Fleece Lightning: Catching Up with Hoodie Allen

The punsome nature of his name might elicit groans – and comparisons with equally smarty-pants imitators like Chet Faker and Joy Orbison – but few American pop properties are as hot right now as Hoodie Allen.

Better known to the IRS as Steven Adam Markowitz, the Long Islander has been a US radio constant for the past six months thanks to his ‘All About It’ collab with Ed Sheeran who’s a pretty damn hot pop property himself. Refreshingly, the hook up is the result of a genuine friendship between the two rather than a record company marketing person spotting the chance for mutual career advancement.
“I brought my girlfriend to see him at Irving Plaza in New York,” Hoodie recalls. “The show was awesome and through a mutual friend I got to go backstage afterwards to say ‘hello’. I figured it’d be full of press people and general craziness but, no, it was pretty mellow and we just hit it off.
“We’ve had a lot of nights out in the city when after a couple of drinks we start rapping together. Ed has a real appreciation of hip hop, which shows on his current album. I don’t think either of us anticipated that we’d do a collaboration... it sort of just evolved. And when it did, he was adamant that, ‘I want to rap a verse!’”
An avowed genre-bender, Allen is heading out on summer arena tour with Fall Out Boy and Wiz Khalifa.
“I’m kind of the link between the other two,” he smiles. “I’ve done straight up hip hop shows opening for Kendrick Lamarr and rock shows with Passion Pit and Panic! At The Disco. It can be nerve-wracking sometimes, but I like to win crowds over.
“My favourite producer’s Mark Ronson; he really mixes it up too. I’d love to be able to hit him up and go, ‘Hey, Mark, what do you think about doing my next album?’ I’m not quite at that level yet but, hey, you have to have something to aspire to.”
Another somewhat unlikely person Hoodie’s got to hang with is Tommy Lee. Has he read Mötley Crüe’s aptly-titled autobiography, The Dirt?
“No, but I hear it’s wild!”
We have an early contender for Understatement Of The Year.
“He was doing his DJ thing at a festival and was just the nicest dude. Tommy watched our set and had nothing afterwards to say but good things. We stayed in touch and when a role came up in one of our videos that I thought would suit him, he came to Los Angeles and killed it on set.”
Hoodie’s younger brother Dan has been getting rave reviews as a stand-up. Which is the harder of the two gigs?
“Being a comic, definitely,” he opines. “My brother’s still in college, so he’s not certain yet what he wants to do with his life. He’s part of a really popular improv troupe on campus, which is extra scary because you’re having to make stuff up on the spot. 20,000 Fall Out Boy fans, no problem, but trying to make people laugh... I couldn’t do it.”
Having already gone top 10 Stateside, Allen’s ace new album, People Keep Talking, is finally unleashed here on March 27.
“The wait has been frustrating, but it means I get to go to Ireland and the rest of Europe just as it’s hitting the shops there,” he concludes. “I’m really psyched to be playing Dublin again. Growing up I never dreamt I’d get to headline in such a famous music city.”