49th & Main: “Some days I feel like a marketing executive, trying to figure out how to do TikToks. We just want to be making music in our bedrooms"

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Those lines, from William Ernest Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’, ring out on the final track of 49th & Main’s debut album Happy Tears. They’re not delivered in English, but as Gaeilge, spoken as a declaration of strength and celebration of self.

Producer Ben O’Sullivan knows exactly why that poem ended up there. It resonates with him more than most. Just as the band was taking off, he developed aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease that made him chronically fatigued and prone to infections, forcing him to undergo intensive treatment.

“I remember when I was in hospital,” he explains. “I wrote that poem up on a whiteboard beside the bed. It was something I could draw strength from.”

The band continued making music throughout his treatment. Happy Tears captures the full spectrum of emotion that comes with youth, ambition and joy, anchored in an appreciation for the present moment.

Does Ben view the album as his personal ‘Invictus’?

“That’s a really cool parallel to draw. But I’m never gonna compare,” he says. “I’m not going to say it has those kinds of ramifications, or that it’s that important or anything. But I always think about how hard it would have been without the music. Especially in the tough times I’ve faced over the past couple years. It’s always been something I can go back to, especially the response from fans.”

Confronting your own mortality is profoundly sobering, especially for someone hitting their stride in their early twenties. The experience left a mark on Ben’s approach to creativity and life.

“We had gotten into the headspace of thinking about what people wanted rather than what we wanted,” Ben says. “There were ups and downs of the illness, and during one of the downs I remember thinking: ‘I just want to make stuff that I like, for me.’

“I just wanted to enjoy life, I guess. That definitely changed things. I took more risks and did things that were less popular and a bit weirder.”

“It definitely put us in gear to be making music nonstop,” adds Paddy, singer and primary lyric writer. “We really wanted to work as much as we could. “

“It was inspirational, the way Ben was powering through. I didn’t ever want to be letting him down. So I was just trying to do my best.”

The choice to deliver ‘Invictus’ in Irish meanwhile, ties into a core message behind Happy Tears – authenticity.

“I guess there were a lot of people who didn’t even know what 49th & Main was, or who we are, or if we were even Irish,” Paddy says. “A lot of people think the name is American, and we just wanted to get across who we were as people on this album.”

“When we sat down to make an album, it was important for us not to do it for the sake of it,” Ben says. “We’re gonna want it to come from a real place, because then we’ve hopefully got something to say rather than making stuff up.”

The lads clearly share a close bond, as friends and creative partners. Though they’ve known each other since they were 12, attending Kilkenny College together, their career as a band began over a summer in Canada (the moniker 49th & Main coming from the street in Vancouver where they lived).

Ben was producing electronic music while Paddy was a guitarist with some busking experience. The combination of the former’s club-friendly beats and the latter’s indie leanings creates a sound that straddles genres and defies easy categorisation.

“We have a division of labour, I suppose,” Ben begins. “We have our strengths and weaknesses, and I think we mesh quite well. We didn’t really think too much about it. We were both into music, and we wanted to try and make stuff together. And the first time it didn’t really work, but we kept at it. And then eventually we started to get into a bit of a rhythm.

“It was such a strange time when we went over to Canada. It felt like everyone from Ireland that was our age had moved over there for the summer. We were staying in a house with a few other friends from Kilkenny, and we were showing them the music.

“We were going out half the week. It was a fun time. It was a silly time, and that definitely rubbed off and helped us take the first step.”

49th & Main.

Their most recent and major step, Happy Tears, is a concept album, threaded together with train station announcements that guide the listener from one sonic stop to the next. That idea came from Ben, who spent a chunk of time travelling on rail, as well as diving deep into Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’ list.

“A lot of my favourite albums involved a concept or a storytelling mechanism, it wasn’t just the music,” he says. “And I love that. I wanted to recreate that and take people on a bit of a journey, and I’m not a talented enough writer to metaphorically take people on a journey. So I was like, ‘Why don’t we literally just put people in that kind of space? And put them on a train?’

“So yeah, the announcer was a crutch that I was using…”

The journey is reflected through the music too.

“There’s so many different tempos and emotions and it varies wildly. It winds down towards the end rather than building up. So we start strong,” Ben says. “We get into a bit more of an electronic vibe in the middle. And then we finish on more songwriting/indie type stuff at the end. I’m really happy with how it plays from start to finish.”

Nostalgia surfaces again and again. One of Happy Tears’ most tender moments comes through one of the interludes; an audio clip of Ben’s family speaking and playing with him as a child.

