Music
[This story is also available as a podcast.]
Most Tinder matches end in ghosting.
When Greg Driscoll and Brendan Eprile matched on the dating app in 2017, it led to something more: a band called Fab the Duo. It was campy. It was pop. And it was a sound that Driscoll says the two “never fully felt comfortable with.”
The pair went quiet until March 2024, when they released their lead single under their new name, BOYR!OT.
“It's been a long journey back to ourselves,” Driscoll says.
“We’ve been really connecting with our childhood selves,” he adds. “It's just very cathartic to listen to music that we grew up with, but it's our music. It's like, ‘Oh my God, this is my voice on a song that I would've listened to back in high school or middle school.’”
The sound takes you back to the classic pop-punk scene of the early 2000s with references to bands like Good Charlotte, 3OH!3 and My Chemical Romance, but adds the pair’s distinctly queer, outsider perspective.
Their latest release, “HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARE,” is about partying through an emotional crashout. Eprile describes it as an ode to old-school Hollywood and the spectacle of celebrity and paparazzi — with some added chaos.
“Everything may be falling apart, we may have no money, but let's just party and not give a shit about the consequences,” Eprile says. Driscoll jokes that the song leads to the beginning of The Hangover movies.
“It's almost like a rock-and-roll ‘Last Friday Night,’” he says in reference to the not-so-serious Katy Perry song.
BOYR!OT says they don’t want to take themselves too seriously, either.
“The most authentic version of you is your childhood self,” Driscoll says. “We finally found a sense of play because of finding and appealing to that side of ourselves.”
That sense of homecoming is also about something bigger.
Driscoll and Eprile are making music for other queer kids without a band to grow with: “I think about if there was an out-and-proud gay pop-punk singer when I was growing up, how meaningful that would've been,” Eprile says.
The pair has a motto: “Just because you don't fit, in doesn't mean you don't belong.”
“If we could have just a few people that we actually impact their lives and make them feel seen and really make them happy, that means so much more than just a bunch of random streams,” Eprile says.
For BOYR!OT, that impact is most felt in person. The band expands for live shows.
Guitarist Constance Antoinette and drummer Jessica Goodwin join in, if available. Antoinette tours with acts like Demi Lovato, while Goodwin can be found on stage with Blaze Francisco, Lauren Ruth Ward and others. BOYR!OT played a live show at the Viper Room in Los Angeles last fall.
The pair aims to have women and other people who “don’t fit the typical narrative” be part of the band.
Driscoll says it’s like using a "Trojan Horse" to get underrepresented people into the music industry, which is, by his and Eprile's account, still a “straight boys club.”
BOYR!OT isn’t the only group working to change that.
“What is cool about the newer generation of pop-punk is that they understand that being queer is in its essence punk,” Driscoll says.
Eprile puts it plainly: “Punk is being on the margins of society, it's not fitting with society. And that is what a lot of being queer is.”
BOYR!OT doesn’t want to play on the sidelines — they want center stage.
“We want people to notice us,” Driscoll says. “And the only way for people to notice you is if you make them notice.”
Showing up isn't enough. You have to prove yourself.
“There is an element of proving yourself, and if no one else is going to do it, BOYR!OT always will,” Driscoll says.
“HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARE” is out now.
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