“I don’t even really go on social media, just for the benefit of my mental health.” “I’ve gotten a lot better,” Lopes says of the criticism. That’s part of what makes the song so unsettling. His lyrics - in his off-kilter, rhythm-bending delivery - are raw but self-aware.Īnd as for “Peach Scone,” it’s about an internal struggle to accept the love we’re offered, even when we hope against hope that love would take a different form. He yearns for love in that way young people do, like it’s the thing that will save him from himself, except he knows it won’t. He lays bare his ugliest tendencies and wonders if he can change while knowing he has to in order to move forward. On his two full-length albums ( The Rise of Hobo Johnson and The Fall of Hobo Johnson), songs make caricatures of his personality, pieces blown out of proportion and mocked. He’s a 24-year-old man grappling with the aftermath of a dysfunctional childhood.
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Sure, Lopes is a mess, but he’s not the poster child for toxic masculinity run amok. In his music and in interviews, Lopes has been open about his struggle with anxiety, about his mother leaving when he was young, about his father’s bad temper, about his run-ins with the law, about getting kicked out of his dad’s house when he was 19, about living in his ’94 Toyota Corolla and showering at a 24 Hour Fitness before going to work at a pizza shop (that’s where the hobo part comes from). … It was like they’re just attacking my character.” “At first it was really, really tough after ‘Peach Scone.’ It was really, really difficult to, like, get such a mass amount of criticism like, before no one criticizes because no one fucking cared, you know? And then out of nowhere it just felt really personal.
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“Yeah, dude,” Lopes sighs over the phone on a day off from the band’s North American tour. Some saw his lyrics as self-deprecating, introspective and sincere while others interpreted the words as a textbook example of toxic masculinity, with one young music critic at The State Hornet accusing Lopes of “making himself out to be the victim in some twisted parody of friendzone edgelording.” The band didn’t win the contest, but the video went viral and the internet proceeded to perform the requisite vivisection of Lopes.
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“Or maybe it’s the thought of not being so alone.” “I love the thought of being with you,” he bellows in the chorus. He runs his fingers through his unruly mane, his eyes moist from effort, pain, frustration… the effect is intoxicating and uneasy, like watching fire destroy a building. Lopes delivers the song through alternating grimaces and grins as he shifts between the pain of loving someone he can’t be with and the genuine pleasure of being her friend. Hi, what’s your name? How are you? How’s your life?/ Oh, you got a man? Are you in love? If so, what type?/ Is it just platonic, strictly just as friends/ Or the type that ties you two together ’til tomorrow’s end?/ If it is, disregard every time I call you pretty/ Though it’s meant sincerely, it’s just my imagination drifting. Watching the video for “Peach Scone,” the one that Sacramento-based band Hobo Johnson and The LoveMakers submitted for the 2018 NPR Tiny Desk Concert, it’s easy to mischaracterize frontman Frank Lopes.īrandishing a cigarette and a microphone in his left hand, the 20-something Lopes, with a cherubic face and a halo of fuzzy curls, drops an F-bomb half a second in, gives a stream-of-consciousness shout-out to Bob Boilen, introduces himself and his band and then launches into an anxious spoken word narrative of unrequited love. Frank Lopes Jr., aka Hobo Johnson Jade Ehlers