Award-winning Australian indie-rock quintet The Rubens are back with the new groove-laden single Million Man and have released the accompanying video, which premiered with Billboard last night.
Keyboardist Elliott Margin told Billboard, ‘We just wanted to do something that reflected the energy and fun of the song… The idea is we’re in New York having the greatest time recording this record and hanging with these dudes (in the studio), so we felt like why don’t we make a video that reflects that and how much fun we’re having.’
‘Million Man’ marks the first single off the band’s highly anticipated third album, due for release in 2018 and follows the platinum-certified, global hit single Hoops.
The track – along with the majority of the forthcoming album – was produced by Run The Jewels producers/collaborators, brothers Wilder Zoby and Little Shalimar (aka Torbitt Schwartz) after befriending NYC rapper EL-P (Run The Jewels) and the band at the 2013’s Laneway Music festival. Realising that their friendship could lead to a pretty interesting musical partnership, both Zoby and Schwartz flew out to The Ruben’s recording studio in Sydney, Australia.
On the collaboration, Margin says: ‘When it came time to look for a producer for this new record, we realised that they’d be the perfect guys to work with. ‘Million Man’ was the first track we worked on in the studio with the boys. It was genuinely just a fun time building the song and being creative together.’
The track was written by Margin in the height of their gold certified album Hoops, which was released in 2016 and saw The Rubens headline sold out arena shows in Australia and make their mark on the US music market. ‘Million Man’ itself seemed to come on unexpectedly:
‘The song itself kind of came from nowhere, just sitting at the piano and playing whatever came out,’ says Elliott. ‘As the song developed, the lyrics slowly came and spelled out a story and the rest came from there. The chorus was an easy flowing one, which is rare.’
The band are now geared up to return to both the stage and airwaves, with Million Man already lighting up stations across the US and Australia and the band embarking on a 26-date, 10 country tour. They will be hitting the UK in April for three very special headline shows in London, Manchester and Glasgow.