Read the news related to the musical life and career of the MonaLisa Twins. Be part of their journey as they’re writing and recording songs, releasing new albums, filming music videos, playing live shows, going on tour, working with other musicians, meeting new people appearing on radio and TV or sharing their 2 cents on whatever they think their fans and friends would be interested in.
In today’s video we answer your most burning questions regarding our latest album “WHY?”, its creation process, its music videos and the meaning behind some of the songs. What was the inspiration behind certain songs? Which songs were the most difficult to write? Who is “I Bought Myself a Politician” about?
Every week, over at the MLT Club, we release something exclusive. Sometimes that’s behind-the-scenes videos, sometimes it’s an early release, sometimes it’s a vlog or sometimes it’s a Q&A video like the one we’re sharing today. We do these quite regularly and hardly skip any questions, so if you too want to have your questions answered, we kindly invite you to become an MLT Club member and contribute to the next Q&A.
We hope you’ll find this video interesting and wish you all a fabulous Sunday!
It was thanks to the 2012 movie/documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” that we were introduced to the incredible music of Sixto Rodriguez. If you know what movie we are talking about you will know just how mind-blowing the story behind the Detroit singer/songwriter is.
It is hard to talk about it without giving some of the unexpected twists away so we recommend you all to watch the documentary without doing any research or googling first. Trust us 🙂
We’ve been hooked on his work ever since and wanted to cover some of his music. “Sugarman” seemed like the perfect pick. Albeit dark, we love the song and the entire record and thoroughly enjoyed giving it a two-person-only makeover. We hope you enjoy it!
While we’re working on new music videos for our album WHY? and some new Duo Sessions, we wanted to release one from the archives! 🙂
This video was filmed during our final Cavern Club performance in 2016. It got released on our album “Live at the Cavern Club” and the video was always available to watch in the MLT Club, but we decided to upload it to the official YouTube channel now for you all to see.
Talk about an underrated Beatles song!
From the minute we first tried “Tell Me Why” during a rehearsal we knew it would be a great addition to the Cavern Club set. It screams “1964”, doesn’t it? Solid 3-part harmonies and some high energy 60s pop.
It’s hard to understand why this song wasn’t a single … until you look at the rest of the “A Hard Day’s Night” track-list and realise that you could say the same about any of the songs!
We don’t need to tell you how much we loved playing this, we think it shows 😉 A big shout-out to Charlie Skeggs on drums and Callum Williams on bass!
To watch all 28 videos/songs from that night, feel free to join the MLT Club!
After months of waiting for our “WHY?” vinyl to come back from the pressing plant, we have finally been given a delivery date, and pre-orders can start!
The official release date will be March 19th, and we will aim to dispatch all pre-orders before or on the day.
If you are an MLT Club member, we will also sign the cover of your vinyl record so perhaps this is a good opportunity to try out the MLT Club! 🙂
We also did a repress of the ORANGE vinyl, this time on classic black vinyl and without the foldable cover, 3D spot-gloss finish or printed inner sleeve. The new ORANGE vinyl is much simpler but therefore also a lot cheaper, so you can now choose between the more affordable option or still pick up one of the remaining limited-edition coloured vinyl with all its bells and whistles (UPDATE: Limited-Edition is sold out now).
Have a look around the online store for any additional music or merch you might want to pick up with your order! 🙂
We LOVE vinyl, and the vinyl-boom over the last few years excites us a lot. It’s great to see it come back, even though that means ridiculously long production lead times because all the remaining pressing plants in Europe are so overworked! Well, not long now …
We filmed this video in beautiful Chester, a most picturesque city 30 minutes south of Liverpool. We are releasing it today, on February 21st, in honour of one of our earliest supporters, Steve from Miami, who passed away a few years ago. We have kept up the tradition of releasing a video for his birthday for many years now, and when it was time to pick a song, we chose what we think would have been his favourite track off our latest album “WHY?”.
That makes it the 7th song from that album to have its own video. And we’re not planning on stopping 🙂
If you enjoy it, please share it far and wide, sing it in your shower or whistle it on your way home from work. Thanks for watching ♥
As always, MLT Club members were able to see this video early, so if you, too, want to get Early Access to new releases and join our groovy community, we welcome you to check out the MLT Club!
As we have done for all video releases from our new album so far, we have created limited-edition (100 copies) lyric art prints for “Any Other Day”. Each one is numbered by hand and signed by both of us! The sooner you order the lower the serial number. 🙂
They are great fun for us to put together and we love seeing them hung up on your walls. A big thank you for everyone who purchased one or all in the past, as it also greatly helps fund these music videos ♥
Please note: We have had major postal troubles here in the UK, and if you live abroad and have ordered anything with us since the start of the year it has likely not arrived with you yet.
There was a supposed cyber-attack on Royal Mail on January 10th which has caused the entire international branch to collapse. Only now are they slowly starting to reinstate alternative shipping methods and your parcels will finally be making their way through the system, but we couldn’t be more sorry about the delays.
Hopefully, things will improve from now on. We are also in the process of setting up a new (and more bulletproof) system for international orders, so instances like this won’t be as detrimental for our shop anymore. Thanks for bearing with us, for any questions please write us at shop@monalisa-twins.com.
“If You Raise Your Head” was penned during the second wave of lockdowns and is available on our album WHY? which came out a couple of months ago.
