If you haven’t heard Canadian singer/songwriter/producer Tebey’s phenomenal country music version of The Weeknd’s hit Blinding Lights then please, stop what you are doing and go and listen to it right now! A fan of country music or not, this version is so blindingly good that it is bringing the beauty of country music to non-country music fans in a better way than Beyoncé.

The cover is genius and brings a sort of western cinematic feel to it and the song hasn’t just caught the attention of millions of music fans but of The Weeknd himself! This song, this version has exploded and deservedly so and on the back of that, Tebey is releasing more countrified pop hits including Drake’s Hold on We’re Going Home and more recently Avicii’s Wake Me Up. The ‘Wake Me Up’ version has been beautifully transformed into to a bluegrass song along with Jake Vaadeland and The Sturgeon River Boys who are exceptional artists in their own right!

Tebey is bringing these outstanding covers as well as his original material to the UK for a very special one off show in London at The Omeara on August 21st. Tickets and info here. Do not miss a chance to see him in such a small setting.

Tebey is one of the most multi-talented musicians/producers in the music industry today. He was won multiple awards for his work and his songs have reached over 100 million streams, 608,000 Canadian radio spins and an audience of 998 Million to date (Mediabase). Tebey has had four Top 5 Canadian country radio singles, five Top 10 singles and five Top 20 singles as a recording artist.

Hailing from Peterborough, ON native and currently living in Nashville, Tebey has also spent time living in the UK so when I say that the UK is like a second home to Tebey, it really is! Tebey has always kept his connections to the UK close and plays here as often as he can such as The Long Road Festival and C2C Festival in the last few years. Tebey also released an alternative version of his song Song of The Summer with our very own Una Healy which is a beautiful duet!

As mentioned, more recently and rather excitedly, Tebey released his phenomenal version of The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights. The originally unplanned and very quick turnaround of a release sprung from a spontaneous country cover of the song that Tebey posted on social media just because he felt that Blinding Lights made one heck of a good country song. If there is anyone who has a good ear for what would sound good as a country song then that’s Tebey and in this particular situation, he was absolutely on the money! The short clip that he posted was enough to cause him to go viral and for fans to demand a full studio version to be released.

We caught up with Tebey to discuss this version, other covers he plans to countrify, his debt headline show in the UK in August and more!

How are you?

Yeah I have been good, things have been busy!

I can imagine!!! I will have to jump straight in and say ‘Blinding Lights’ what a genius cover!

Yeah! Who’d have thought? Who knows?

Did you go in with the expectation it would do well or was it on a whim?

100 per cent, (on a whim) there wasn’t even a finished version of the song. It was literally for my social media just to grow my followers, that was the whole thing behind it. I went in and recorded the verse and the chorus so I hadn’t even recorded the second verse or anything after that. I remember waking up that morning after I posted it late afternoon so it was 8 or 9 hours later and it had already over a million views. Thousands and thousands upon shares. We were getting ready to go on holiday in Europe with my wife and kids on the Monday and on Sunday when it all went crazy, I called my producer and said “I need to come in to the studio and at least record the second verse and the rest of the song because I have a feeling that we are going to need to put this out like asap”. We did and we scrambled to get it done and we got it out in five days. At that point, like three days later, it had like 12 million views or something and hundreds of thousands of shares . I have never seen anything like it, it was very overwhelming.

I love that! I love the original too but it’s such a great version!

Yeah, it’s completely unexpected and it’s been really cool to watch people react to it and for the most part it’s been extremely positive. The whole thing has been fan driven. There was a never a plan to release it. We had to scramble because the demand was just so high. People are finding it by accident and are demanding it which is great!

And The Weeknd has even heard and shared it himself hasn’t he?

