with CGI. And I luckily had a writing session that week. My friend Ben Abraham came over and I was just like, I just have this beat. I don't really know what the song is, but like, I think it could be cool.
And I sang it for him and he freaked out. He was like, this is what we're doing today. Let's do it. So we spent the day just like kind of dancing around and singing about my love for Olivia.
That's amazing. I love that. And I love the way you create music sounds very fun and like it's a very stress-free environment. Do you have any like, instrument or any type of production scale that you usually divert to when you start creating songs?
Yeah. You know, when I'm writing, I try to keep it to just an instrument. So like, just guitar and voice or just piano and voice just because I feel like that's the best way for me to tell a story. But sometimes like making a drum beat on Ableton and then putting something to it is even more inspiring.
So it really just depends on the mood that day. Yeah, for sure. Okay. When I was researching for the scenario, I found your bio with First Avenue.
And it says that you love Gwen Stefani and Drake and Mac Miller. And so I was wondering if you have a go-to song of any of theirs that like, we were kind of like, coming home from a writing session, like you just want to listen to a song for what song are you playing? That's a great question by them. Or what, you can be anyone.
Honestly, I listened to Gwen Stefani. So on her first The Hair as You Could Girls album, I think that's what it's called. Bubble Pop Electric, I think that's what it's called. Yes.
I know the song you're talking about. But it is so fire and so fun and way, it was totally age-in-appropriate when I heard it. But like, now I just like, love it. Exactly.
It's so fun like discovering a song that you don't necessarily understand when you're young and then growing up and being like, oh my gosh, this is what it's talking about. They were talking about doing it in the backseat. Like, I don't know. Yes.
It's my favorite thing to make those connections and songs that you've known for so long. So transitioning onto the topic of lyrics, I know you're talking about that earlier. But so for me, in your song, it's okay. There's a lyric that says, I should, I should, I should.
But I know that I'm not going to do the things that statistically that make me feel better. Can you tell me a little bit about that lyric? Because it really resonated with me and I connected with it so much. And I want to see like, kind of where you were coming from on that when writing that lyric.
Yeah. You know, I was going through a pretty rough patch whenever I started that song. I wrote it with my friend Grant in LA at one point. Yeah.
I was just like, I hadn't, I was looking for a doctor to prescribe antidepressants. I was just doing everything I could to get help. But also knowing that like, it was just hard to wake up sometimes. It was just hard to get out of bed.
So yeah, I really just wrote it about the season that I was in at that time, which was like not super fun. But also like, I think my whole thing is I try to make light of things and try to just find hope where I don't really see it immediately. Yeah. A hundred percent.
You totally come across that way. Your music is very like uplifting, even though it deals with not very fun topics. I definitely feel like music is a great way to help me personally with my depression and anything. Like really like motivates me to do these things and to get the help.
And I really like listening to your music is like, just it gives you that extra comfort of like, there's someone else going through this. There's someone else that has been through this. There's someone else who has been through this process, who has researched those resources. And it's really valuable.
And I really admire that you are so open about that and that you're willing to talk about it. Because it's definitely something that we don't see a lot of. And so what we do is super special. Well, thank you so much.
That means just so much to me. I think that music was my first tool as well. You know, writing has really saved my life many, many times. So it's very cool to have it kind of come full circle.
Yeah. Like kind of brave and honest with like how you express yourself. Your lyrics are very like dialed in. Like you can clearly tell what you're talking about.
It's not very mystic. You can clearly tell the message. Have you always been that comfortable kind of speaking so freely and writing so freely? Or did you kind of have to ease into that process?
I definitely had to ease into that process. I often say that I didn't start writing good songs until I met my girlfriend, Olivia Barton. And I have just always found so much bravery in her lyrics. And being around her so much hearing her writing songs in the other room has really inspired me to just tell it like it is.
You know, I think that for a lot of my songwriting history, I tried to make something sound prettier than it was or use certain words just because they were better lyrics. But ultimately, like I grew up in Pittsburgh. I have the vocabulary that I have. And it always sounds more honest when I just say it the way I would say it.
Sing it the way I would say it. Yeah, for sure. Do you have a song that you kind of associate with like this is kind of the first time where you're like experimenting with writing more freely? Oh, yeah.
