Artist Spotlight: Tones and I
By Dylan Johnson
I first heard the Tones and I roughly a year ago through a speaker at the Verizon store I was working at. When it comes to music I’m picky. It’s incredibly rare for me to instantly fall in love with a song. I need a sense of familiarity, something to ease that resistance to the new, to really begin to open up and learn a song’s lyrics or get down with the beat.
This may be a personal flaw, as I often tend to reject incredible music on the first go and realize 4 months later that I had been sleeping on a banger. Well, this is exactly what happened with the Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey”. I must have heard this song in the background of my working life every day for the span of several months and only then did it stand out.
On my first real listen, the song grasped me. The light piano open, coupled with the beautiful high-pitched voice coming into a layer on top was ethereal. Something so simple never sounded so beautiful. The song became an instant favorite - played on repeat in any drive or walk or bus ride over and over again, never losing its magnificent groove.
Few are able to achieve such success with their earliest work and continue to maintain the quality that Tones does. (Tones and I | YouTube)
Tones and I is the stage name of Toni Watson an Australian singer-songwriter that only recently came to prominence. Remarkably, Tones and I blew up with very little discography out in the world. “Dance Monkey” was one of her first pieces released onto streaming services and it almost instantly brought her to prominence. Going platinum 13 times on her second released single is something to marvel at. Few are able to achieve such success with their earliest work and continue to maintain the quality that Tones does.
What I personally love about Tones is her voice. It complements the duality of her sound so perfectly. The majority of her work exhibits this very groovy level of pop, where she was certainly able to get my hips moving and attempting to hit even the highest of notes (unsuccessfully I might add). But then she is able to take that same vocal quality, slow it down, place a softer beat behind it and create a completely new song.
Several months after hearing “Dance Monkey” I stumbled on the stripped back version. With the same song lyrics and core beat intact she creates something brand new. Stripped of all the filler sounds and voices that tend to accompany a pop hit, this minimalist version of Dance Monkey is a work of art. She took a wonderfully fun, exciting song and somehow made it reflective, even melancholy. This banger all of a sudden felt so much more intimate. Same song, same lyrics, same voice, but 2 completely different feelings. I literally am incapable of describing my level of awe when I realized these two songs existed.
Tones only have roughly 11 songs out on streaming services as of right now. That’s it. The whole discography easily fits on an old school CD. Yet the artistry Tones weaves into her music as you listen is almost indescribable. She can get you jamming with “You’re so Fucking Cool” just to slow you right back down again with “Never Seen the Rain”. She encompasses nearly every feeling in these songs.
They are human, they are intimate, they are relatable, and most of all they are so good. Tones aren’t some heady concept artist, she’s down to earth. She sings about topics that the average person can find some connection to. I am thankful every day that I found Tones. While she doesn’t have the depth of catalog that I would like, the catalog she’s made has depth. Getting to find a talented artist at this early of a stage in their career is rare. My only hope is that her music does something even rarer and continues to captivate in the years to come.
Dylan is a culture writer for La Tonique.