Passing of close friend, Adam Schlesinger, moves fellow master songwriter, Mike Viola, to craft one of 2020’s most searing, soaring albums.

“Godmuffin,” out today, captures raw artistic impulse with precision, grace; See monster movie-themed video “Ordinary Girl” at Under The Radar.
 
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Mike Viola as photographed by Silvia Grav
 
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Mike Viola is a Grammy®-nominated producer, musician, songwriter and singer best known for his work with Panic! At The Disco, Mandy Moore, Jenny Lewis, Ondara, Matt Nathanson and Fall Out Boy. His original music has been featured on soundtracks for movies such as “That Thing You Do!,” ”Get Him To The Greek,” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”
 
Viola’s latest album Godmuffin is out now via Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony.
 
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Mike Viola | “Ordinary Girl”
 

 
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQYXSlgeFM
 
[STREAM]: https://fanatic.lnk.to/MikeViola-OrdinaryGirl
 
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“It’s a girl power song,” Mike Viola tells American Songwriter in its premiere coverage of his single “Ordinary Girl.” “We all have superpowers. For me, the scariest thing out there in the world is blending in, disappearing into the status quo. This is like a John Hughes version of that concept.”

An obsessive monster movie fan, Viola continues the series he started with the video (see below) for “Drug Rug” (which co-stars Mandy Moore, and her swimming pool, alongside a hilarious turn as a vampire by Viola himself) with the video for “Ordinary Girl.”

With a team comprised of all women creators, including sisters and co-directors Kelsey and Rémy Bennett, alongside acclaimed 26-year-old photographer turned cinematographer, Silvia Grav, “Ordinary Girl” redefines power as we know it through the perspective of a horror obsessed suburban girl.
 
The video, shot like a short film, bears witness to the main character as she harnesses her transgressive creative gifts in a manifestation of self-reflection, exploration, and an otherworldly growth of inner strength that will break your heart just to see what it’s made of.
 
The lyric video for the song finds Viola in a real moment with his “monster thumb,” following his young daughter around the sidewalks of Los Angeles as he teaches her to roller skate.
 
Stereo Embers says, “While Springsteen’s songbook is filled with tracks told from the perspective of a guy who wants to get out of town, ‘Ordinary Girl’ might very well be the first song written from the point of view of a parent wishing the same for his children.”
 
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Mike Viola
Godmuffin
Out Now
(Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony)
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
 

Track Listing:
01. USA Up All Night
02. Creeper (STREAM)
03. Drug Rug (STREAM | VIDEO | LYRIC VIDEO)
04. We May Never Be This Young Again (LYRIC VIDEO)
05. All You Can Eat
06. The Littles
07. Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do
08. Honorable Mention With Jam Show
09. People Pleaser, You’re The Man Of The House Now
10. Ordinary Girl (STREAM | VIDEO | LYRIC VIDEO)
11. That Seems Impossible Now
 
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[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQokPDo77c
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/MikeViola-DrugRug
 
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“Legend has it that vampires can’t expose themselves to sunlight, but Mike Viola begs to differ,” explains Rolling Stone in its coverage of Viola’s horror short for his latest single. “He’s a pool-lazing vampire in the new video for ‘Drug Rug,’ a track off his upcoming LP Godmuffin. Directed by Caitlin Gerard, the video opens with Viola lying on a float in Mandy Moore’s pool.
 
“Viola channels his preternatural gift for directness and warmth into a celebration of youth,” BuzzBands.LA says it its premiere post of the song. Viola explains that the tune is “a look back at my icy days in NYC. This is an ode to my beloved classic rock, as well.”
 
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Mike Viola | About
 

Music lives in Mike Viola. Shit, it’s his last name, right?
 
Godmuffin (Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony, Dec. 11^th) even opens with strings and man, do they tug.
 
Hard.
 
“Don’t be afraid, no don’t be afraid / We still have time, we still have time / There’s so much I wanna do”
 
“I wrote ‘Creeper’ the morning I got the news my close friend died,” Viola says. “He was my age. Now he can’t make music. I still can. I can still spend my time looking for the secret cause, the next new song, even when it feels too late, ‘cause I still have time.”
 
Viola’s friend is the artistically immortal, Adam Schlesinger, to whom Viola will forever be publicly tied as the voice of his friend’s perfect, Oscar®-nominated pop song “That Thing You Do!”
 
At any other time, this association would be a fun fact. A bullet point in a career full of them. But right now it’s painful to listen to with Viola’s real-life tragedy in mind. Somehow, he makes it sound beautiful.
 
Godmuffin follows-up Viola’s 2018 album The American Egypt, and is his first return in over a decade to the more conventional rock and pop sound that he first broke through with as front man of Candy Butchers during that band’s string of major label records in the late-90s to mid-2000s.
 
Godmuffin was written and recorded alone in Viola’s home studio. He describes it as “11 songs about transformation” and Viola isn’t afraid to let you see.
 
“It’s youthful in the chances it takes,” he says. “It doesn’t give a fuck.”
 
In the face of fine-tuning everything into oblivion, Godmuffin is the least experimental-sounding experimental record you’ll hear this year. Viola records on half-inch tape and mixes on a vintage Auditronics console without the advantage of digital editing.
 
“The recording is linear, 'cause I can’t punch and fix things very easily, especially when I’m playing drums.  On the computer, you can repair all of your mistakes ‘til you sound perfect. Or even worse, tune or beat detective the life out of it. I prefer rock music that’s beautifully flawed.”
 
“It’s human,” he says.
 
“Only the dead get to heaven / Here on earth we just get lost”
 
Human it is.
 
Viola sings the chorus of the album’s first single “Drug Rug,” and it’s as if you’re listening to recently re-discovered dedications from a high school yearbook.
 
It’s not nostalgia, it’s time traveling written from the point of view of the graduated Viola, “who’s spent a lifetime doing windmills on Big Star guitars, slick with Todd Rundgren syrup hand-drawn from the tree.”
 
Elsewhere on Godmuffin, Viola sings about being a teenager (“USA Up All Night”), about being the father of teenagers (“The Littles,” “Ordinary Girl”), and even offers up a sequel (“Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do”) to a previously released song (“Superkid”) about being a teenager.
 
Youthful. Not giving a fuck.
 
Is there a time in our lives when we feel more invincible? Godmuffin is the sound of fearlessness.
 
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Mike Viola | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE : GRAND PHONY
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL