“FUCK the corps who try to management bands and alter their sound”
STONE have spoken out about their exit from Polydor Information, writing: “FUCK the corps who try to management bands and alter their sound”.
The Liverpool band launched their debut album ‘Concern Life For A Lifetime’ in 2024 on the most important label, however as frontman Fin Energy made clear in a prolonged put up on X on Friday (Might 9), the group felt they have been constantly “silenced”, “undermined” and “ignored” by Polydor.
Explaining that the band at the moment are “deep into writing” their second album with a brand new label and that they’re now “fucking completely satisfied once more”, he stated he felt a accountability to “speak actually” about their time with Polydor as a result of “some new bands want to listen to it” and “as a result of why the fuck would I shrink back from talking our reality”.
Energy stated that regardless of having heard the horror tales about main labels, the band have been informed their imaginative and prescient can be supported and “that promise felt fucking good on the time”. However, he added, “they didn’t imply it”.
Hey Fin right here. I posted this on my Private instagram, thought I ought to share it right here too. STONE won’t ever be managed and we’re extra unified now than ever. FUCK the Corps who try to management bands n change their sound. We’re again.
This received’t get deleted this time. pic.twitter.com/5fyOkdRSrL
— STONE (@STONELIVERPOOL) May 9, 2025
“I keep in mind after signing, I examine one other artist who obtained utterly fucked over by the identical label. Their album obtained shelved. They weren’t allowed to launch it independently. They ended up leaving and doing it their method, and now they’ve gone on to win seven BRIT Awards. I keep in mind pondering that received’t be us. We’ve obtained a imaginative and prescient. We all know who we’re. We’ll be high-quality.”
Energy was referring to RAYE, who made headlines in 2021 when she left Polydor after claiming they’d refused to launch her debut album regardless of having signed a four-album cope with them.
“ALL I CARE ABOUT is the music,” she stated on the time. “I’m sick of being slept on and I’m sick of being in ache about it this isn’t enterprise to me this so private. I’ve executed every little thing they requested me, I switched genres, I labored 7 days per week, ask anybody within the music recreation, they know. I’m executed being a well mannered pop star. I need to make my album now, please that’s all I need.”
Explaining why the truth on the label was not what he had anticipated, Energy continued: “Inside months of signing, every little thing modified. Each time we introduced up making an album, it obtained dismissed. Just like the phrase album had grow to be soiled. Abruptly, I used to be being despatched off to put in writing with strangers. We have been being guilt tripped into TikTok dances. I began questioning each phrase I wrote. We barely heard from the A and R who signed us. A cellphone name each few months, if that.”
He stated their vlogs with followers have been changed with social media lip syncs and filters, which the band “hated”.
“We have been a challenge. A product. Of venture. And that’s the reality. To most of those firms, artists are simply scratch playing cards. Purchase a stack. See which one hits.”
He continued: “We obtained signed as a substitute rock band and slowly shoved towards pop. We have been caught in an identification disaster. I keep in mind being despatched Combine 4 of a track we recorded and pondering, wait, the place the fuck is Combine 1? We weren’t even trusted with listening to the evolution of our personal sound.”
“We have been silenced. Undermined. Ignored into pondering our instincts have been flawed. Each no chipped away at who we have been. We weren’t even allowed to place our largest monitor, Cash, on the album. We’d stated from day one we needed Go away It Out and Let’s Dance on there. However slowly, certainly, every little thing we cared about obtained stripped away. We misplaced ourselves.”
Energy clarified that there have been “genuinely good folks on the label” who “actually did care and tried their finest for us”, however stated they have been the “minority” who have been “simply as powerless as we have been”.
He additionally reiterated that the band are “massively proud” of ‘Concern Life For A Lifetime’, however stated “we will be proud however unhappy by how issues have been on the identical time”.
“To each younger artist: don’t let anybody change your core,” he concluded. “Don’t allow them to chip away at your identification in trade for some promise that by no means arrives. Don’t grow to be one other line merchandise on somebody’s spreadsheet. In the event that they don’t see your value until another person is within the room, they don’t should be in yours.”
“And to the system that attempted to show us into one thing we’re not – fuck you.”
NME have contacted Polydor Information for a response to Energy’s assertion.
NME awarded ‘Concern Life For A Lifetime’ 4 stars, writing: “Entrance-loaded with its three singles, the change in fact in ‘Concern Life For A Lifetime’ ensures it closes on a colossus of emotion. Positive to be lapped up by their ever-growing, cult-like younger fanbase, this stellar debut album will solely add to the case that this can be a band with heaps of ambition, primed to degree up whereas staying true to their indie-punk roots.”
RAYE, in the meantime, has spoken extra about her personal cut up from Polydor lately. Talking to NME in 2022, she stated: “Whenever you signal with a file label, technically they be just right for you: you’re signing to an organization for them to work on your profession and take you to that subsequent degree. However as a girl, it simply doesn’t really feel like that. It feels such as you’re working for them. And , among the issues I needed to put my physique by means of to even be capable of that… it’s actually fairly unhappy.”
She later informed Louis Theroux in 2023: “It wasn’t in any respect deliberate, it was extra of a determined cry to be free. It’s so deep, what I’d realised I’d truly been doing to myself as an individual, to try to be the any individual that they needed me to be. It’s so unhappy.
“On the finish of the day it’s a enterprise and I wasn’t promoting what [the record label] needed me to promote.”