Tones And I the latest busker to go from the streets to the charts
Tones And I has taken her ode to busking to the top of the global charts but she’s just the latest in a long line of performers to show why busking is the ideal apprenticeship to launch a career.
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The song Toni Watson wrote about the few downsides of being a busker has made her so popular globally she’s had to upgrade her busking from the streets to the stage.
Dance Monkeyhas seen Watson, as Tones And I, spend 11 weeks at No. 1 in Australia (now the longest-running homegrown chart topper in chart history, a record held by Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock since 1971) and it’s been No. 1 in the UK for two weeks.
This week it became the first Australian song to top Spotify’s Global Chart — it’s been streamed over 350 million times on their platform — and has just started to ascend the US chart as well as topping charts in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden and Switzerland.
Three years ago Watson would watch Melbourne acts Tash Sultana and the Pierce Brothers busking outside the Jetty Surf store she was working at in the Bourke Street Mall. She not only followed their career path from busking to a music career, she’s signed to the same management team as both acts.
However the self-taught Watson’s instruments are keyboards, not guitars.
In 2018, while waiting for her Melbourne busking permit to come through, Watson moved to Byron Bay after being told she could make a good living there as a busker.
Dance Monkey’s inspiration came from January this year, where drunk girls at a hen’s night were swarming around Watson’s keyboards, trying to play along.
“It was as if they thought it was funny, that the equipment doesn’t mean anything to me,” she says. “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. I’d had enough that night.
“People have no respect, they’re on their phones scrolling ‘I don’t really feel this girl. This is entertaining me for a second, but now I’ll find something else’. But I’m not a robot you know.”
The musician wrote Dance Monkey about the pressure to perform, and life as a busker.
“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 literally stopped me in the street as I was walking by’. 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.”
The success of Dance Monkey will undoubtedly see the song being performed by young buskers also lugging keyboards on the streets. Yet for many years, the blueprint for buskers has been the trusty acoustic guitar.
That stretches back to late blues icon B.B King, who started out in the 1940s as a kid playing guitar on the streets of Mississippi. In 1962 Rod Stewart was a budding folk singer busking in London’s Leicester Square, armed with a harmonica, then busking around Europe. 1m 1981 US band the Violent Femmes took to busking on the streets as they couldn’t get gigs in clubs — they’d later become alternative heroes and this year filmed a video performing on the same street corner in Milwaukee they were discovered by the Pretenders in 1981.
Tracy Chapman cut her teeth busking ahead of breakthrough hit Fast Car while Jewel was busking ahead of her 12 million selling debut album Pieces of You.
Most recently, Ed Sheeran has been the go-to inspiration for street performers. The British singer/songwriter started as a busker in London’s underground in 2009. A decade later he has just finished the most successful concert tour in history. His two year Divide tour made over $1.1 billion, beating a record held by U2 — it sold a record-breaking one million tickets in Australia and New Zealand alone last year.
Sheeran’s modus operandi hasn’t changed since his busking days — just him, his guitar and a loop pedal that allows him to become a one-man band. There’s just more fancy technology involved now, but he’s essentially the world’s most famous busker, now filling stadiums solo.
Sheeran’s longtime mate Passenger, aka British musician Mike Rosenberg, also went from busking to topping the charts. His 2012 hit Let Her Go has been streamed over a billion times on Spotify, but began life being busked on the streets of Sydney where Passenger shaped his early musical career. For his follow-up albums, Rosenberg has included busking as part of the promotional campaign, including in Australia — these days he doesn’t accept money, but hands out flyers spruiking his new material.
“I still want to keep busking, I don’t want to get carried away with success,” Rosenberg told the Herald Sun in 2015. “Busking is a way of saying thank you for that.”
In Melbourne acts like The Teskey Brothers cut their teeth busking at Warrandyte’s St Andrews Community Market — their modern soul sound has now seen them a drawcard on festivals globally while their new album debuted at No. 2 in Australia in August.
John Butler tested out his roots-driven blues sound on the streets of Fremantle in the mid 90s, opening the doors for a legion of fellow dreadlocked buskers from Torquay’s didgeridoo specialist Xavier Rudd to Melbourne’s Pierce Brothers, both of whom have built up loyal international followings that started from street performances.
The Pierce Brothers, featuring twins Pat and Jack, started busking as a side-project while they were finishing university, hoping it might get some people coming to their live shows.
Inspired by Kiwi band Bonjah they started busking in the Bourke Street Mall in 2013 and sold 66 CDs on their first day. They’d sold 50,000 CDs in their first year busking and went on to sign a record deal and tour globally.
“When we started making good money it became an income stream to record our own EPs,” Jack Pierce said. “The first EP was sent off to Europe which got us a career over there. I don’t know how we would have done it without busking. Our music was tailor made for busking, it was loud and bombastic, it got peoples’ attention. Then playing quieter songs people would bring people in. Busking dictated the way we would perform (on stage).”
Tash Sultana turned to busking in the Bourke Street Mall in 2014 after being unable to find regular work — ironically noting that busking created a strong work ethic and became a pathway to making original music. Sultana’s guitar prowess, using pedals to create effects and beats, soon drew huge crowds — and the musician filmed the jams and started posting them on a YouTube channel, which helped to secure a record deal both here and overseas.
Sultana’s 2018 album Flow State reached No. 2 in Australia (winning an ARIA award) and charted in the US and UK, where the musician has huge live following — she’s played everywhere from Coachella to Lollapalooza.
“Busking was the most important thing to happen in beginning my career,” Sultana told Tone Deaf three years ago. “Busking is like street rehearsal. It’s an open rehearsal space where people will stop and vibe with you if they’re feeling it. It can change people’s whole day just by adding a little bit of sunshine into the concrete jungle.”
For Watson, while she’s got dates in the UK, Europe and US locked in over the next six months, she makes sure her Melbourne busking permit remains validated as a reminder of where she came from — and so she can return to her roots for a busking fix.
“I never want to stop busking. This seems like it’s happened so quickly, but there’s been a lot of hard work that’s gone into it. Busking is how this all started.”