Meet Adam Young. The self-described “shy boy from the middle of nowhere in southern Minnesota,” who records under the name Owl City, just hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart with his sweet-natured laptop-pop single “Fireflies.” “It’s pretty surreal!” laughs Young, 23. The Music Mix called him up to find out how he got from Owatonna to the top of the charts — and ask how he feels about being constantly compared to the Postal Service.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Take us through your backstory. You’re from a tiny town in Minnesota?
OWL CITY: Yup. It’s about 15,000 or 16,000 people. It is about an hour south of Minneapolis, so it’s basically in Iowa. I actually still live there. I got my own place a few months ago. It’s a cozy, quiet place. Music really isn’t a big deal there. It was kind of removed from the world. I think it’s been good, because it’s given me an unbiased perspective in terms of writing.
How were you exposed to music when you were growing up? Did you listen to the radio or watch TV?
Probably radio a little bit more than TV. It was sort of just whatever was playing in the room — whatever my parents had on. I grew up an only child, so I never had siblings that played instruments or anything. I had a few friends in high school that dabbled in music. Initially I was inspired by a friend of mine to learn to play guitar so that both of us could jam together and cover old Blink-182 songs and stuff. That’s what got me interested very early on.
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