Girlfriends

The California duo known as Girlfriends, made up of Nick Gross and Travis Mills, have released their single "Tattoo" on Big Noise. Mills said, "I wrote 'Tattoo' right after I got my neck tattoo covered up. I had it done 14 years ago and wanted something different. The whole time sitting in that chair, I kept thinking about how I had not heard about a song about getting an actual tattoo for someone and about how it can make or break a relationship. I took the idea to the studio the very next day and Nick and I wrote the song in 30 minutes. It was so fast. I love the idea of having a love song based around the concept of a tattoo. Most relationships don't last...but a tattoo is forever."

Mills and Gross packed several lifetimes’ worth of success, heartbreak, and redemption into their first couple of decades on earth. They bring it back to the sound that first inspired them with their self-titled debut album, a caffeinated pop-punk collection of fourteen tracks. Nick Gross (Big Noise, Gross Labs, Find Your Grind) and Travis Mills (musical artist, MTV Host, actor) have made multiple realms of media their own, but music is at the heart of it all. Pulling from influential artists like Blink-182, 5 Seconds Of Summer, The 1975, Phoenix and All Time Low, girlfriends is destined to cross boundaries and inspire massive sing-alongs with energetic hooks, fury, and optimistic swagger.

The duo first walked right up to the edge of rock stardom before either of them had even left their teens. The brash and catchy hip-hop Travis made in his Riverside, CA, bedroom and posted on MySpace as “T. Mills” led to a major label deal, a spot on the Warped Tour, and an electric buzz, presaging the era of SoundCloud emo-rap and laptop hooks that was to come. At 17, Gross found himself in New York’s Times Square playing MTV’s TRL, in a poppunk band featured prominently on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, with a major label contract of their own.

In recent years, Travis experienced the loss of his close friend Lil Peep and the very public dissolution of a romantic relationship. He knew he needed a new creative vehicle to exorcise his demons. After seeing Nick drumming in an Instagram story, he called him up. It was a serendipitous conversation, as Nick also felt the urge to give a new pop punk band his focus. It was a no-brainer for the duo to enlist John Feldmann, whose production and songwriting collaborations resulted in landmark albums by Blink-182, 5 Seconds of Summer, and The Used. Like the punk rock music that first inspired him as a teenager, Mills sees girlfriends as an outlet for soulful expression and emotional catharsis, a means to process his feelings of grief, uncertainty, and renewed vigor for life, in a way that’s likely to connect with others who struggle. Nick is equally enthusiastic to have another crack at pop punk, the genre that first set him on his career path.

Travis and Nick are long time music veterans. Travis hosts Travis Mills LIVE on Apple Music’s Beats 1 and MTV’s Ghosted: Love Gone Missing. Gross is a founder of the LA-based multi-dimensional entertainment and media company, Gross Labs which includes record label Big Noise and the educational foundation Find Your Grind.

Girlfriends (Photo Credit: Matty Vogel)

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