Bartees Cox, Jr â better known as Bartees Strange â is telling NME about his forthcoming debut record âLive Foreverâ. âI was always like: âOh, I canât be this, because people are gonna think itâs weird for a Black kid to do this.â Or: âI canât do this âcause Iâm queer and people out here are gonna freakâŠâ
“As I’ve got older and kept creating things, though, the more I’ve been like: âYo, I can build whatever world I want.â And thatâs kinda what âLive Foreverâ is all about: you can do whatever you want.â
âLive Foreverâ has been eagerly anticipated by many since the Washington, D.C. artist’s acclaimed EP of covers of The National, âSay Goodbye To Pretty Boyâ, arrived in March, garnering him fans among such famous National devotees as Paramoreâs Hayley Williams and Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds â not to mention the band themselves. But âLive Foreverâ is a different kind of masterpiece that is sure to propel Cox further into the indie rock stratosphere. âI could talk about it for hours,â he admits.
Cox spent his early childhood as a military child moving between air force bases. As a pre-teen, he finally settled in Mustang, Oklahoma, a town that was overwhelmingly and oppressively white. âThatâs where I picked up that I needed to do whatever I needed to do to fit in, and it started a trend of me not letting myself shine through,â he says. âI had friends who were getting run out of town for being good at basketball. And all the while, we had to act like everything was normal.â
He picked up a love of music from his mother, an opera singer. As he got older and discovered the world of punk and indie music, he found empowerment in artists of colour such as Bloc Party, TV On The Radio and At The Drive-In. Yet even while he channelled those influences into Bartees Strange, he felt sorely underrepresented; a feeling compounded by his experience at a National concert which inspired âSay Goodbye To Pretty Boyâ.
âIt was here in D.C., which is like ‘Chocolate City’ â one of the last remaining majority Black cities in the country. And there was all white people there,â he recounts. âThen I kept thinking deeper, and I was like: ‘Why is it that the only bands that have this multi-album, multi-Grammy [career]; theyâve got families, relationships, money, opportunities: why are they all white? At what point are Black people gonna be able to have everything in this space that weâve put so much into?’ So much of the foundation is us, so I want my piece.â
âLive Foreverâ was recorded over two weeks at a friendâs barn in Wassaic, New York with a host of Coxâs friends selected as collaborators. For the first time, Cox knew he wanted complete control over the recordâs recording and production. âI remember going to studios and being the only Black kid in the studio. I remember feeling like people didnât know how to handle my voice, they didnât know the references I was making. Thatâs when I started being like: ‘I gotta figure out a way to do everything on my own.’â
It resulted in a creative freedom that lifts âLive Foreverâ to new heights, allowing Cox to make good on every ambitious whim and boldly inject his personality into the record without adulteration.

Most notably, the record resists conforming to genre at every turn, blending shades of indie rock, hip-hop, punk, country and more â often within the same song. Itâs more than just a signifier of Coxâs varied musical appetite: itâs a deliberate defiance of the racist pressure on Black artists to subscribe to a single mould. On the song âMossblerdâ, Cox proclaims: “Genres keep us in our boxes [âŠ] Keep us from our options“.
âThe idea of the song is Iâm talking about how genres are making Black people feel like they have to be one thing,â he explains. âI want Black people to just flourish and feel like they can be whoever they wanna be, everything they wanna contribute is valid and they donât have to worry about acceptance from white people. With this project, the whole point of it was me being like: ‘Fuck it â if I wanna do a rap song that has a country verse and a breakdown, then weâre gonna do it.”
He adds: â[Since] the day I decided that I was gonna make this record and go with my gut in more aspects of my life, things have just fallen into place. Things that I never thought would be possible are just kinda happening.”
Whatever Cox can imagine possible, expect him to do it â just donât ever expect him to compromise.
Bartees Strange’s ‘Live Forever’ is out on October via Memory Music.
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