The rise of Tones and I: how an unknown Australian busker outsold Ed Sheeran
It took Toni Watson half an hour to write the song that changed her life. Then a busker on the streets of Australia’s Byron Bay, Watson – who performs under the name Tones & I – dashed off Dance Monkey in a matter of minutes in 2018, thinking it might be a fun track to play to her friends later that day.
It has since been named the most Shazam-ed single of all time, become the third most streamed song ever on Spotify, and is the longest running UK number one by a female artist in history, spending a staggering 11 weeks at the top.
“It’s pretty wild,” Watson agrees matter-of-factly over Zoom from her home in Melbourne. “I don’t even know how it happened. One minute I was playing music on the street, then I was playing a sold-out world tour and then I was in lockdown back in Australia. It’s been a crazy two-and-a-half years.”
For Watson at least, the pandemic couldn’t have come at a better time. By the time she was forced to cancel shows and return to Australia from Europe in early 2020, she was almost at breaking point following the runaway success of Dance Monkey.
“I needed a rest,” she says. “I was at the tipping edge, to be honest, so it came at a good time and within half an hour of getting the email in Berlin, I was out of there. I took two weeks off in lockdown in Melbourne and then I thought, I’m fine, I’m ready to go back now! But the rest of the world was like, no. We’re not ready.”
Instead, Watson had the chance to reflect on her stratospheric ascent to stardom and make some sense of it while recording her debut album Welcome To The Madhouse, due out this month. With influences as varied as hip hop, gospel and EDM, its idiosyncratic sounds and unflinching lyrical honesty reflect Watson’s struggle to come to terms with her extraordinary success, which left her thrilled, confused and vulnerable in equal measures.
“It’s not a cohesive album because it’s not about a break-up or whatever,” Watson says. “The only constant is my voice. It’s just about an erratic time. Some of it’s triumphant, some of it’s sad – it’s really a way of saying, welcome to the last two years of my life.”
Don’t expect a sugar-coated rags-to-riches tale. Growing up, Watson was devoted to basketball rather than music, playing for up to five hours a day in local teams rather than dreaming of topping the charts.
“I’d watch Australian Idol and there were all these people who thought they could sing but couldn’t, and they were only just finding out,” she says. “That made me think I didn’t want to be one of those people. So I never had a singing lesson and maybe that’s why I sing a bit weirdly now, because I’m not classically trained – or whatever they do in lessons.”
By 2018, she was busking and living in her van when she was first approached by her soon-to-be-manager Jackson Walkden-Brown. Yet Watson still refuses to fit the neat narrative of a struggling artist hitting the big time.
“Byron Bay is a beautiful beach town with hostels everywhere so all the buskers get a lot of attention,” she points out. “You can live off busking. Sometimes I’d make AU$2,000 a night! I don’t say that much because people like to think I did the hard yards, but if you’re good enough, busking can really pay the bills.”
Still, she had no idea what she was letting herself in for with the release of Dance Monkey. It became a global smash hit before most people even knew Watson’s name, topping the charts in over 30 countries and being streamed six billion times. Music-rights data platform Blokur later named her the world’s most successful songwriter of 2020, beating Drake, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi.
“I remember the UK radio people came back and said they wouldn’t play Dance Monkey unless we did a remix of it,” she says. “I said no. If they didn’t want my song, then no. Two weeks later, it was number one anyway from people listening on their iPhones and stuff, so they had to play it then.
“I think most people thought it was just this dance track by a DJ, but it really was a song produced and written by an artist, like any normal song. Everyone thought it was auto-tuned, but the audio hadn’t been changed in any way whatsoever. I just have this high-pitched voice I can get to sometimes, and I only realised it recently.”
Success came hand-in-hand with a sudden frenzied focus on the woman behind the music. Everything from Watson’s history to her dress sense were scrutinized, often with alarming cruelty.
“I’ve been told by radio presenters off-air that the s--- I’ve copped has been horrible and it’s because I’m female,” she says with resignation. “No one wants to have a go at the boys! In Australia, we don’t have boy bands that just sing. They all play guitars and have long hair and are surfer dudes. No one wants to have a go at the surfer dudes! But the one chubby female that busks on the street is such an easy target,” she says. “It’s hard. Being a female is hard in this industry.”
At its worst, relentless online bullying forced Watson to have a complete break from social media. She’s back online now and mentions someone recently spent four hours messaging her vicious threats.
“I’ve come to terms with it knowing it’s usually just young girls,” she says. “But damn, the person I was when I first started? That really ruined me. It really hurt me. I look at my old self like a big sister now and think, don’t worry about that.”
I wonder if she’s tempted to stay away from social media permanently.
“That has been my biggest battle,” she says. “If I’m off it, my team says get back on it and if you don’t, we’re gonna do it for you and it won’t be what you would want us to do. It bloody sucks. With the album you can’t not be on it, you’ve got to be on it every day. Nowadays, I’m fine and it doesn’t bother me that much but you know, I still see stuff.”
Fortunately, she says, she’s not the sort of artist willing to be told what to do by anyone.
“No one’s going to put me in a little boob tube. I get to be comfortable all the time. The only time I noticed it was when I got to number one, I saw this chart of the biggest female artists in the world right now with Ariana [Grande], Nicki Minaj and Dua [Lipa]. They all had these beautiful press shots and there was a photo of me just sitting in my van. It kind of played at me but not enough to make me change. It does make you feel like: ‘Oh God, if only I was prettier!’ But that’s not how I’m born and I’m not going to change that with a knife.
“People want you to be this beautiful figure but have music that’s down to earth and relatable – and I feel like you can’t get both.”
On Welcome To The Madhouse, Watson finally gets the right of reply she’s been waiting for, confronting her strange new reality with disarming, no-holds-barred honesty. It’s there in the sinister pop sprawl of the title track with its claustrophobic portrayal of fame and the music industry, and more bleakly in the plaintive Lonely, which asks simply “Why am I so damn lonely?”
“All these new friends, how am I meant to know why they’re here?” she asks now. “Either I’m paying them or they’re coming over for drinks every weekend or trying to tell people they know me. I do feel disconnected because if I’m really going through something, I’d rather keep it inside than talk to those people. They’re not going to be around when I need them!”
She allows herself a small, sweet moment of triumph on one track however. On the deceptively chirpy calypso-flavoured Westside Lobby, Watson takes aim at those who pigeonhole her, who suddenly want to be friends or tell her she looks all wrong to make it, singing “but my song went to number one in over 30 f---ing countries and I’m sorry if that offends you my dear.”
“I see so many artists that say things like ‘I want it, I got it’,” she says. “Or ‘I got bitches, I got girls, I got money, I got cars, I got everything! I’m the best!’ Well, guess what? I actually hold the record for the number one song in the world, yet I wouldn’t dare to actually say that fact. There’s a whole lot of people online who can say whatever they want. I just gave myself a safe space in a song to say everything I’ve ever wanted to in a joking way that still gets it off my chest.”
From here, the statistics and the music can do the talking for her. One thing is certain: Watson is no one-hit wonder. She’s even beginning to come to terms with that fact herself.
“Even this time last year, I 100 per cent thought I was faking it,” she says. “I thought it was just going to be Dance Monkey forever. But there comes a point where you realise: ‘Wow, I can do this!’ And then when you’re enjoying it and writing music, it’s like – who cares what anyone else thinks?”
Welcome To The Madhouse is out on Elektra now
