Cover The Boyce Avenue brothers, Daniel, Alejandro and Fabian Manzano (Photo: Alyssa Shrock Photography)
The Boyce Avenue brothers, Daniel, Alejandro and Fabian Manzano (Photo: Alyssa Shrock Photography)
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The Manzano brothers share insights on sticking to their roots, their approach to making music and more
“The band was born the day [Alejandro] was born,” jokes Daniel Manzano, one of the three brothers that make up Boyce Avenue.
The band of brothers, comprising Daniel, Alejandro and Fabian Manzano, rose to fame in 2007 when the trio began sharing their acoustic covers on YouTube and MySpace. Over the years, they grew to become one of the most successful cover bands, garnering over 16 million subscribers on YouTube. But the band’s roots began long before fame arrived for them.
Growing up, the brothers were surrounded by music. Alejandro, the youngest of the three, shares: “Our grandfather used to play classical guitar … my mom’s brother was a musician and released his album and all that. It was kind of always in our family.”
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Being in a “tight-knit household”, the brothers have always been best friends—from singing together on car rides to always wanting to spend time together. So, when Alejandro picked up the guitar when he was 13, the brothers took it as an opportunity to spend even more time together.
Above The brothers had always been close growing up
The brothers had always been close growing up
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“He got obsessed [over playing the guitar]. You know, when they say you’ve got to put in your 10,000 hours to be good at anything, he really worked for it. He was playing for hours a day from when he got home from school until bedtime, he would be playing the guitar,” Daniel reflects.
The trio began learning various instruments and performing together at school talent shows before posting their first YouTube video in 2007.
While there were others posting covers online, the brothers hadn’t seen artists taking full advantage of creating cover music. “What we saw were people just opening their laptop or their webcam, get the karaoke track and singing a verse of like Halo by Beyonce. This was in 2006 and YouTube started in 2005. So we had kind of seen that but we hadn’t really seen anybody fully take advantage of it,” Alejandro explains.
Above Instead of posting a quick cover video, the Boyce Avenue brothers wanted to do something bigger
Instead of posting a quick cover video, the Boyce Avenue brothers wanted to do something bigger
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Instead of posting a quick cover video, the Boyce Avenue brothers wanted to bring what they saw on MTV to YouTube. “Nobody seemed to be doing that at the time,” the youngest brother says, adding how they would use different camera angles and edits to create their videos while posting audio on iTunes. “It seemed to stick. It took off and it kind of fit,” Alejandro muses.
Today, on top of continuing to create acoustic covers of contemporary and classic pieces, the band has also released original music. The brothers continue to post their covers on various platforms, including YouTube.
The past weekend saw Boyce Avenue grace our shores as part of their Asia Tour. Ahead of their concert, Tatler Singapore sat down with the trio as they shared their thoughts on the current music landscape, the importance of sticking to their roots and more.
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Above The past weekend saw Boyce Avenue grace our shores as part of their Asia Tour
The past weekend saw Boyce Avenue grace our shores as part of their Asia Tour
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What was your approach to these covers like back then and how has it changed over the years?
DM: The creation process has evolved quite a bit. Back in the day, we would always do covers to songs that we liked and thought we could do a clever and unique spin on. We were also kind of focused on what was popular at the time on the radio. We were also younger, so we were listening to that music too.
But as we’ve gotten a little older, we’ve started going back in time to do more songs that we actually grew up listening to, [like the] 80s and 90s hits. As our audience has aged with us, we’ve sort of gone back to ur roots and our origins to cover more songs like that for personal reasons than what is relevant on the radio.
AM: [Doing covers of popular songs on the radio] was always an element. Every now and then we would do a timeless classic like Iris or Wonderwall and we didn’t see people doing that [back then]. When other people came in [to the YouTube cover music] landscape, they only did covers of new songs.
I’m thankful we [did covers of classics] because it’s wild that there are still videos that we posted in 2007 and 2008 that to this day are still getting tons of views and people are still caring about because they were timeless… We’re glad we took that kind of approach, where it was like two new songs, one classic.
Above The brothers share their process of creating a video from start to end
The brothers share their process of creating a video from start to end
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How do you choose a song to reinterpret?
AM: For us these days, we would pick songs that we love or timeless classics. It’s got to be something that we grew up listening to, that we are excited about. That’s the other thing: you have to be excited to be able to put your own stamp on it.
DM: [We also pick songs] that we respect. Some of the songs we pick are not necessarily a favourite, but they have really good lyrics or that it was a banger from back in the day.
How long does it usually take for you to create a song from start to end?
AM: There are probably a lot of people on [social media platforms] who can put something up in literal minutes. It feels like early YouTube where the barrier to entry is zero and it doesn’t take a lot of fine-tuning of the craft. They’ll get on, sing and release. It’s almost like quantity versus quality—that’s one thing that we haven’t strayed from for almost 18 years. [We] probably take a week in total for recording, mixing the audio, filming and editing. It can take longer if we’re doing a collab because you’re getting the other artists’ input.
What are your takes on the current trend of hyper-fast 15-second covers on TikTok?
AM: It’s just a different thing. I think everybody has to pick what makes sense for them. We know that if we’re going to make a video or a piece of content for ourselves, we tend to like it to be the whole song. I feel cheated just watching a snippet, you know? For our model, that’s kind of what we’re doing. But I can respect that the younger generation, if they’re viewing it like we did when we started YouTube, they’re kind of making it their own thing and maybe they have their own audience.
Above The brothers share their experience in the industry for over 18 years
The brothers share their experience in the industry for over 18 years
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Being in the industry for so many years, how do you think the industry has evolved? How do you adapt to these changes?
AM: It’s pretty wild because when we posted our first video on YouTube in September 2007, we specifically remember that at that time, not too far away from where we lived, there was a Best Buy. It was like a dream to get signed to a record label and to have your physical CD in a store like Best Buy or Target. Then we saw the rise of iTunes around 2003 and by the time downloads took over, it was more like the 2010s before seeing the pivot to streaming in 2014.
We’ve seen almost three paradigm shifts from physical to digital to streaming, and then we’ve seen shifts in social media from MySpace to YouTube and now TikTok. For us, there have been a lot of changes. What has made it easier is to just focus on the music. So when we put [music] front and centre, regardless of what platform it is, the music is going to speak for itself.
Do you believe covers are still impactful? Has the market become too crowded?
AM: I definitely think they’re not as impactful as they used to be because I think there was a novelty factor back in the day… and there’s a virality that comes with that. We’ve also noticed that a lot of the impact isn’t the same as it used to be. So I think that is also what has us leaning towards doing more timeless classics. There may not be that Week One impact that a cover used to have, but we know that people will search for that song for years and that’s kind of a win.
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Images: Alyssa Shrock Photography
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Amanda Goh was the former senior writer for Tatler Singapore.
