Like a late night drive down Sunset Boulevard, G Flip’s latest chapter is a dazzling collision of retro decadence, booming beats, and star-powered ambition. The acclaimed singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist is revving the engine on a thrilling new era—an ‘80s-inspired blast where every drum hits hard and neon signs glow across a raucous, electric cityscape. Get in the car—we’re going on a Dream Ride.
Following the massive success of their sophomore effort, 2023’s DRUMMER, which was named best album of the year by triple j, Dream Ride finds the Melbourne-born, LA-based artist widening their musical scope and taking their already massive sound to exuberant new heights. “There was a point in writing DRUMMER where we came across how they recorded drums in the ‘80s, and we realized it was a beast of its own,” G says of the transition from their sophomore album to creating Dream Ride. “You could really make a whole record about this ‘80s world. I always knew in my back pocket there was something about that to explore.”
Jumping right into writing and recording after releasing the percussion-themed DRUMMER, G (they/them) and their co-writer/co-producer Aidan Hogg became obsessed with ‘80s-style beats, citing the iconic Phil Collins “In The Air Tonight” fill and arena-filling Bruce Springsteen-style reverb. Playing ‘80s pop and hair metal music videos for more inspiration on a TV screen in their LA studio, G wrote more than 100 songs as they imagined an album of cinematic nighttime driving music while fashioning a new character for themselves: Butch Springsteen.
“When I made the record, there were colors and themes in mind, and there was always this car,” G says of Dream Ride, which they wrote, co-produced, recorded live at their home studio, and played nearly every instrument on. “Nearly every song on the album references a car. A lot of the songs have this nighttime driving soundscape to them, which may have been informed by me listening to the songs while driving home from the studio every night, seeing fast beams of lights going past me, and driving through Hollywood late at night with the neon signs.”
Cementing the transformation to Butch Springsteen with their first haircut since childhood, G expanded their already wide-ranging sonic universe, one they’ve been building since they first took up drumming at just nine years old when their dad (a part-time guitarist who gigged around local pubs) gave them a kit for their birthday.
After honing their drum skills and teaching themselves guitar and piano, G went on to study music at university and later juggled work as a session player, wedding performer, and band member. All the while, they quietly made their own music on the side until, in 2017, G took the leap and launched their solo career, where they wrote, recorded, and produced their own material in their bedroom studio and quickly broke out into mainstream recognition with 2018’s “About You” and its accompanying album, 2019’s About Us. Four years later, their sophomore album DRUMMER (home to singles “Be Your Man” and “The Worst Person Alive”) debuted atop the ARIA Albums Chart.
Even three albums in, the internationally recognized performer remains true to their DIY roots while scaling up their epic live performances and dreaming up vibey new visuals to match. Introducing G’s latest era is the scene-setting pop gem “Disco Cowgirl,” which captures the ache of fleeting love and its emotional aftermath. Rumbling in with the sound of a car engine, “Disco Cowgirl” packs on larger-than-life drums, glowing synths, a soaring chorus, and well-placed sax solo, all of which is topped off with a riveting key change and echoing backing vocals. “‘Disco Cowgirl’ was such a fun song to write,” G says. “I have artwork all over the walls in my studio to help inform my song lyrics. We were just riffing words and singing melodies out loud, and then my co-writer Buzz said the words ‘disco cowgirl,’ because there's a cowgirl on the wall and this poster of a disco ball that says, ‘New York loves tequila and disco.’ We just started writing it from there. We made it as texturally ‘80s as possible, and then put a lot of effort into recording the drums for that song.”
G keeps the momentum going on the rip-roaring and unapologetically queer “Big Ol’ Hammer,” which celebrates the intoxicating effect of a lover. “This song was written after a couple of drinks at the end of the night,” says G, who has consistently written from their experience as a queer, non-binary artist. “I wrote it with Jesse Thomas, one of my closest mates. It's all about having fun. There's a lot of songs we wrote for this record where it was like, ‘Guys, we're being too serious. Let's have some beers and be creative and have fun and not care.’ The more songs you get out, the more you're gonna get a good song, it's like fishing. The more you fish, the more you're gonna catch the big one.”
Meanwhile*, Dream Ride* shifts gears to a more reflective place on the shout-along synth ballad “In Another Life,” a universal song about loss that G says is the most emotional cut on the album. “Anyone who's lost someone can feel like this song speaks to them. I put myself in the shoes of people close to me, and myself, who really lost someone. And it just brought me to tears. It made me a mess thinking of it in that way and how powerful it was.”
Long recognized for weaving in conversations around gender identity into their work, G looks back on their Catholic school days and subsequent coming out process on the proudly defiant “Bed On Fire.” “This song is all about the angst I grew up feeling going to Catholic school,” G says. “It wasn't safe for me to come out as queer in high school. I had a lot of demons with that. You could interpret ‘set the bed on fire’ as sex, or you could interpret it as once I came out queer, I was overtly queer. I told everyone, I wrote music about it, I screamed it. I'm still screaming it from the top of my lungs in everything I do. So it's like, ‘All right, I'm gonna set the place ablaze with my queerness.’”
Already a force of personality and multi-faceted artistry, G Flip is putting rubber to the road on Dream Ride, which burns so hot it’ll leave a trail of flames in the rearview.
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