Chris Greig & The Merchants have unveiled their latest single ‘Shy’.
The new track comes ahead of the band’s forthcoming Glasgow headliner at 13th Note on March 21st.
To celebrate the single release, we caught up with Chris Greig to discover 5 tracks that influenced the release.
Frightened Rabbit – I Feel Better | Listen via Spotify
Although they don’t sound anything alike, we wrote ‘SHY’ about something that can really affect someone’s mental health – social anxiety. It was the lyrics in this song that I feel I took influence from for ‘SHY’ and what helped me come to the realisation I wanted to write about social anxiety as a topic. Although ‘I Feel Better‘ is, at heart, a break-up song, there are specific lyrics that really got me thinking outside the box. “I feel better and better and worse and then better” is really something that resonated with me and reminded me of a friend who described their social anxieties in a very similar way.
The 1975 – Girls | Listen via Spotify
To be honest, although hard to hear in a lot of our songs, we take a lot of influence from The 1975. I’ve been listening to The 1975 since 2013 and I can’t help but feel their influence in our music – even though at times it may be hard to hear.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop | Listen via Spotify
This one is down to Chris Johnston, who wrote the guitar part for this track based on his appreciation for the guitar playing style of John Frusciante. Chris was mainly intrigued by Frusciante’s method of playing around with fragments of chords in different ways, but never quite playing the full chord. I feel like this is another one that might be hard to hear in our songs. Our process often takes influence from someone and make it sound more ‘indie-pop’ or more ‘Chris Greig & The Merchants’
Fickle Friends – Glue | Listen via Spotify
Soley down to the way Natassja Shiner has written a whole song with the same rhyming sound (‘oo’) is incredible to me and was genuinely the first time I’d ever heard it when the song came out a few years ago. I thought I’d start writing this song by attempting the same thing but considering I wanted the song to be called ‘SHY’ I kind of shot myself in the foot there. So, I just stuck to writing the verses taking that influence from Fickle Friends.
Tom Grennan – Found What I’ve Been Looking For | Listen via Spotify
Simply down to the fact that my dad kicks about in his house singing the guitar intro to this song – I really wanted a section in ‘SHY’ that would be good for that sort of crowd participation – or a part of the song anyone’s dad could kick about their house singing! This is primarily what inspired the middle-8 section with the ‘woah’s’
You can listen to Chris Greig & The Merchants ‘Shy’ via Spotify below: