Good Neighbors Share What's Next After 'Crazy' Success Of 'Home'

Good Neighbors' 'Home' has been one of 2024's biggest success stories so far. See how the duo managed it.

foundation

Before they became Good Neighbours, Scott Verrill and Oli Fox were literally neighbors in an East London studio space last year, excited by each other's solo work bleeding through the metal windows. “We could hear what each of us was playing all the time,” Fox recalls, “and on a free morning, we'd do some free writing together.”

These sessions hinge on shared influences—Verrill and Fox draw from late-2000s indie-pop mainstays like MGMT and Passion Pit—and “Keep going”, one of the first songs the duo wrote along with its booming drums and vocals formed a mission statement, while the pair worked on a demo in late 2023.

Discovery

In January, Good Neighbors recorded the long chorus of “Home,” a whistle-filled anthem, and decided to release the chorus on TikTok without finishing the rest of the song. “It took off pretty quickly — a few thousand plays — and we got excited and said, 'If it gets to 25,000, we'll have a pint!' says Fox.

Within hours, the “Home” clip had crossed the 1 million mark, and major labels reached out to the duo's manager, Joe Etchells of Various Artists, who signed the act in September 2023. “Home” quickly ended up at a full song, which debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in February and has garnered 77 million streams as of April 25, according to Luminate. Instead of taking that celebratory drink, Verill and Fox turned their worlds upside down: “We're constantly looking at each other and saying, 'This is insanesays Fox.

Future

Last week, Good Neighbors announced a global joint venture with Capitol Records and Polydor Records. And after hitting headline shows in the UK and Europe for the spring and festivals for the summer, Good Neighbors released 'Keep It Up' in April as their second single and are finalizing more material for release later this year.

“We wrote a bunch of new demos in January, and we've got about 10 from last year — some of which are probably better than 'Home,' which is pretty cool,” Fox says. However, after recording separately for years before joining forces, Verrill and Fox understand how rare a breakthrough like “Home” can be in the modern music industry. “The whole thing was such a happy accident,” says Verrill. “We're still trying to process it.”

This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024 issue Advertising sign.