We love shooting these type of “studio videos” from time to time as they capture some of the reasons we love working in the recording studio so much. Our album “WHY?” was played, recorded and written by us and Papa Rudi and we’re beyond proud of how it turned out. It shows you that you don’t need a huge team to create something worthwhile.
It’s the first time we have ever used a talk box on a recording. That’s the “tube thing” Lisa is using while playing her guitar solo. For those not familiar with a talk box, what’s happening here is that the sound of the guitar gets directed into Lisa’s mouth through a plastic tube where she can alter the way it resonates and therefore sounds by changing the shape of her mouth. The microphone then picks it up from there. You don’t see talk boxes around much anymore but we felt it fit the sound we were going for perfectly.
It’s also the first time we ever featured a Hammond rock organ sound so prominently in a song.
We put together these “Studio Scribbles” for all the songs off our new album that got music videos so far. So of course, we had to make one for “If You Raise Your Head”, too 🙂
These lyric art prints are signed and numbered by the both of us. They are limited to 100 prints, and the sooner you order the lower the serial number.
We’ll see you all with new music and more videos soon!
If you want to hear new releases earlier, get your ordered albums signed, gain access to a ton more exclusive videos, pics and music, join the forum and MLT Club community, ask us questions, … all while supporting our music, don’t forget to check out the MLT Club!
We hope you had a great weekend and will catch you all in the next newsletter, over at the MLT Club or on social media.
When we first heard this song, it took our breath away. It’s Paul McCartney at his best. The melody, the chord progression, the subject matter, the way he manages to sing about something so deep in an incredibly light, moving and poetic way. It is one of those perfect songs.
We were hesitant to give it a go. It’s hard to compete with perfection. But then, what we do has never been about “improving” on any of the songs we cover. We pick songs because we love them, because we want to honour them and to experience performing and interpreting them ourselves. We like tapping into the magic of these songs and the people that created them.
We hope you enjoy this Duo Session as our Christmas present this year.
Livestream TONIGHT 🙂
We will be playing music in a similar way – just two guitars and two voices – during tonight’s livestream exclusive for MLT Club Members.
We do this every year before Christmas and cannot wait to spend a couple of hours tonight chatting, playing music, answering questions, giving away a few things and just having a good time. These are the details:
Livestream TODAY, December 23rd 2022
London – 10 pm (GMT) Los Angeles – 2 pm New York – 5 pm Berlin – 11 pm Moscow – 1 am Sydney – 9 am
The livestream link is only available to MLT Club members but we warmly welcome you to join the Club today (even if it’s just for a month or two – it’s easy to cancel :-)) and hang out with us in a few hours. We’d love to see you at the livestream ♥️
Over at the MLT Club we are currently posting daily reaction videos leading up to Christmas as part of the annual Advent Calendar – a tradition we have established at the MLT Club over the last 4 years.
Today we watched and reacted to some of our very first YouTube videos! We wanted to make the video available outside the MLT Club as well to give everyone on YouTube an idea of the antics we are currently getting up to in the Club and to join the fun for a day. 🙂
We loved revisiting some of our oldest YouTube videos and seeing our 13-year-old selves again. We’ve come a long way since then and it’s beautiful for us to have this whole journey captured on YouTube to look back on.
Filming this made us feel incredibly nostalgic, slightly embarrassed but also terribly proud. Sometimes it is good to reflect on your beginnings and how far you’ve come since. Sometimes it’s also fun to poke fun at your past self a little bit.
If you want to keep seeing video like this one daily throughout December, then you might want to consider joining the MLT Club. There will also be a big MLT Club exclusive live-stream on December 23rd with live music, viewer interactions, and lots of fun stuff. All members also receive a signed Christmas card in the mail! December really is the best time to join 🙂
We are offering -25% on all music and merch in the shop as well as the monthly and yearly subscription to the MLT Club!
Today, we also uploaded a new little music video for “Pretty Little Thing”, a song off our new album WHY?.
As some of you might remember, we looked after an orphaned Canada gosling called Neve earlier this year. During that time, we were working on the final songs for our now released album.
We wrote a little tune for her and wanted her to be part of the recording. The fee negotiations were exhaustive, but she finally agreed to do some guest vocals on it, under the one condition that she could star in her very own music video. Who can say “no” to a cutie like her! So here it is! 🙂
Now is the perfect time to pick up the new album for -25%!
We also put together a few new bundles, all packed in a way to minimise shipping costs, and we also released two new lyric art prints (we call them “Studio Scribbles”) today! The “Pretty Little Thing” one got decorated by Neve herself 😉.
Prices shown below are without the -25% discount. The coupon code BLACK2022 will be automatically applied during checkout and will take off 25% of your entire order!
We continue to be blown away by the reception of our new album WHY? and want to say a big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to check it out.
Going about our music independently has been SO rewarding and wouldn’t be possible without you all, so please accept our virtual gratitude and hugs! 🙂
The day we’ve been looking forward to and working towards for months, no, years has finally come! Our third original album is now officially released and we made a new music video for its opening track “Make Show” to share today.
You can stream the album on all the major music platforms but a special huge Thank You goes to everyone who has (pre-)ordered the CD from our website www.monalisa-twins.com. You can now also get the download version there. Buying from our website means we’re getting 100% of the revenue which will go right back into new music and videos!
Your support means the world and allows us to keep making music so freely and independently.
We are so happy and proud and excited to share this new music with you!
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WHY? – Album CD£12.00
WHY? – Album Vinyl£19.00
WHY? – Album Download£8.00
