The story behind Tones And I’s No. 1 hit Dance Monkey that cost just $800 to make

Tones and I was a Melbourne-born busker who now has the No. 1 song in Australia. But what is the infectious Dance Monkey actually about? The story will surprise you.

Tones And I spent just $800 making her No. 1 hit Dance Monkey. Picture: Elise Derwin

Tones and I spent just $800 making her No. 1 hit Dance Monkey.

That’s about $100 more than Vance Joy paid for the recording of his global breakthrough Riptide.

And Dance Monkey is already shaping up to be Tones And I’s international calling card.

Tones And I — Toni Watson — wrote Dance Monkey in January this year while living in Byron Bay.

The 20-something had moved from Mornington in Melbourne to take advantage of Byron’s thriving busking scene.

Armed with her keyboards and some demo CDs she was selling for $10 (“I did some research, that seemed to be the going rate”), she quickly gained a huge following.

Not everyone was pleased by her success.

Melbourne musician Tones And I in her The Kids are Coming socks. Pic: Supplied

“Someone going to Byron Bay who isn’t a surfer dude with long hair and a guitar doesn’t know how to play music apparently,” she says.

“Anything electronic the other buskers are like ‘What are you doing in our town?’ Then if you start doing really really really well in Byron Bay as an electronic busker they hate you.

“Not all of them. There’s some nice ones. But a few literally said “We will run you out of town’. That stopped me busking for a while but I just pushed through it, I didn’t want to go back to retail.

“I thought ‘I have a busking permit, I’m allowed to be here, I’m not going to bullied into leaving’. Some buskers only busk once a fortnight, I busked every night.”

Dance Monkey came from one particularly messy night.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was January this year, so it was the holiday period. There was a hen’s night party going on, they were really rowdy, but rowdy people can make me lose my permit. There were some drunk guys as well, and this really drunk old guy. Everyone was drunk.

“People were coming behind my keyboard, trying to play it while I was playing it, thinking it was funny. Like the equipment doesn’t mean anything to me. And another group of people were trying to start this chant going ‘Again again again’.

“Everyone used to laugh at how all my equipment was a bit NQR (not quite right), all the screens on my keyboard were broken. Someone pushed my stand and it collapsed and the two keyboards on it fell down.

Tones And I moved from Melbourne to Byron Bay to be a busker. Picture: Elise Derwin

“There were people behind me and I was trying to tell them to be careful of all the cords on the ground. I thought ‘Oh my God these people have no patience’. And when it collapsed I just thought ‘I’m over this’ and I packed down that night.

“People have no respect, they’re on their phones scrolling ‘I don’t really feel this girl, I’ll find something else I like’. This is entertaining me for a second, but now I’ll find something else. They can just entertain themselves like that (snaps finger). But I’m not a robot you know.”

The musician wrote Dance Monkey about the pressure she felt to perform, as well as life as a busker in general.

“I literally quoted the most common things I got told, ‘Oh my God, I see the way you shine’ and people grabbed my hand and they’re like ‘You stopped me in the street as I was walking, I literally stopped’. That’s what buskers are meant to do. Some people get right on top of you. Most people are amazing, but this isn’t a song about that. It’s just about the pressure.”

Dance Monkey, like all of Tones And I’s songs, is self-penned.

“I wanted to write a song with a bass drop,” she recalls.

The song was premiered, soon after being written, at a talent show at a hostel in Byron Bay where Tones And I had been living for a year.

“I’d play Dance Monkey every Tuesday at the talent show. It was 500 capacity, because it was outside, for this talent show. Then it became this thing where every Tuesday I’d get up at the end of the talent show and play Dance Monkey.

“All of a sudden, week after week, more and more people came. The hostel have been running this talent show for 20 years, all of a sudden they put a $5 (cover) charge on the door, it was full capacity, couldn’t get anyone more in. There’s a video of it on my Instagram. It was the funnest time in my life so far.”

That video, from January, captures the first time people sat down during the song — which is now a feature every time Tones And I performs it live.

“The guys at the hostel started that. In that video they didn’t know the words, I’d just written the song, but they loved it. The song kicked off in Byron. Everyone’s so supportive in Byron, everyone loves to have fun. No one cares too much what other people think.

“I thought of course they’ll like my music, they’re super nice. So I didn’t really think it would resonate like that to the world. The world is the hardest critic. I just thought Byron seemed to like it.”

After her first single Johnny Run Away reached the ARIA Top 20 and saw her cross from Triple J airplay to commercial radio, Tones And I wanted Dance Monkey to be her second release.

“One of my managers said ‘Don’t be disappointed if Dance Monkey isn’t like Johnny, it might not be a radio song, people might only love it at live shows’. I thought it was a sick song. I love the song. I wrote Johnny four years ago. It’s childlike, the song has no meaning, but it’s childlike which is fine because it’s talking about a young person.

“Dance Monkey I wrote that for me now. I’m so glad me now is going further than me four years ago.”

Melbourne musician Tones And I spent $800 making her No. 1 single. Pic: supplied

She took Dance Monkey to producer Konstantin Kersting (Mallrat) who has worked on all her music so far.

“It cost about $800. It was all paid for through selling demo CDs and busking. Mainly busking, that paid for everything.

“Basically how I work is I wrote the song myself. I figure out how I wanted it to be, then I took it to the producer to put it into a computer and turn it into an audio format.

READ MORE:

TONES AND I: BUSKING TO NO.1 HIT

TONES AND I TO PLAY MELBOURNE SPOTIFY EVENT

“Some of the sounds, I use my keyboards for the bass effect. I took it to Kon, who finds better bass sounds in his computer, ones with more depth. But pretty much I’ll go ‘Let’s start with this verse, but with better sounds’. Same thing with the chorus. I’ve never gone in and co-written with anyone else yet.

“I do want to do that, but not until I establish myself properly. My next song The Kids are Coming was completely produced by me, the first song I’ve produced. I’m so proud of it. I want to write everything on my first and second EPs, and on my first album I want to have two collabs, Macklemore and Adrian Eagle.”