THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Alternative rockers find unlikely fans with smash hit ‘Bad Boy’

Alternative rockers find unlikely fans with smash hit ‘Bad Boy’

Thai alternative rock duo Paper Planes found an unlikely audience with "Bad Boy", their first major hit with an unexpected audience.

Grade 1 students and even their parents have embraced the catchy tune about a playboy gangster suffering the blues of unrequited love.  

 

The song went viral after its video was released on October 17 last year. As of Wednesday,  it had more than 54 million views, 430,000 likes, and 11,000 comments on YouTube.

 

Even though the song is about the kind of guy parents often warn their children about, young children across the country know the lyrics by heart. 

Parents are posting about their Grade 1 sons singing the song constantly, and many praise Paper Planes for avoiding inappropriate language.

 

The duo’s Children’s Day performance on Saturday saw all 6,000 seats at Bangkok’s Safari World snapped up in 15 minutes by young children and their parents. The performance was held near the dolphin exhibition area, where more than another 1,000 fans waited outside the performance area to hear the duo perform the song live. So many children sang along they nearly drowned out vocalist Tunwa "Hye" Ketsuwan. 

 

He, and guitarist Nakarin "Zen" Khunpakdee, comprise the duo that has suddenly become beloved. Tunwa and Nakarin advised children to enjoy life and do what they love without comparing themselves to others. They also asked parents to take good care of their children so that they will become high-quality citizens.

"We may be dubbed leaders of the children’s gang, but we believe that we are their big brothers," Paper Planes said. "We have done both good and bad things, but we believe that we and parents can work together to encourage children to do the right thing."

 

Tunwa and Nakarin also thanked the parents of their young fans for their support and for refraining from judging them by their appearance. Paper Planes debuted in 2017 under Thai record label Genie Records, a subsidiary of GMM Grammy. The band released its first music video "Kon Sia Ther Pai" (“Before Losing You”) on March 6, 2017.

Another Paper Planes' video, "Pretend", has accumulated 103.36 million views on YouTube since its release on March 8 last year. The video has also drawn more than 590,000 likes and 20,000 comments.

 

Tunwa also produces songs for Thai artists like Retrospect, Lomosonic, Sweet Mullet, Wonderframe, Mirrr, Annalynn, Gavin.D, ActArt, SBFIVE, and PiXXiE.

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