Once again, I find myself backstage with Wheatus frontman Brendan B. Brown , this time in Brighton. On the road since January 7th (2025), he’s be-hoodyed and struggling to regulate his body temperature. Yet the Teenage Dirtbag singer still makes time for our fourth interview.
In the time since we last spoke, the untimely death of Liam Payne has gripped the world. Brown fondly recalls meeting him back in 2014 ‘after a One Direction show where they covered Dirtbag’. At this hotel party, ‘we had a little chat, and he seemed sort of distracted and a bit serious. He was concerned that that their tickets were too expensive. He said, ‘all these places that we [perform], it’s just the rich kids who can afford it, it’s terrible’. He was really kinda worked up about it, he was upset.’
While E17 and N Sync understandably kvetch about performers having been underpaid and overworked, Liam Payne was plagued by the disenfranchisement of fans.
So, it’s a good job he bumped into the Wheatus frontman, who has a Ph.D in disagreeing with record companies, or rather remaining assertive under pressure from bosses. It was the best chance ‘convo’ anyone could have hoped for, and led Brown to write the song Tipsy. It initially appears to be just another song about the price of fame, but Brown’s anecdote alters the meaning.
Lines like ‘And you’re noticing the outsiders in every single town’, ‘But you could only recognise the ones who live without it’. At first glance, these suggest a famous star’s envy of anonymous people. A fervent desire to be them for just one day. Knowing the story behind the song, the lyrics describe the priced-out fans who preyed on Liam’s mind, the mind that ‘kn[ew] exactly why they can’t afford to come around.’ It was a viewpoint that Brown found ‘a really conscientious and deep thing for an early 20s kid to be thinking about at that stage of his [global] success’. The line ‘There’s no X to mark your spot’ (hinting at X- factor?) evokes the singer’s hidden depth of consciousness behind the sugary pop phenomenon.
The record’s production effects immerse the listener in the action. It makes you feel, well, tipsy in a noisy, blurry venue and happening upon this heart-to-heart between two perfect strangers who don’t mind you eavesdropping. You’re slightly drunk so you probably won’t remember it anyway. You can ‘hear’ the two smiling and glancing at you between sips, vaguely including you at their table. The paternal, comforting vocal competes against the distorted hubbub of a raucous party. Because I’ve spoken to Brown many times, I can hear him speaking behind the lyrics. He implores the young singer to keep sight of ‘Your world for what it is|All the happy little kids’: the sheer joy 1D was bringing to the army of ‘Directioners’. Brendan reassures Liam ‘you’re [not] alone’ in the feelings the young singer has towards the priced-out fans, a sentiment lost on people who would ‘never ever know| What it felt like down below’. A clever double entendre: it could mean rich music executives not knowing what it’s like to be working class. Or the general public’s ignorance of the qualms that come with hitting the big time, something that first happened for Wheatus in Australia.
PHOTO: Jane Greenwood.
The song’s message is the music industry’s faults should not take the shine off the fun artists create for the fans. If we can’t separate Art from the artist, we can separate it from the faults of the industry.
Many singers use their songs to shun fame, and we wonder if it’s purely because their agents are telling them to do something relatable to their followers, especially in the age of ‘fake news’. The fact this exchange actually happened makes the song so refreshingly genuine.
The story behind Tipsy offers a glimpse into the emotional sensitivity that may have played into -or been symptomatic of- the star’s ‘struggles with fame and mental health’. Even the title hits harder. Ten years before the autopsy that revealed Liam Payne’s narcotic use, he was just innocently, merrily ‘tipsy’. No class A drugs, no risky substance cocktail, just…tipsy.
Brown doesn’t know ‘however his life went from that conversation to his death […] because [he] didn’t get to know him very well, just the one convo and a couple of other meet ups’, but who knows. Maybe that ‘convo’ in 2014 kept Payne in One Direction until the band’s hiatus.
Sobering thoughts for song that makes you feel slightly drunk.
Photo: Jane Greenwood.
Rosie MacLeod 