Jedward Speak To RTE2fm About Black Lives Matter, Influencers, And Simon Cowell

Jedward spoke this morning to Eoghan McDermott and Doireann Garrihy on Irish radio station RTE2fm, and candidly talked about some of the events of the past few months.

Back in June John and Edward, who were quarantining in Los Angeles, took part in a Black Lives Matter march around Hollywood, saying that as they live in the area they were able to help organise the right route to ensure their message would be heard by those should hear it.

“We literally took it over, we were going for five hours marching, from Hollywood and Vine all the way to Beverly Hills, and to have the national army and the police there. It was like it totally took you over, before you knew it you had this really deep voice from chanting, and roaring my head off.”

“We were at the front, as white allies they’d have us marching at the front because [the police were less likely to shoot white people]. A lot of people weren’t from the area, they came from all over, and because we’re based in Hollywood we knew the streets that were more prominent. Sometimes they’d want to go down an off street and we would say no, lets go down this street because it’s a really focal street where a lot of powerful people are living, and would hear the message.”

They also spoke about the removal from digital media of their first single, ‘Under Pressure/Ice Ice Baby’, which spent several weeks at number 1 in Ireland, and rose as high as number 2 in the UK, when it was released back in 2010.

“It wasn’t on Spotify, it wasn’t [available to] download, I felt like we lost a piece of ourselves, because it had so many downloads, it was our first single, it had so many memories for our fans, I think it was number 1 over here for a few weeks. To lose a part of pop music history – I know it’s not like Michael Jackson – but I think it’s the first time a lot of people heard that song. It seems like it’s been resolved and they’re going to get it back up there.”

They also revealed  that they’d contacted Vanilla Ice to re-record the song, and had contemplated asking some of their celebrity friends, including William Shatner, and David Hasselhoff, to also stop, collaborate, and listen.

Eoghan also asked about their recent tweet which called out influencers heading off to Ibiza rather than staying home for the summer and saving lives by not spreading COVID-19. Edward said,

“I came to the realisation that it’s so hard for people staying at home, and it’s even harder when people are tweeting a picture every minute going, “look at me look at me”.  Especially social media influencers with their thousands of followers, they have so much impact, they should instead be having staycations, so we’re all making progress. There are certain countries that are not on the green list [of safe countries to visit] , and it’s not good for people to see others on their timeline going to [Ibiza] to sell bikinis, or “swipe up now to buy this”.

John and Edward feel that it is important that they used their social media platform wisely:

“I felt like someone would have said it [already] but when I tweeted it I realised that they hadn’t said it publicly.”

You can listen to the entire interview below:

Jedward’s current single, ‘Taste The Heat’ is out now through Universal, and is available to stream and download on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play, and Amazon.

The ‘Taste The Heat’ video is out now on JedwardVEVO through Universal. You can download the video on Apple Music.

Stream and download ‘Voice Of A Rebel’ here, and buy the CD from Jedward’s official website.

Jedward can be found online on their official website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.

Read all our other Jedward articles here.

About the author

Lisa has been writing for over 20 years, starting as the entertainment editor on her university newspaper. Since then she's written for Popwrapped, Maximum Pop, Celebmix, and ListenOnRepeat.

Lisa loves all good music, with particular fondness for Jedward and David Bowie. She's interviewed Edward Grimes (Jedward), Kevin Godley, Trevor Horn, Paul Young, Peter Cox (Go West), Brendan B Brown (Wheatus), Bruce Foxton (The Jam), among many many more. Lisa is also available for freelance writing - please email lisa@essentiallypop.com