Ruel’s new single, “Made it Awkward,” which releases November 21, might be the best metaphor for his exploding career trajectory. It’s a song about oversharing, and that’s exactly how the singer-songwriter has been making his mark on the music industry for the past 10 years.
Born Ruel Vincent van Dijk, Ruel moved to Los Angeles six months ago from his hometown of Sydney, Australia, where he had lived with his family since he was in preschool after moving from London. He tells me over our video call that while LA is a lot like Sydney in terms of the weather, the pace is a lot different. “It’s just fast, where Sydney’s so slow,” he says. “Just the way I work and how I’ve kind of gotten things done and how the albums come together in six months, where if I was in Australia it would take like three years.”
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After being discovered by Grammy-winning producer M-Phazes at age 12, the singer-songwriter made his music debut two years later in 2017 at age 14 after a collaborative cover of Jack Garratt’s “Weathered” went viral on YouTube. Since then, Ruel has put out four EPs – Ready (2018), Free Time (2019), Bright Lights, Red Eyes (2021), and Adaptations—featuring his interpretations of five songs from The Weeknd, Sixpence None the Richer, Imogen Heap, Tobias Jesso Jr., and Miley Cyrus—along with his first studio album, 4th Wall (2023).
(Credit: Deanie Chen)
Now at 22, he’s amassed more than 3 billion global streams, collected multiple platinum and gold singles, and continues to leave a string of sold-out tours in his wake.
Ruel says that growing up in the music industry, he’s learned some contradictory lessons. “…Someone told me really early on…make sure whoever’s around you—because it takes a village a lot of the time to get through this industry—the core people that you deal with every day are just people you genuinely trust in every way,” he says. “But then I was always told that because I was so young, it was okay to kind of step back and let other people handle things for you if you couldn’t handle it. And now I feel like the lessons have been as I’m getting older now…it’s like, hold as much in your hand as you can. In a way, like that’s the opposite.”
As his star rises, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Growing up in the music industry has given him the experience and confidence to steer his career in the direction he sees fit. So far, it’s serving him well.
Earlier this year, Ruel released two collaborative singles, “What a Life” and “We’re a Pair of Diamonds”, with indie rock trio DMA’S. In October, he released “Cats on the Ceiling,” which has surpassed one million streams, as well as his cover of Sabrina Carpenter’s “santa doesn’t know you like i do” as part of Apple Music’s Carols Covered campaign.
And now there’s “Made It Awkward.”
Written by Ruel, M-Phazes, and singer-songwriter Nick Long, the song is bookended by a sample of a phone call gone wrong, chronicling the jarring tension and subsequent fallout of a risky confession to a crush.
We’ve all been there, right? “Made it Awkward” perfectly captures that feeling of regret after confessing our love for someone and not having it reciprocated back. It’s Ruel’s most emotionally vulnerable song yet for a veteran musician who, years into his career, seems to be only getting started. It’s that oversharing, as Ruel discusses in our interview below, that has served him well in his music.
I can relate to “Made it Awkward” in a lot of different ways. Was this written from personal experience?
Yeah. Of course, I feel like I’ve made it awkward many, many times in my life just by oversharing things. Yeah. I’m a visceral oversharer in every relationship. Even when I just meet someone for a meeting or whatever, I’ll, like, end up telling them my whole life story. And a lot of the time it kind of breaks down a barrier and works. But then there’s some people that, you overshare and it just completely fucks up the relationship and that person becomes distant. The reason why I like that though, I’ve kind of figured it out, is because since I’ve been songwriting since I was like 13, 14 with other people in the room, you’re forced to overshare and tell everyone everything that’s happened in your life in a session. You know, it’s just the way it is. So I’m so used to meeting someone for the first time and then telling them my deepest, darkest secrets and then writing a song about it. So, then when I meet someone else in another context, I kind of do the same thing without really knowing. And I feel like out of the songs I’ve put out, it feels the most clear to relate to.
Yeah, the first time I listened to it and watched the video, I was thinking about how many times I overshared and then regretted that decision instantly. But there’s an amazing amount of vulnerability in this song, and I think that’s important in music, you know?
Yeah, I think absolutely. I think now to cut through it just has to be like the most authentic, vulnerable version of yourself no matter what, how the song sounds, whether it’s sad or happy or fast or intense or angry. It’s just like, as long as you’re showing a real part of yourself—which I feel like I’ve always done in my career, but I’ve always found ways to hide it in metaphors and hide it in other ways just to make it feel more artsy or poetic—but for this song, I just wanted to be as blunt as possible and as straight up, but not hide behind any funky metaphor and go straight in for the jugular and say exactly what’s going on.