He did! The Weeknd posted about it twice! Which is pretty cool! He is arguably the biggest pop star in the world with 80 million followers or something crazy like that on instagram. One of the videos that we have which is like a marketing thing, has a clip of The Weeknd and we put my version over the top of it so it looks like he is singing it. That was part of the brilliance behind the marketing. That video has about 23 million views which is insane but here is the insane fact…that has more views than any one post that the Weeknd has ever posted himself.

Oh wow!

That’s insane!!!

How do you go into producing that and so quickly? As a producer what do you hear? Do you just think “ok, banjo here, this there” and so on?

I knew the vibe that I wanted. I have thought about doing other songs (as country covers) I was looking for a popular song, I was looking at Dua Lipa and other artists like Harry Styles and then that one (Blinding Lights) in particular just worked within country music. I think the reason that it worked are a couple of things. Musical hooks, which you don’t really see a lot in today’s pop music, it’s not like that old school Max Martin way of writing songs where they would have a musical hook. Blinding Lights had that! All we did was take it and play it on a telecaster guitar, electric like a national and then we added this different drum groove underneath it, kind of like a Tim McGraw type of thing. That’s why it worked, it’s a lot of things but also it doesn’t sound the same as the original. All the melodies are still there, they’re all the same but vibe wise, the vibe is so different and I think that’s the key to making a great cover. It can’t sound the same as the original but just with a country asset, that’s not going to work, that’s not going to do it, so I think we just tapped into that! That’s why it worked.

It’s more cinematic too. When I hear this version I can imagine it being part of a film soundtrack.

Yeah hopefully! I hope we get a lot of cool things out of it. It’s so different. It’s still the original but it’s not! It’s taken it’s own mind, it’s got legs of its own and it’s doing crazy things. It’s only getting started. If you look at how many people there are in this world, it’s really just getting started and it’s exciting!

What’s the possibility of an album full of country versions of other pop songs?

Thinking about it! I actually toyed with the idea of doing a four, five EP. I just released a cover of Drake. That had a million views the day after I posted it so I think I have accidentally stumbled into my niche in the market here.

That’s amazing! You are coming back to the UK in August so I am going to assume these covers will be in the set list or if not, that will be a bit mean haha!

Oh yeah for sure! Can you imagine coming all the way over there and not playing them haha! I can’t tell you how important it is to me to sell out this show! The goal is to do a proper UK tour. I want to go out and play Manchester and all these places. I can’t do it until I know I can sell the tickets and that is why the London show is so important and having Live Nation on board has been amazing as well. If we can sell out this London show, then we can do a full UK tour in November but we have to sell out London first!

Well I hope you do!

So you released Hold Your Horses, an original in January, any plans for other original material?

The plan took a left turn because Blinding Lights was so high! Yeah, I have another duet coming that we are getting ready to record with a Canadian female artist that is popular in the UK. That’s exciting so we are probably going to drop that in the fall. I am constantly recording new music and I feel that I need new music. Fortunately you’re going to be seeing a lot of me in the next six months hahaha.

I’d be very happy with that! I would love to see you at some of these mixed genre festivals as you would fit right in plus bringing country music to mainstream festival goers like at The Big Feastival.

Absolutely, I mean this version has really done that though, that’s the thing that’s so exciting! I have so many messages from different people all over the World, West Africa, India, that you wouldn’t think have much country music and the first line of every message is “I don’t like country music or listen to it but I like this” and that’s crazy to me because the song is very country the way we have done it! It’s not like it’s pop country, it’s country!

It’s better than Beyoncé.

I have gotten a lot of that too which is a huge compliment! It’s opening so many doors and growing the fanbase.

I look forward to more dates. I look forward to London, are you bringing a whole band?

Yeah! I refuse to so these shows without them! I am losing a ton of money like boat loads but that’s because I believe in what I am doing and we are going to come over and bring a full band. I think the fans will appreciate that! I am happy to take the loss and build my brand and the show! When people see that show, we hope they tell their friends and sell more tickets.

Thank you so much for chatting today, I really appreciate it!

Thank you!