Joe Jonas says being in DNCE made him "chill out."
The 29-year-old singer – who rose to fame as a member of the pop rock band the Jonas Brothers, alongside his brothers Kevin, 30, and Nick, 25 – has revealed that needing to become a "perfect" role model for Disney after the group starred in ‘Camp Rock’ piled on too much pressure, so he was thankful to be able to relax more when he started up new band DNCE.
Speaking to NME magazine, Joe said: "Sometimes it’s a hard mentality to break. But I think it even goes back further than that – to working with Disney for years and, like, feeling like you’re a role model when you didn’t ask to be one. But you’re so young and you’re put in that box. It was similar when I was being looked at as a heartthrob.
"It was freeing for me, actually, to be with these guys. Because we could let loose and just have fun. I used to feel like I had to be perfect and would beat myself if little things went wrong in the live show – if I flubbed a lyric or someone messed up a solo.
"Now, we laugh about it and just roll with the punches. If I forget a lyric now, the front row will sing it for me, you know? Being in this band has definitely made me chill out."
Joe – who got engaged to 22-year-old ‘Game of Thrones’ actress Sophie Tuner last October – also admitted he didn’t expect the bands first single ‘Cake By The Ocean’ to do so well, because the song’s title had been initially met with criticism.
He added: "Honestly, I should have screen-shotted some of the comments on Instagram when we first posted a teaser saying ‘new band, coming soon, debut single ‘Cake By The Ocean’. People were like, ‘What the f**k is this? Is this really the name of the song?’ It took about a month before people were like, ‘Oh, you guys are serious. This isn’t a joke. This isn’t some SNL skit. You guys are actually a real band.’
"We did a lot of gigs in New York City. We took over a bar there and were supposed to play a showcase once a night. We ended up playing like eight or nine times a night. It became a party, and we got a spillover from the nightclub next door. We were playing to a really fun, entertaining crowd with a lot of club kids, and that’s kind of how our fanbase started."
Joe Jonas: DNCE helped me chill out
