Before "Sunroof," Nicky Youre was ready to write himself off as a one-hit wonder

Columbia Records/Thirty Knots Records

Nicky Youre's summer hit "Sunroof," which he wrote in 2021 while he was still in college, has made him a star. But he says if things had gone differently, he would've ended up giving up on music altogether before he ever came up with that song.

"In college is when I almost quit music," he tells ABC Audio. " I was making a ton in high school with my buddy who introduced me to the whole process and I was enjoying college a lot and I was enjoying making music. But he lived an hour away and I didn't have any friends that made music in college, so I slowed down a lot."

He did come up with one song that got a lot of attention online -- it was called "Sex and Lemonade" -- but he didn't think he could follow it up.

"[It was] the first pop song that I ever made and I knew right then that I wanted to make more of that stuff," recalls Nicky. "But I didn't really have any producers [to help me] that were making pop. So I was like, 'I'll just be a one-hit wonder...[with] with my one song,' 'cause it was doing well. And I was like, 'I'll just be done with music.'"

But then, he got some unexpected encouragement.

"Luckily, my manager reached out to me and was like, 'Dude, you gotta keep going. You've got too much cool stuff to, like, not at least give it a try when you're young,'" says Nicky. "So I'm super-grateful for him and I'm glad I kept going with it."

It's a good thing he did. He says last spring, "I was feeling bad one night at my college house and wanted to make something that was going to make me feel good. And 'Sunroof' was born."

Tuesday, August 16, 2022 at 6:00AM by Andrea Dresdale Permalink