The German-based social media stars turned boy band, Elevator Boys, recently released a new single inspired by their love of the Golden State. “California,” which is now available to stream on all platforms, marks the band’s entrance into a new era, but is equally reflective of their past, as it was the place where they decided to start making music after initially gaining traction on TikTok.
The group, which is made up of Bene Schulz, Tim Schaecker, Jacob Rott, Luis Freitag and Julien Brown, is celebrating their four-year anniversary soon.
“It’s kind of like a full circle moment, if that makes sense. For us, a lot sort of began here … like four years ago when we started off as Elevator Boys, we came to California for two months,” Schaecker, 26, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the single’s July 25 release. “And afterwards it was really set in stone that we’re gonna be this group.”
“It’s like a love letter to California, because we owe California a lot,” Schulz, 24, seconded.
Celebrity Boy Band Fans: Diehard ‘NSync Fan Taylor Swift and More
Though the song is an homage to their time in California, it was actually written in Stockholm, Sweden, where the band was working on creating “a bunch of new songs” with Swedish duo Jubël.
“It’s kind of funny because coming from writing it in the wintertime and really like in the snow, and now actually really having the full feel to the song, being in California, being in L.A., being in the sun is like a different experience than when we wrote the song the first time,” Rott, 25, told Us. “But I feel like the feelings when we listen to the song are still the same.”
With the release of “California” and more forthcoming singles, the band is entering a new phase where they are “taking the music even more seriously than before,” Freitag, 25, told Us.
“Just giving it our absolute best and our absolute all and really shifting all of our focus towards [music] as much as possible,” Freitag continued. “Over the past two years we’ve really been trying out a bunch of stuff, and we were hesitant at first, but like we were committed, but a little bit hesitant because we were still not fully, I would say, confident in our abilities yet, and not fully happy with how everything was set up. But I feel like now we have a really, really good setup, a great music team. We have really good songs that we just made, and we are way more confident in our abilities.”
Listen Up! Tons of Artists Are Dropping New Albums This Spring
“One of the main things is that the new songs, we really love them, so we can’t wait for all of them to come out. We kind of wish we could drop them at the same time,” Schaecker told Us. “It’s a bunch of different sounds also. So ‘California’ marks this new era, I would say. But yeah, there’s some unexpected things coming.”
Rott added: “And I feel like not releasing for a year definitely gave us the chance to develop ourselves as artists and also our voices and our sound. So I feel like it’s just now at a point where we can really perform on an international level.”
The group hinted that there is something planned to celebrate their fourth anniversary as a band, but only Brown was aware of the plan.
“No one [knows] yet, so I can’t tell, but definitely there’s gonna be something,” Brown, 25, told Us.
The group also shared that there will be another single released this year.
“It’s gonna be my personal favorite,” Freitag said. “This next release is gonna be crazy. And then also upcoming, we have our movie, which is coming out beginning of next year. And that’s gonna be, yeah, very cool too.”
As far as a future tour, the group said they want to possibly visit “a bunch of different American high schools,” and drive from school to school.
“So if you hear this right now, text us your high school and we might be coming around but nothing planned yet. That’s just like a first rough idea, but I think it’ll be so sick, so fun,” Freitag said.
