We’re getting candid in our interview with Hotel Mira.
We talk with Charlie from Hotel Mira about releasing a record that gained success right before covid and how Charlie turned to TikTok to maintain steam, dealing with TikTok virality and being accessible online, and how fans are a reflection of the artists they support.
Hotel Mira released their 4th studio album I Am Not Myself at the end of 2023. The album explores ideas of mental health, fame, and identity throughout the pandemic. The Canadian quartet embarks on their biggest headlining tour to date across their home country this February.
Listen to the full interview with Hotel Mira on Name 3 Songs podcast and find a transcribed excerpt below.
You released an album called Perfectionism in February 2020, and that had a lot of success leading up to and during its release. And then COVID happened one month later, and it kind of threw everybody through a loop. But you started utilizing TikTok to stay in front of your audience following the success of the album. Did you feel like TikTok was a silver lining to stay connected to listeners and reach new listeners while we didn’t have any access to live music?
100%. That’s a great way to put it. Social media is a tool that can be used for good or evil. And for us, it was this really cool thing where I couldn’t perform live and I missed that so much. But doing the TikTok lives, it was like digital busking. So people would walk by and they’d stay for a song or they’d stay for 10 seconds and you try to catch people’s ear.
And when the TikTok Live feature first came out, hundreds of people would come by and I’d be sitting there playing out songs acoustically. So we got a lot of fans from doing that and that sort of digital busking model was really fun and satisfying for me.
In thinking of fans and audience, you’ve said that you felt like fan bases reflect back on the artists – both as musicians and as people. It’s clear that this is something that you care about. Was this idea something that you always had in the back of your mind growing up and being a fan yourself, or is this something you realized more recently?
I think on some level I’ve just always felt like a bit of an outcast or an alien or an underdog. I was a very lonely, shy kid and music was my way of connecting with people. I’ve always related to people who feel like they’ve crash landed on this planet. So I think that comes out in the music. And therefore is sort of reflected in the fan base.
It’s people who are really, I think, rooting for each other and especially the marginalized people for whatever reason. There should just be room for everyone in whatever you’re doing. Maybe it’s because my moral compass is important to me and sort of more important to me than success in entertainment. And sometimes that’s gotten me in trouble, but I’d rather have everything blow up because of something I believed in. I think people pick up on that.
Listen to the full interview with Hotel Mira on Name 3 Songs podcast, available on your favorite podcast platforms.
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