We caught up with the X Factor Alumni at Parachute Music Festival 2014. The ‘Make You Mine’ singer told us about his new music plans, what inspires his songwriting and the X Factor experience.
Check out his new single ‘Make You Mine’ below which is out on iTunes now.
WE’RE LOVING YOUR TRACK MAKE YOU MINE. WHAT INSPIRES YOUR MUSIC?
I would say just being happy, music makes me happy. I suppose its kind of like a element that you get into when you write or record a song, that you’re so happy – it’s like a drug. That makes me happy and inspires music, also just life, people, good situations, bad situations, the world, girls, guys, everything inspires me – it all comes from that.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE SONG ON YOUR UPCOMING EP?
There’s a song called ‘Toulouse’, it’s quite a dark song and the chorus is ‘what have you got to lose’ but we named it after the place Toulouse in France and that’s what it’s called. It’s actually got nothing to do with Toulouse so hopefully the French don’t come over to New Zealand and start a war! That one’s my favourite and I’ve written a few new ones as well – well every new song is your favourite. Look out for it!
HOW DID YOU DISCOVER YOUR PASSION FOR MUSIC?
When I was in high school, I was in a drama class and one of my friends Drew, we listened to The Beatles, my grandma died and I was listening to rap music non-stop and “Let It Be†was my favourite song, it was my sad song and I learnt how to play that on piano, taught myself piano first and then my friends said you can’t be a pianist in a band cause it’s too heavy to carry around so I learnt guitar and from that it all started, and I didn’t start till I was 17. The songwriting skills built when Drew and me started writing for our band and it has been growing since then.
WHAT MADE YOU AUDITION FOR THE X FACTOR?
I didn’t really want to do it. It was my mum and a friend of mine who told me that ‘you’ve got nothing to lose, you may as well go for it’ and I was in the carpark about to go into the pre-auditions and there were all these people around singing with guitars and I was like ‘man, I can’t sing like these people, they have voices of angels, and I’m just a songwriter’ so I guess it was a bit of curiosity to see what it was like and to see how far I could get, I had no idea that I would end up coming third or going to the last episode but it was such a good platform, it was the best thing I could have done for myself musically, personally it dragged me down but it was good.
HIGHLIGHT AND LOWLIGHT OF 2013…
Highlight would be getting my own music to people and getting on the radio, that was a cool thing and having my fan base and people who listen to me increase. Hopefully I’ve inspired somebody to pick up a guitar, I think somewhere along the line if that’s happened then it would be a highlight.
Lowlight was sometimes on X Factor, just being away from family and friends and not having a normal life as it’s such a bubble and you can really only talk to the people that are involved in it and when it gets to that point where you’re sick of people and that’s the reason why you have problems, so I guess there was a point in X Factor that was a lowlight because you just live a life and life’s not always good and sometimes it’s bad.
WHAT’S COMING UP NEXT FOR YOU?
Release the EP late February and go on tour with that, release another single which will be exciting. I’ve got Homegrown (February 15th, Wellington) after this [Parachute] and yeah just keep writing.
Catch up with Benny on Facebook  and his new ‘Make You Mine’ video below.
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