‘I
t was wild,” says Hester Cham-
bers, a musician from the Isle of
Wight, talking about a gig she
recently played in Paris. “People
knew every word of our songs
— and they climbed on stage.”
Chambers and her friend Rhian Teas-
dale are better known as Wet Leg, the
most hyped band since the Strokes —
and they are still taking it all in. Their
catchy first single, Chaise Longue, has
been listened to more than seven mil-
lion times on Spotify since June last year
— Elton John played it on his Apple
Music show and Dave Grohl listens on
repeat. Their US tour sold out before
they had even released their first album.
Wet Leg have shot to fame at an excit-
ing time for women who play guitars. As
male rock stars wax and wane, women
are making some of the most original
and varied music around; there’s Haim,
Phoebe Bridgers and Warpaint to name
a few. Wet Leg sing perky, irreverent
songs that play with double entendre
and wry observations, with honest
commentary on growing up, falling in
and out of love and wondering if you
are frittering your life away. Think Pulp
for 2022. “I don’t know what I’m even
doing here, I was told that there would
be free beer,” Teasdale says on Angelica.
Chambers, 27, and Teasdale, 28,
know about the difficulties of being in
your twenties. Wet Leg’s success came
as they were about to give up. They met
studying music at sixth-form college
and were both performing — Cham-
bers had gigs where no one turned
up and, wondering if there was a
future in music, had begun an
apprenticeship at her parents’
jewellery business. Teasdale
was dispirited by playing to
festival crowds who didn’t
seem interested. So she asked
Chambers to team up (along withher boyfriend, Joshua Mobaraki, who
plays synth and guitar in their band).
They decided to care less and write
songs for their own enjoyment — and
came up with the name Wet Leg while
playing with emojis on their phones.
“Wet Leg is a reminder not to take
ourselves too seriously,” Teasdale says.
She is wearing a gold necklace that says
“Wet”. Chambers made it, and wears
one reading “Leg”. “A few people asked
if we were sure we wanted it to be our
name, but we do because the world is so
ridiculous and making music is such a
self-indulgent, ridiculous lifestyle, it’s
grounding. No matter how bad or well
we do, we are in a band called Wet Leg!”
Chambers, the quieter of the two,
laughs — she finds Teasdale hilarious.
Teasdale plays to that, putting on com-
edy accents and abbreviating words (the
pandemic becomes “pandem”).
“I can imagine that if [fame] had
happened when we were younger we
would take it for granted more,” Cham-
bers says. “This is a bit selfish but
we make music for us rather than.. .”
she searches for a word and TeasdaleWE HAVE A RIDICULOUS LIFESTYLE
comes to her rescue, “... trying to
appease expectations.”
But in their own way they are trying
to change the music industry, looking
for a female team to work with them.
“There are some wild numbers out
there,” says Teasdale, who only learnt to
play guitar when she teamed up with
Chambers — before, she was a pianist.
“Two per cent of sound engineers are
women. Looking for a female team has
exposed how few women there are in
music.” Her mother was the first woman
to go to sea in the merchant navy “and
she told me about gender imbalances
there. Sexism is everywhere, isn’t it?”
“At music college there were three or
four guys to every girl and you were just
like, ‘That’s the way it is,’” Chambers
says. They are firm that they “don’t want
to let being women define us”. “We are
just trying to do the thing we love and
not let any fear stop us from playing gui-
tar and having fun,” Teasdale says. “But
you need to talk about [imbalances].”
Wet Leg have been compared to Elas-
tica, Art Brut and Björk, but they were
more inspired by Nineties and Noughties
pop and rock. They reel off the music
they grew up listening to: the Suga babes,
Ronan Keating (they have a brilliant
cover of his song Life Is a Rollercoaster),
Beirut, the Strokes and, of course, the
Spice Girls. Teasdale says that is all she
can think about when she is imagining
their tour. “I think it will be like Spice
World the Movie, our
bus will be like that.”
How will they celebrate
when their album is out?
Their answer is refreshingly not
rock’n’roll. “We’ll have a Kinder
Egg each,” Teasdale says. cSusannah ButterWet Leg by Wet Leg is out on Fridayenough”. He made his name discover-
ing the Welsh rockers Manic Street
Preachers playing small pub shows and
gambling on the hunch that they had it
in them to become stadium stars.
Today A&Rs trawl through TikTok,
YouTube and Spotify for new acts, and
few signings are made without exten-
sive data analysis.
“The way we find talent has changed
a lot,” he admits. “There was much
more gut feeling in the Eighties and
Nineties. We’ve taken chances on com-
plete unknowns that turned out to be
huge. But, in this day and age, feeling
that something is special, backed up by
statistical data, is the ideal combo.”
Meanwhile Sony has paid huge sums
for the catalogues of Bruce Springsteen
and Bob Dylan. So, while new artists
remain vital, Sony still has a stable of
icons to rely on.
Stringer worked with the 19-year-old
Adele when he ran Columbia Records
US. “When she came to our building
she looked down the corridor and saw
pictures of Beyoncé, Bob Dylan and
Barbra Streisand,” he remembers. Now
Adele’s picture hangs next to her idols.
“I think she knew even then she could
be with those photographs. She has
God-given talent.”
Yet nothing compares to Stringer’s
stint working in secrecy with his teen-
age idol, David Bowie, on the 2013
comeback album The Next Day and the
2016 follow-up Blackstar, released days
before the star died.
“People always say, ‘Don’t
meet your heroes’ — pardon the
pun — but he was remarkable,”
he says. “I realise now that
he was in a hurry to make crea-
tive decisions. I didn’t know he
was in so much of a hurry, but
to be around that inspiration —
nothing will beat that. It was
a privilege to be in the room
with him.”
When Stringer got the 2014
Music Week Strat award for
industry greats, Bowie sent a
message thanking him for “a
genuine long-term support
sadly missing in the recording
industry”.
Sony has tried to widen that
support network under Stringer
making artist-friendly moves
such as sharing the proceeds
from the sale of its Spotify
shares, and scrapping recoup-
ment on older contracts (so art-
ists will receive streaming royal-
ties). Yet the #BrokenRecord and
#FixStreaming campaigns still
say that labels take too large a
share of streaming revenues.
Sony is working on further
reforms, but in the meantime
Stringer and his team will con-
tinue their quest to find fresh
talent. “A&R remains totally vital,”
Stringer says. “You’ve got to look
forward.” c
They’re the most hyped band since the Strokes — Wet Leg on their madcap year
Wet Leg Hester Chambers, left, and
Rhian TeasdaleHOLLIE FERNANDODANIEL DESLOVER/SHUTTERSTOCK3 April 2022 9