Listening to a Will Linley song feels something like magic. The South African singer-songwriter has the ability to create dance worthy, anthemic tracks that encapsulate the euphoria of youth and coming of age.
At the core of Linley’s success is connection. After taking TikTok by storm in 2021 with his debut single “miss me (when you’re gone),” he has continued to create a global fan base, his Gingerbread Club, with his ability to make his fans heard and seen in new and creative ways like his his Gingerbread Times, an old school newspaper.
However, the real “magic” is Linley’s ability to engage with his fans live. In intimate venues he is able to interact with everyone from the barricade to the back whether he’s participating in lively banter or encouraging crowds to dance along to his latest single “Just Because I Called You.”
We caught up with Will Linley before his debut headlining performance in Cambridge, MA, a stop on his “The Magic Tour,” to chat about his journey so far and connecting with his fans through music.
What first inspired your passion for music?
A big, a big draw factor just for me into pop music was what I listened to as a kid, like listening to Ed Sheeran. “A Team” was one of the songs that inspired me most to get into songwriting. I remember I was on camp with a bunch of my friends and “A Team” had come out and a friend of mine was singing “about like, “wide lips, pale face..” I was like, what song is he singing? What is this? And he told me about Ed Sheeran and I suddenly went into this deep dive into Ed Sheeran and I was like, oh my gosh, who is this?
Then I did a whole deep dive into that acoustic session that he did of the addition album. I was just blown away by his musicianship, his writing, his voice. That was just a massive, massive, massive reason into me just stepping into this like guitar singer songwriter-esque world. And then I wanted to dance and I was like, okay, so how do I dance while doing this as well? And then that’s where pop music really took off for me.
You opened for Em Beihold earlier in your touring. How has your previous touring changed how you perform on stage?
There hasn’t been one moment where I felt completely comfortable on stage, which I think is really important. It’s kept me on my toes. Every now and then I’ll try something new and I’ll come backstage – I’ll be like, ‘Oh no. Okay. Don’t do that again.’ And then there’ll be some days where I try something new and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that worked really well. That connected with the audience really well.’
And what I love is I feel like we are building this world of Will Linley that is centered around a live show. It’s centered around creating a space that people can come into and immediately feel a sense of love, a sense of belonging, a sense of ‘Oh, this is where home is.’ This is what family is like. I think that it is my job as an artist to create that space. It’s been such a blessing being able to do that back at home in South Africa. And it’s only something that I wish I can do in the future here in America. We can hopefully start getting these shows to be bigger and start putting more into it.
You started your career on TikTok. How have you continued to find ways to engage with your fans?
I think the most important thing for me has been centering around the fact that ‘whoa, I would not be here if it wasn’t for the people that listen to my music. Without this community that we’ve built, it’s just me in an empty room and two incredible instrumentalists, but it would be an empty room. And I think that centering in that has been probably the realest thing for me, and then realizing that we can have fun in this. We can really lean into it and create a family dynamic amongst our community of people that want to be a part of something that is fun, that is engaging.
And so like making these newspapers, handing them out, getting people to call in. It’s just been such a fun way of interacting with the community that we’ve built. It’s something that is so important to me and I want to continue giving back to fans just as much as they are giving to me. It’s been an unbelievable journey so far.
You mentioned the newspaper, there’s two terms that come to mind, The Gingerbread Times and then Pookie. Where do those terms come from?
Someone called me Pookie and I was like, what is this? This is confusing. And then I searched it up and it, and Urban Dictionary said it was a term of endearment. I was like, oh, okay. Wow. Thank you, Pookie. I’ll take that. Then it’s kind of just been this running joke amongst my fan base. We’ve kind of taken it further than it ever should have been taken.
Then when I talk about the Gingerbread Club, the Gingerbread Club is our community. It’s the fan base on the whole, so the Gingerbread Club is something that I hold incredibly dear to myself. And so when we were making this newspaper, the right name for this newspaper, the Gingerbread Times, just felt perfect.
If you could set up fans in the perfect environment to listen to your music, what do you imagine it looking like?
Oh, man, I’m trying to think of the non obvious ones because I immediately go to – there’s this beautiful coastal road in Camps Bay in Cape Town, South Africa – they’re in the passenger seat with me, we’re driving, we’re listening to the album, sunsets going down, we’re listening to music together, windows roll down, we’re cruising.
When I listen to demos, when I listen to my music, when I’m really trying to figure out what songs do I love, what songs aren’t feeling right just yet, I hit that drive and listen to my music and it just eases all sense of what’s going on.
What is it like to be on your first ever headlining tour?
It is a dream. Ever since I was a little kid, I have thought about what it must be like for an artist to be able to go and play their songs in places around the world. I think it really just is this mind boggling experience of I come from the tip – Cape Town is like the most Southern city in Africa. And I am in America. I’m in one of the most like Northern states of America right now and I’m about to put on a show in Boston and people are hopefully going to sing some of the words, and that is wild to me. It’s really incredible. And I think sometimes one can get so caught up in the analytics and the stats and the, Oh man, we only saw this amount. Oh no. I wish we had more people coming, but it’s like, Oh dude, like give yourself a break. Like you are in a different country and different cities and people are coming and that is the biggest blessing.