“Personally, I’ve always felt nostalgia quite strongly,” Ben says. “Even for some of the bad times in my life, I’ll look back and feel nostalgia. I’ll smell something, or I’ll hear a song from that time, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that was great, wasn’t it?’

“Last summer I was in a really good moment. I was really happy. I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna want this. I’m gonna want these moments back.’

“And in feeling that, I was trying to figure out how to actually appreciate a moment. When you have the realisation that you’re gonna want this moment back, it’s a really strong feeling.”

A strong feeling that’s also bittersweet.

“I think I’m quoting Mad Men now, but it comes from like a Greek word, doesn’t it?” Ben continues. “He says it’s like a pain from an old wound. There’s a bit of pain involved in any nostalgia. But yeah, that’s what being human’s about.”

Despite the polish and cohesion of the record, both members admit to moments of insecurity when asked what they learned from the experience.

“I think I learned that we need to get better at all of it,” Ben says. “I listened to quite a few albums in preparation, and I remember I almost scared myself from releasing this one. I was like, ‘No, ours is not good enough to be called an album’. It just felt like there was a lot more pressure on it.”

Sounds like a bit of imposter syndrome.

Paddy nods. “There’s definitely a bit. It’s wild how quick things kind of started going well for us. So it’s amazing, but it definitely does leave you with a bit of that.”

“Yeah,” Ben continues. “There’s so many people who are definitely more talented that don’t get half the recognition. When you see people out there working hard every day, you definitely have a bit of imposter syndrome, especially when you see yourself up on a festival line-up alongside them. For a while, it just felt like it was all gonna end. I was like, ‘Alright. When are we gonna be found out and have to get real jobs?’”

The moment to prepare their CV’s is yet to arrive. Despite their modest self-appraisals, 49th & Main are one of the country’s fastest-rising musical success stories of the last five years.

They sit at over a million monthly listeners and almost 200 million streams on Spotify alone. These numbers translate to the real world too, with sold-out shows not just in Ireland, but across Europe and

North America. The lads report their music being played everywhere from their local gym to supermarkets in Taiwan.
The appeal is deceptively simple. 49th & Main are in the business of making people feel good. The music is house-tinged, energetic, and danceable, with straightforward lyrics that are at once personal and universal.

“It’s surprising,” Paddy says. “You don’t think of what the words could mean to other people, and when they do come back with that response, it’s crazy. Every time we go on a tour, I just want to write so much more after it, because you see those things happen.

“I feel like I always forget what a live show feels like until I’m in it, and then it’s so much fun. You really feed off that energy and feel it in the room.”

Ben echoes the sentiment.

“On one hand you have that imposter syndrome,” he says. “On the other hand, it really does inspire you to go, and go again. You’ve got in mind that people do care, and they’re listening. And you want to get back out there.”

“You go to places like North America, these places you’ve never been, and you see a full room. People come up to you after the show, and they want to take pictures and tell you how much the songs mean.

We’ve even had people in random places come up with tattoos of the lyrics and things.

“One person had the album art for a song called ‘Raw Mixer’, which is a pineapple carton that I had made in Photoshop. This guy had it on his leg.”

Designing your own cover art is just part and parcel of being a modern musician. In today’s industry, the job doesn’t stop at writing and recording.

“It feels like multiple jobs right now,” Ben admits. “Some days I feel like a marketing executive, trying to figure out how to do Tik Toks. We just want to be making music in our bedrooms. That’s all we want to do all day.”

Speaking of Tik Toks, a clip still lives online of Ben feeding prompts to an AI song generator and asking it to make a “Malaria-type beat.” Though his experiment was more satire than science.

“I vaguely remember that,” he says, laughing. “I stole that idea from somebody else – it was a trend people were doing at the time. I didn’t actually use AI at all, it was a joke.”
Still, with the recent viral success of The Velvet Sundown – an entirely AI generated band that’s gone on to rack up over one million streams – serious questions about the technology’s role in art are being raised.

“It’s a wild one,” Ben says. “ Every time I try to think about it, I have too many questions coming into my head. I haven’t even looked into how easy it is to make these songs. It kind of scares me. I know for one that I’m very against using it just in the work that we do.

“But who knows? In like five to 10 years, it could be completely accepted.”

“The idea of an AI band is definitely worrying,” Paddy observes. “What’s the point? You can’t even go and see them live. I’ve tried using AI, asking it to, ‘Write me a song’, and it’s always the worst. I’ve seen that and think that this is never gonna work.”

And that’s because what works for 49th & Main is what’s real.

• Happy Tears is out now via Ninja Tune.