49th & Main

No matter what obstacle gets in their way, 49th & Main refuse to be defeated. This hard-fought resilience to achieve their dream has long been ingrained in the dance-pop duo. After meeting at school in Kilkenny, producer Ben O’Sullivan and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Paddy King began making music together one summer. However, O’Sullivan soon discovered he had developed aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease which prevented his bone marrow from producing enough new blood cells, making him chronically fatigued and prone to infections.Nonetheless, just three months after he began treatment, 49th & Main introduced themselves to the world in early 2020 with lo-fi banger ‘CatchingEyes’, which thrust them into the spotlight internationally (and has since clocked up 50 million streams). However, at that time, they were faced with another massive setback –the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Undeterred, 49th &Main powered through, and their jazz and indie-infused take on house found a global following. Post-pandemic, the duo quickly made up for lost time, as the energy of their live shows started spreading word-of-mouth; their raucous first ever show, which sold out in minutes, is still talked about to this day. Far from just pressing play on a laptop, the pair always wanted the 49th & Main experience to be fully live. With King on guitar and vocals and O’Sullivan on the decks and drum pads, headline tours and a performance at Glastonbury followed. However, just as things were going well, the duo were separated when O’Sullivan was forced to take a year off the road while he underwent treatment for his illness. Consequently, King toured alone with the band for much of last year. “I definitely felt shut out,” O’Sullivan recalls of missing the 2023 summer festival season. “Being up on stage is so much fun,” he adds; “it’s like an addiction. That adrenaline rush is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Withoutit, it was definitely tough.” The show, as they say, went on. But,despite receiving great support from fans, King says “it felt like a slow year, just waiting for Ben to get back”. One positive, however, was that having to fill in for O’Sullivan’s partmeant that King’s own stage confidence developed. “It definitely didn’t feel like the same show without Ben there,” King recalls. “It took a while to get used to.”Back at home, meanwhile, O’Sullivan spent much of his time -especially last summer -focusing on production. “I was experimenting a lot with weird sounds,” he says. “Just because I wanted to try and see if we could evolve a bit.” This resulted in him widening the band’s sonic palette, looking at more genres, such as drum ‘n’ bass and garage, and weaving those influences into the 49th & Main world.