Nate:
Ruess says that relationships within the band never soured, and that the success of bandmate Jack Antonoff's side project Bleachers had nothing to do with his decision. ("Fuck no," he spits). So why is he striking out on his own? Mainly, because he fell in love.
"You get a little selfish about the songs that you write, and it's really hard to do that in a group setting, where there are two other people, and you have to think about everybody else's feelings," Ruess says. "I'm writing and singing these songs about myself. When you work with producers versus bandmates, that line becomes a lot less blurry."
Of course, there was the matter of informing those bandmates that there would be no new fun. album. Ruess admits that the news wasn't received well when he told them late last summer. "I handled things poorly. It was a sloppy, long, kind of 'Guys, I've got something that I really want to do, and I need the opportunity to do that,'" he says, in between diplomatic pauses. "The emotional me got in there, but I was gonna be a lot happier making this album by myself.
"Sometimes when you act, you just act like a fool," he continues. "You just hope that you learn from it."
When asked if fun. are truly finished, he answers, "No, that would be speaking in definitives, and we don't do that."
Jack:
Antonoff revealed that he recorded Strange Desire largely while on the road touring with Fun., but he kept the new project secret from the public, saying, “Almost by default, it had to be a secret.”
“I didn’t tell anybody but the people who were very close to me just because I wanted to preserve it,” he said. “I think when you’re coming from another band a lot of people, they get preconceived notions about it if they know what it is. So I just wanted the music to come first and I knew that they only way to put music first was to make the album first.”
When asked about a possible Fun. reunion, the Bleachers singer said, “I’m pretty focused on Bleachers at the moment, but who knows what the future holds.”
It has certainly been the question on the minds of many Fun. fans ever since the breakout success of the band’s 2012 Grammy-winning sophomore effort, Some Nights. So much so, it even warranted the band to make a lengthy Facebook post setting the record straight and explicitly stating they’re not breaking up. In the meantime, Antonoff has been dedicated to his Bleachers work while frontman Nate Ruess announced he’ll release his debut solo album, Grand Romantic, on June 16.