And it works. So, what was the songwriting process like for this song in particular?
It’s funny, this one I only wrote like a month or two ago. It took a really quick turnaround for this song, where like, “Cats on the Ceiling” that came out last month [October 17] was extremely a long process. Like I wrote that at the very start of the year and then, we’ve been finishing it for months. And then this song, yeah, I only wrote it like a month or two ago. I wrote it with a guy called Nick Long, and M-Phazes, so two guys that I’ve written with since I was literally a kid. It’s one of those things where you just start talking about things in the session. You just start talking about life and I was talking about just one instance that I’d made it awkward when I was young, when I was in a relationship or when I was in the start of a relationship. And I pretty much told the story and then…we kind of wanted the intro to feel kind of like Pixies/Coldplay, like a guitar-driven riff. We wanted to keep it like really nursery rhymey, like all the melodies just really straight and succinct. I feel like it makes it more memorable that way. Yeah, the song came in a couple hours, but it was just that sort of thing where we started with a beat, then wrote melodies and then wrote lyrics.
That’s part of why I felt like it really worked, because it is so catchy. It just gets stuck in your head.
It’s just really simple melodies and intervals and it’s easy to grasp.
There’s a video, too and I felt like it added even more to the awkwardness of the song’s situation. Because you’re laying in bed, regretting that phone call that you made, and, then it just zeroes in on you tossing and turning. What was the making of that video like for you?
It was really fun. I mean, we shot it the day of the “Cats on the Ceiling” shoots. So we did one where I was shaving my head and I was dancing and smiling and kind of being a bit goofy. And we shot that for like a few hours. And then in the other room, we had set up just like a dark room with these bedsheets, and it was very dark lighting and the song mood changed completely to the opposite. And then, because I’d also just shaved my head for the first time in my life, I was also kind of terrified that I’d just done that because that was scary enough for me having long hair my whole life. I was like, I’m gonna look like an egg. And then I used that slight bit of regret (I don’t regret it now) and it was really fun. And I like that the whole video is…I feel like it’s so relatable to me. Like honestly, it’s the amount of times I’ve acted exactly like how I am in that video. Just like, you know, throwing pillows around, slamming it, and just like tossing and turning after something that you did. And you know, when you are alone in your bed with nothing but your thoughts and how you could have done things differently or thinking about the future, I feel like that’s the place where people get the most in their heads.
(Ruel in a scene from the video for “Made it Awkward” Credit: Deanie Chen)
What made you decide to shave your head?
I think I wanted a bit of a change-up for this new year. I feel like I’ve had the same haircut for four years. I’ve always had it long and I honestly just wanted to see what it looked like. And I was sick of worrying about it.
You’ve had a lot going on this year. How has this year been different for you regarding your career?
I feel like in this year, when I think about it on a macro level, all I’ve done is just written songs. From January to now, I feel like I’ve been in L.A. for the most part and going into the studio every day, trying to write something new. It feels a bit like Groundhog Day as well. You go through ebbs and flows of writer’s block and stuff like that. And then I realized in between what I’ve done, I played Lollapalooza for the first time. I put out an EP of covers—which was really, really fun—called Adaptations…because it was an exercise for songwriting. We were trying covers to just see how my voice would sound on certain types of songs and certain types of production. So that was just a bit of fun. And then, I did a few shows in L.A. and New York, Chicago…but other than that, I feel like I’ve pretty much got an album. Like, I’ve definitely written an album. I’ve written like nine albums. I’ve written like 90 songs. But, now I’m just finishing up and we’ve picked the songs and now we’re just finishing those songs from recording. And so yeah, we’re on the back half definitely. Or at least the last like 20% to go. So, I’m really excited about this bit. I feel like the pressure’s off me a little bit, so next year, definitely expect something.
You covered an Imogen Heap song.
Yeah, “Hide and Seek.” It’s one of my favorite songs ever. I love that song. Yeah. All the songs that I covered are just songs that have been around in the back of my head for years. So all of them I’d either covered before live or it’s just been songs from being a kid that I love, like” Kiss Me.” It was so much fun to do.
What shows do you have coming up?
If there’s anyone reading from Australia, I’m coming home in a few weeks and I’m doing a bunch of festivals in December.
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