"That Thing You Do!" vocalist, Mike Viola, channels pain of losing a friend on "Creeper" from upcoming "Godmuffin" album, out Dec. 11th

NEWS

Music lives in Mike Viola. Shit, it’s his last name, right? Godmuffin (Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony, Dec. 11th) even opens with strings and man, do they tug. Hard.

“Don’t be afraid, no don’t be afraid / We still have time, we still have time / There’s so much I wanna do”

“I wrote ‘Creeper’ the morning I got the news my close friend died,” Viola says. “He was my age. Now he can’t make music. I still can. I can still spend my time looking for the secret cause, the next new song, even when it feels too late, ‘cause I still have time.”

Viola’s friend is the artistically immortal, Adam Schlesinger, to whom Viola will forever be publicly tied as the voice of his friend’s perfect, Oscar®-nominated pop song “That Thing You Do!”

At any other time, this association would be a fun fact. A bullet point in a career full of them. But right now it’s painful to listen to with Viola’s real-life tragedy in mind. Somehow, he makes it sound beautiful.