Father John Misty

Father John Misty is quickly becoming one of the music industry’s funniest members. From trolling the entire world with a batshit “dream” he had about the late Lou Reed to hosting impromptu Q&As with fans in lieu of encores on his recent world tour, even through to his unsuspectingly witty lyrics, real name Josh Tillman is actually a really funny dude.

Now, he has taken to Soundcloud to upload a few cuts of promos he did for online radio service Pandora that didn’t quite make the cut. You would assume they aren’t real, but if we have learned one thing about FJM, it’s that you should never, ever assume (he really knocked us for a six with the Lou Reed dream thing).

Poking fun not only at himself, but at the task of recording promos to get people to listen to his music, they’re as over the top as you would imagine. From talking about how when he was a kid “radio was on the radio” instead of being online, to how a particular mix is as close as you will get to wearing a “veritable skin suit” of him on and how you can be him for “one terrifying hour”, these cuts are really, really great. Hear for yourself below.

Father John Misty was recently in Australia for a tour in support of his most recent (and fantastic) album, I Love You, Honeybear. The typically charismatic and hilarious performer treated audiences to sensational performances, but it has now come to light that this isn’t all he did during those shows.

During one gig in particular, Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman) opted to do things a little differently. He wanted to shake things up, you know? Instead of the generic encore that punters have now come to expect, Tillman decided to do an impromptu Q&A with audience members – because of course he did. This is the same guy that told the world he was visited by Lou Reed in a dream, and then revealed he was actually just trolling us the entire time, so it really comes as no surprise that he would do this, and the results would be unsurprisingly hilarious.

Being uploaded to his own Soundcloud account overnight, the below is a cut of sessions from the US, Europe and Australian tours, and whilst we love that we can now hear it ourselves, we can’t help but feel surprised as to why this is only coming to light now. Here is Father John fucking Misty answering questions like “How does sex work?” and everyone that went to these shows took it upon themselves to remain silent? How are people NOT talking about this? Share the Misty love around, future audiences. This is vital news for the rest of us too!

In the most unsurprising news in the music world today, Father John Misty has announced that his Taylor Swift covers, and the subsequent dream that seemingly explained why he removed the tracks from the internet, were all one big fake trolling effort to fuck with the media.

For those who haven’t already heard, it went like this. Father John Misty uploaded two covers of  (or covers of Ryan Adams’ covers of) Taylor Swift songs  Blank Space and Welcome To New York – performed in the style of The Velvet Underground. Then he deleted them. Then he shared a statement, documenting a ridiculous dream, which included a meeting with Lou Reed, who demanded he take the songs down.

In a new interview with Kentucky radio station 91.9 WFPK Radio Louisville, FJM, real name Josh Tillman, explains the whole thing. The idea came together in an hour, he says, after he found his tour manager listening to Swift’s latest album 1989. FJM had never heard Taylor Swift’s music, and decided to print off the lyrics and record a new version.

They were far more popular than he expected, and the media pounced like never before. It was trending news on social media, it even made it to the news in some locations – so he took the covers down.

As you might expect, that only riled us up even more. Why did he do it? Did Swift and co. demand they be removed? Is he in trouble for it? Perhaps he’s gearing up to release a whole cover album like Ryan Adams did?

The news spread so far that it’s even been alleged that Taylor Swift’s own team reached out to the musician, asking that they be put back online.

Tillman used the opportunity to troll everyone with that ridiculous dream, including an angry Lou Reed ordering him to “delete those tracks, don’t summon the dead, I am not your plaything.”

“I was annoyed at the media,” he explained. “I was like, ‘these people will print anything’, so I went and gave them the most fraudulent, the most blatantly absurd, unprintable piece of surrealistic nonsense – and they printed it!”

