Ever since she was young, singer-songwriter KINGS has always wanted to connect to others through music.
What first began as a passion in North Carolina evolved into a music career pursuit that took her to Nashville.
In 2019, audiences took notice of KINGS’s dedication sending a video of her singing at the Starbucks drive-thru into viral TikTok stardom.
Since then, she has released the anthemic “ur a good bye,” and her most recent single, “Thank Me Later.”
We chatted with KINGS about the single, TikTok, and what fans can look forward to next.
Excerpt from the podcast:
I want to congratulate you on your recent single, “Thank Me Later.” What inspired that song?
Oh my gosh. It was a whole crazy story to be completely honest. I’m a very much a single girl. I love being single, but I was talking to this guy last fall and we were like best friends, honestly. And I was like, we’re probably going to end up dating, but like no need to rush things. We’re just getting to know each other. That was when I kind of started going back and forth between LA and Nashville more regularly because the label was out here. I went to LA for three weeks from Nashville and when I got back, he had a girlfriend and I was like, oh, that’s bold. And it was really painful. Honestly, I was like this is going to inspire a lot of songs. But at the moment it was, you know, it was really painful. Later on, I found out that he actually was super into me and just didn’t think I was into him and just wanted to date someone else. And I was like, that’s totally fine, but you’re going to get a lot of songs written about you. That’s what inspired this one. I was like, you know what, I’m ready to write a sassy one. I’ve written enough sad songs/ Immediately, when I wrote it, I was like, I have to drop this.
Has he heard the song?
He has. He has heard the song. Yes, and I think our entire friend group, which, I mean, we have a few mutual friends. I’m in LA a lot so it’s hard to keep up certain friend groups, but because of that whole situation, I think everyone knows, but it’s okay.
There’s a little voice memo at the end. Was that recorded afterwards or was that actually from a conversation you had?
That was a conversation that I was actually having with my co-writer when I was recording the song. And I was like, we have to add this in, we have to.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that writing process?
Yeah, so honestly, throughout the entire year of, you know, COVID being awful, I couldn’t really do as many in-person session sessions, so I was doing it over zoom. Last January was when I wrote this one and it was over Zoom. I was basically talking to my co-writers. I always, typically have like one of my friends who’s a co-writer and then someone who’s a producer and we all just kind of brainstorm until we come up with something fun. And so the producer was coming up with a dope track and I was like, yes, that’s it. And I had honestly kind of exhausted this topic of this boy, like every writing session I went and I was telling them about this boy. At this point I was like, I’m kind of at a turning point. I think I want to write a song about this rebound, not in a mean way, but kind of like, you should know what you’re getting into, because that was really difficult for me. We just kind of were brainstorming and I think the first line we came up with was like, ‘you’re so welcome, ‘in the very first verse, and I was like, that’s really cool. We should do something with thank me later, or you’re welcome, you know, like that type of thing. And I was like, this could be super cool. So we just started writing it and I remember that we were like going back and forth about the chorus for so long. I put myself on mute and I was just sitting in my bedroom and I was singing it and I was immediately freaking out and we just kind of continued the song from there. I feel like taking this painful situation, turning it into something crazy fun, just set the tone for the song.