The Chats Just Scored A Shoutout From Miguel About ‘Smoko’, And Everyone Is Confused
Even The Chats have no idea what's going on.
We Aussies might like to think the musical export we most resemble is Tame Impala, a band of super cool scarf-wearers who make sophisticated psych rock. But to be honest, the band that sum us up best as a nation is The Chats, a three-piece whose 2016 ode to nicotine, ‘Smoko’, went viral.
Yep, with their rough edges, ocker drawls, and lopsided sense of humour, The Chats write songs dedicated to the most unique of national past times — eating discount food at the pub, and taking a break from work to sit on a milk crate and smoke a Winnie Blue.
As a result of their unique ‘Strayanness, it wasn’t always clear whether The Chats were going to hit it big overseas. But, as we learned last week, it’s obvious that at least some Americans are picking up what the band are dishing out — Miguel, the Californian crooner, dropped a clip of him belting out ‘Smoko’ via his Instagram page.
Amazingly, his Australian accent is actually pretty good — he probably honed it during his time in the country for Splendour.
Still, watching the clip does produce a weird kind of congitive dissonance. It’s a little like something you might see after applying four coats of varnish to a chair in an unventilated room; an eerie, mostly amusing fever dream. Why Miguel? Why that song? Why did he post it on his Instagram page?
Well, turns out The Chats have no bloody idea how to answer any of those questions either. In fact, when they first saw the clip, they didn’t even know who Miguel was.
“We don’t really know him,” the band told triple j host Bridget Hustwaite. “He tagged us and I looked at it and thought, ‘This guy’s got millions of followers, who is he?'”
So there you have it — if you’re looking for ways to explain the day Miguel dropped a video of himself drawling about smokos, on you must wander, lonely soldier.