Honestly, I would say bad friend. I wrote that with Olivia and I could tell it was going to be a really honest song. And so I started it and she walked in the room. She was like, what is that?
I really like it. And I said, well, I love your help because I think I want to go somewhere deeper with it. And I just know you can take me there. So yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome. And I love that you too have created this partnership that like while you have a relationship outside of music, you are able to work with each other and create amazing songs together. Yeah. So now to talk about if I were a fish, this song just makes me so happy and I love listening to it.
I play it for my mom all the time. And it's so it's just it's just a happy song. And I haven't heard a lot of happy songs in a while that like are just so genuinely like uplifting. And it makes my heart like so happy.
And so I'm very happy that you released this. It came out just the right time. And so I kind of, one of my questions that I had when I was listening to this song was this has, this has a different sound than most of your other songs. There is, I feel like in the beginning, there's a lot less heavy production.
It's just voice and guitar. There's a couple layers and then it goes into more production, heavy towards the end. And so I was kind of wondering how it felt releasing something like this. That was kind of a different direction than other songs we released.
Yeah. You know, I think that my first EP of songs, which I absolutely love and it was my first time producing and my first time releasing is Carooc. And I think I think there's part of me that was just like really trying to prove myself. You know, like I am a non-binary music producer, artist and songwriter.
So I wanted to like show off whatever I could and that included production. And I think right now I'm just in a place of feeling like I just want to serve these songs as they come out of me. And I'm finding that a lot of the time that just means doing less. And that is a scary thing because I feel like often as artists that produce their music, like we hide behind production sometimes, you know?
But it feels good to just record it the way I made it and add a little sprinkle and release it into the world because I think that's the most authentic way to do it. Yeah, for sure. I definitely, I agree with like sometimes less is more and like you can clearly, like it makes you focus in on like the stuff that's actually there and more. And it's definitely, I love when artists release like who are known for being more production heavy.
Start releasing things that don't have as much production or maybe not as noticeable production. I think it's a really special thing to see. The next question I have for you is if I were fish has been immensely viral on TikTok, it has been. So it is blown up.
I see all the time. How has it been kind of seeing that reaction, seeing the public's reaction, looking at the videos under the sound, seeing like the tweets about it. How, what has that been like? I still can't seem to process it.
It is very overwhelming. I can't go to the grocery store without somebody saying hello to me, which is amazingly sweet, but also makes me reconsider wearing sweatpants all the time. But yeah, I, you know, I think that the song was me calling out for a community and a community responded, you know. Yeah, for sure.
I'm really grateful for that. And while I am overwhelmed, I definitely don't take it for granted. Yeah. And speaking of community, recently you had a pop-up at Washington Square Park.
And those videos were insane. I was so jealous, I couldn't go, but it seemed like so much fun. What was it like being with all those people in such an intimate way and like being able to sing your song with them? That I think I would call like the most insane thing that has happened since all of this.
I really just posted about it to see who would come because I was honestly tired of reading all of the comments and I was like, I can't read all of these. I don't even know who's real. Yeah. And I just wanted to see who would show up.
And I thought maybe like 25 people would come and I showed up and there's like 300 people standing under the arch at Washington Square Park. And it was so healing. That's like the word I would use to describe it. I think it was healing for me.
It was healing for everyone that was there. There wasn't a dry eye. Everyone was smiling. It was very, very special.
That sounds amazing. I like just watching the videos online, you can tell that there was a community being built there and there was a special bond that was formed. Okay, I have one more question for you. Recently you announced that you are going to be performing at Austin City Limits.
Congratulations. What are you doing to prepare? Are you thinking of your set list already? What is the process going to be like for getting ready for such a big performance?
Yeah, luckily I have some shows under my belt. I've been touring as the opener for the last year and a half. So we have a pretty good idea of our set list, but we haven't played a five-year fish yet. We haven't played some of the songs that are coming out before that show.
So I'm hoping to add a couple new ones, but it will be lively and it will be emotional as usual. It's so exciting. I'm so excited for you. This is awesome.
Yeah, I'm so excited. It's going to be great. All right. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kuru.
Once again, Kuruks, music can be heard on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and all radio station. Thank you so much for listening to 889 The Bridge.