A CONVERSATION WITH... BOY DESTROY
On the heels of the release of the transitional project “Pink Cloud EP”, rising Swedish star Boy Destroy explores the meaning behind his music and artist persona.
Photo Credit: Dawbell PR
What do chess players and musicians have in common?
They are in their chosen fields for many reasons, but the main one is their love for the game. It fuels them and keeps them going through all the despair and chaos, the highs and lows that are scattered along the road to the top. That the game becomes their true love, a love that tests their patience, spirit, and confidence.
So what happens when the two worlds intersect?
You have the boundless and genre-clashing alternative artist, Boy Destroy.
Hailing from Sweden, Boy Destroy is only a few years into his professional music-making journey. So while he’s figured out bits of himself and his artistic persona, he’s on the adventure of understanding who he is (besides a dedicated chess player).
“It wasn’t a conscious choice to have ‘Boy Destroy’ be my persona. I just wanted to discover who I was as a person after getting sober. I wanted to find out what I actually liked about me.”
The original plan for his life was to be as brutal to the outside world as it had been to him, but after getting sober, plans changed. Instead, Boy Destroy started finding himself — finding that passion again for music, that joy for the world, and that honesty.
He’s an ever-evolving testament to not letting the world turn you against yourself and the ones around you — something that ties perfectly into his music and art.
His latest release “Pink Cloud EP” dives deep into Pink Cloud Syndrome: a phenomenon many people recovering from addiction experience when they first venture into recovery. It’s a sense of euphoria that’s followed by an intense crash into reality as sobriety hits. So in this EP, he grapples with his inner child and demons as they affect his new realities. This continues the testimony from his 2021 EP “Warpaint” which openly and poetically discussed his struggles with addiction. With solid production and gorgeous orchestral arrangements, Boy Destroy uses this EP as a transition piece and as a way to explore the angst many teens and twenty-somethings are feeling.
“Kids today feel angry and nihilistic in a way that I haven’t known before. You know the third wave of emo with My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore? I feel like that was ‘I’m sad but there’s beauty in the melancholy’ and while I know I was too young to fully appreciate it at that time, I feel like this current emo wave is like ‘I’m sad and the world is actually ending in a few years. Because basically, it is, but I think you can still see the beauty in the madness. I want to reflect and dissect that in my music.”
Boy Destroy doesn’t shoehorn himself into any certain genre but instead samples from genres across the board to create a collage of music he believes in. Part of this desire and drive to be outside of any box is due to the lack of a strong and uniform alternative subculture in the Swedish music scene. “In the 90s, we had some incredible alternative and indie bands that were emo before emo really exploded. But now there are pockets of people who like alternative music and I’m trying to be a champion for them and bring them together. So much incredible music comes out of Sweden, especially pop, but slowly alternative music has been taken off the back burner and I’m glad to be a part of that.”
With everything that has been thrown his way (the good, the bad, and the in-between) Boy Destroy’s music has been a saving grace for his fans and for himself. “I have this internal combustion engine that inexplicably keeps me going forward. Because logically, there should have been many times I should’ve just quit and become something else. But doing this is my purpose here on Earth, I just know it.”
And the fans feel the same — from the first released single ‘Warpaint’, listeners across the globe have reached out to him and expressed how much his music means to them. “Right when the war began in Ukraine, I had someone reach out to me and tell me that my music gave him the power to keep going. And after one of my shows, a girl gave me a drum kit she made and it’s just incredible to see that fans care so much. I care too, I really do try and meet up with them before shows and the response to my music has just been so beautiful.”
Chess and music are both incredibly competitive: they test your patience and your values daily once you get stuck into it. But they’re also things that keep you sane, keep you feeling like you could (to quote Boy Destroy) “stay sober in spirit in a trap house”, and make up a large part of who Boy Destroy is. We’ll have to keep tuned in to the next EP to see what else makes him him.