INTERVIEW: AJR Lists Five Advantages Of Not Being Famous

You may know indie pop band AJR -- comprised of brothers Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met -- from their 2013 hit "I'm Ready," which features the memorable Spongebob Squarepants sample. This opened up the door for the NYC natives to play live at the same show with a number of big artists like Demi Lovato, We The Kings, and Fifth Harmony. But the guys have hit their living room studio again, and are back with brand new music, including a song called "I'm Not Famous." The band stopped by iHeartRadio HQ for an exclusive performance of the new single, along with "I'm Not Ready," and a cover of twenty one pilots' ukulele cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love," and talked to us about their new music in an exclusive interview.

[Buy "I'm Not Famous" on iTunes]

AJR released their debut album Living Room from Warner Brothers Records and their own AJR Productions in March 2015 ... because in case you didn't already know, the guys create a lot of their music in the living room of their Chelsea apartment in New York City. Although now, the guys have told us they've made some upgrades -- their vocal booth is now in their kitchen closet. So now they can snack while singing, as they tell us.

As for their latest single "I'm Not Famous," the guys tell us the idea came to them following recent fan meet and greets. Following the success of their first single "I'm Ready," fans would often ask them what it's like to be famous ... to which the brothers would always respond, "We're not famous."

On the inspiration behind the lyrics of their song "I'm Not Famous"

"We didn't think we were famous. We had a song which everyone knew, but us as AJR was not like a household name. So we would always say, 'I'm not famous.' And originally the concept for the song was a little bit sad. Then we kind of turned it on it's head. I remember coming back and I was like, 'Let's write a song about how it's awesome to not be famous, because everybody that's gonna listen to this song, or almost everybody is not famous and they're gonna kind of connect to that, and realize, Oh, wow, it is better not to be ... ' Our society is little bit obsessed with fame right now. Especially the people that are just trying to be famous for fame's sake with no real talent attached to it. And I think that's kind of the lamest part of society, and we wanted to kind of make that commentary about that."

While you can probably think of quite a few reasons why it would be awesome to be famous, AJR's single is just the opposite. Playing off of their single "I'm Not Famous," we asked the trio to tell us five perks of NOT being famous ... and they came up with some pretty good reasons! Check it out below.

AJR Lists Five Advantages of Not Being Famous

1. You can walk around in a onesie, carefree.

"You can walk around the city in a onesie and no one will notice. And that's in our music video. It was really fun, honestly. An old woman attacked him. She hit me with her cane. I feel like it wasn't because I was in the onesie. I feel like I was just in her way. So she would have whacked anyone that was standing there."

2. No invasive paparazzi will stalk you at 3 a.m.

"You can pull up to your house at 3am drunk or something, and there won't be someone there taking a picture of you to show the whole world. It's a nice perk."

3. You can basically wear anything you want, like your PJ's, and no one will put on you on the "Worst Dressed List."

"You can wear whatever you want. Honestly, I love dressing comfortably out on the street. I'll wear pajamas outside sometimes. And I feel like if you were famous, you would just get really pegged for that. I mean like, 'Oh, what are you doing? You should be dressing in this and this.'"

4. No one is filming your public arguments.

"You could have a fight with somebody in public without people surrounding you and trying to film it. Not like fighting somebody, a verbal fight. I feel like whenever there's like an altercation, like if someone's yelling at a waitress or like something like that, like a famous person, they'll always blame it on the famous person. So it's always their fault. You know everyone's filming it too. Like, immediately. But I feel like there's always a real story that people aren't getting. So you don't have to go through any of that."

5. No one will judge you for change.

"You can change who you are and kind of update yourself as a person. Which is what everybody does naturally, we're all going through changes. But every time a famous person does it, he gets judged and scrutinized."

Photos: Rachel Kaplan for iHeartRadio