Look, it’s an interesting remark, and indeed the international media (including us) gleefully reported on this ridiculous news, but his statement does not hold up. Reasons being that a) it’s still entertaining news – that he fabricated the dream is almost irrelevant, and besides, the news had begun before that, when he release the covers. He’d released the songs, taken them down, written up that dream, etc., – that’s still worth reporting on, if for no other reason than a laugh. And b) most of us assumed it was fake anyway, because, well, it’s insane.
It’s hilarious and it’s not exactly world-changing, but it’s still news – if for no other reason than looking at how anything involving Taylor Swift suddenly turns to gold. Even if it was true, it’s not a case of ‘the media will publish anything’ . He created entertaining news for us to write about, so we did.

All in all it’s a pretty hilarious situation, one that’s earned Father John Misty a whole lot of attention – we hardly think he’s unhappy about that.

You can listen to the full interview here, in which he also talks about his recent single and video clip. You can hear him begin talking about Swift-gate at 26 minutes in.

Father John Misty will be visiting Australia this December to perform at Fairgrounds in NSW and Meredith Music Festival in Victoria.

Reportedly inspired by a truly ridiculous dream, Father John Misty has removed the covers of Taylor Swift songs from Soundcloud. Well, actually, he wasn’t covering Taylor Swift. He was covering Ryan Adams’ covers of Taylor Swift – in the style of the Velvet Underground.

Confused? It gets better.

There is little point fleshing out the intricacies of the issue. While the most obvious explanation would’ve been legality, copyright, royalties etc., it’s a little more complicated than that. We think. And the reason is so much more entertaining than the actual songs.

In an extremely vivid and detailed dream (or so he says, we assume this is fiction), FJM crab-walked around his neighbourhood, got a ride on Air Force One with Obama, and discussed the ruling of the free world before being reprimanded by none other than late Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed.

It is essential you read the full statement:

“I had a very strange dream that I abruptly woke up from around 3am early this morning. I was crab-walking around a neighborhood in New Orleans that, though it does not exist, is a recurring location in my dreams. My childhood friend Brian Kawamura was was telling me I still owed the tennis rental place $7000 when the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan was suddenly standing over me, saying over and over, “The only thing crazier than a peasant who believes he is King, is a King who believes he is a King.” He put one of those birthday Burger King crowns on my head and out of the clouds a sort of “Switched on Bach” version of “Ode To Joy” began to play. A crowd which had formed around me began to sing along, with tears streaming down their faces. The crowd was obviously hypnotized and I assumed if I crept away discreetly no one would notice. The earth become a sort of treadmill, and though the locations (The Great Wall of China, a McDonald’s where I had my 3rd birthday, the town from Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Vignola’s restaurant in Rockville, Md.), “Ode To Joy” and the crowd remained all around me.

All of a sudden it was time to soundcheck, which I was late for, and Barack Obama offered to give me a ride on Air Force One. He told me he needed urgent advice regarding some important policy decisions, and we spent the day in Hawaii playing basketball, petting his dogs, golfing and the like when I, gripped with anxiety, told him I really needed to get to soundcheck so we needed to discuss the ruling of the free world. By this time he had turned into an obscene visage of my Father and said, “I have one injunction for you, son: That you enjoy life. It is by this mandate that all is ruled. It is the true tyranny; the equalizing force that binds us all.” I jumped out of Air Force One and landed on top of this massive pink, sparkly, glowing blob that stretched for miles beyond miles, covering entire cities, and I had to keep gulping down chlorophyll because the thing was emitting insane levels of EMF’s, so my mouth and hands were stained dark green.

Down inside the blob I could see thousands of familiar faces and one of them was Lou Reed on a catwalk hand-cuffed to supermodels who had adopted babies handcuffed to them and Lou said, “Delete those tracks, don’t summon the dead, I am not your plaything. The collection of souls is an expensive pastime.” Then I woke up.”

Thankfully for the internet, YouTube has retained a copy of the hilarious cover.

Father John Misty will be touring Australia later this year, where he will be performing at Meredith Music Festival and Fairgrounds Festival.