Five minutes with Sunday (1994), the alt-pop band putting gut over everything

It’s the last night of Sunday (1994)’s third UK tour of the year, as well as their final show for 2025. Tonight, they play for a packed house at EartH in East London, and tomorrow they jet back home to West Hollywood, California. “And joining us tonight we have the best drummer in the world,” says Lee Newell, the UK half of the duo known as Sunday (1994). Perhaps what he means to say here is, rather than being the best drummer, Jordi Radnoti loves Sunday (1994) so much that she took a break from touring with Olivia Rodrigo to be on the EartH stage tonight. Regardless, together with bassist Christine Sloman and Sunday’s American half, Paige Turner, the band played an unforgettable closing show to a stellar year of music.

The duo’s journey, however, started on the other side of the pond. Turner and Newell met at a gig for The Neighborhood at the Los Angeles Palladium in 2013. Shortly after they began dating. And then they started making music together. Their first song, ‘Tired Boy’ was written sometime in the last decade and released on their first album — which came out only one year ago on their debut self-titled EP. At the beginning of this year, they released their second EP, Devotion, which they’ve since toured around the world, playing shows for a global fanbase. “It’s crazy — we’ve been releasing music for just over a year and yet here you all are,” Lee says to a packed hall of chanting fans, waving their phones to the duo’s most popular song, ‘Rain’. 

Much like the credits of a film on IMDb, Sunday (1994) is meant to read like a film title, but pays homage to Turner’s birth year, and the day of the week on which they wrote their first song. “We met in 2013, which feels like a hundred years ago,” says Newell. “I was in a band, Paige was just starting making music and as soon as we met we instantly talked about starting a band together. It just took twelve years to get there.” Up until the pandemic, the two stayed busy writing and pitching to other musicians “in order to pay the bills”, but became uninspired and burnt out right around the time the pandemic hit. “I have to say it — we had nothing else to do and thought, Let’s just write something for fun that’s exactly what we want to listen to, without the intention of pitching it to anyone.” And with that, Sunday (1994) was officially born. Now, two (soon to be three) EPs later, the band has cemented themselves as an indie favourite — or, as Newell’s mom says, ‘the voice of their generation’.’

You’re both cinephiles — or at least the internet thinks you are after titling your band like a movie. What’s your favourite movie right now?

Lee Newell: We keep being told we are. But I like a good film.

Paige Turner: I feel like right now, it’s Carrie (1976). I’m going through a Brian DePalma phase. When I rewatched the film again recently, I thought, This feels very quintessentially us. It feels like all of the elements that we draw on in our music. It feels glamorous, but then there’s also something really sinister to it. It pulls from a young person’s perspective the same way that the stories we write about are from our younger selves and the things that we both experienced growing up. 

You’ve been writing together for over a decade, seemingly without the intention of ever recording the songs. How did you finally decide to bite the bullet and get into the studio?

PT: We didn’t have any intention of recording the first song we wrote [‘Tired Boy’), and then after that, we wrote ‘Blonde’ and ‘Loneliness of the Long Flight Home’. But then we kind of sat with them for a couple of years and Lee just kept bugging me being like, Paige, please, can we, like, let’s record these, let us record them properly. Please, please please. And then finally we just did it.

LN: I sort of forced you to record a couple of the songs, because I knew this was going to sound good. I knew this was going to work… 

PT: Lee was in this place in his life where I felt like he’d been doing this longer than me, and he needed this. He needed something to invigorate him again in music.

Were you falling out of love with music, Lee?

LN: Not falling out of love with music, but I didn’t have very much purpose to be honest. Music is the thing that gets me up in the morning or gets me to sleep at night. I’m constantly listening to it. And we don’t write anything for anyone other than ourselves. It’s really gratifying and liberating, actually, to do that — and even more so when people listen to it and actually come to the gigs. So it feels like a miracle that anyone comes to our shows.

It sounds like you have a greater love for making music than just playing it. 

PT: It feels different for me, because I love singing and I love performing with loads of people around — the whole aspect of it. I love writing songs with [Lee] but, for me, it’s quite a serious task. I find songwriting very, very hard, versus Lee [who’s] constantly listening to music, going to bed and coming up with ideas for songs. That part of his brain is always on.

LN: Paige is good at editing. I throw loads of ideas at her, and she’s really good at curating and making it palatable. 

PT: Then we co-write the lyrics.

LN: It’s probably worth mentioning, if we’re talking about the genesis of the band, that we have a quite strict set of rules that we follow — a manifesto.

The Sunday (1994) Manifesto

Two cooks only, lest the broth be spoiled.

Reverb must linger, guitars must shimmer with chorus, and all must yield to the embrace of heavy compression.

Film photography only, still or unstill. The visual medium must be tangible. You listen with your eyes.

Before a lyric is sung, let the words pass through three gates: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it interesting?

Black, white, crushed pink: three colours suffice. Four is an indulgence; five is jazz.

The kick drum belongs to Joe Porcaro.

The bass guitar must be simple enough to inspire the unversed to start a band. It is the most important instrument.

Worship at the altar of the middle 8, or 16 if fate permits.

If it doesn’t make you laugh then it isn’t sad enough. The written word must jump off the page. Sung softly, always.

The greats carry the torch, they do not reinvent fire. You cannot.

You never tell them what to feel, just simply how you are feeling. It’s more powerful and the highest form of respect.

Gut over everything.

When tracking vocals, a tiny heartbeat on the lap is essential.

These rules are never broken; they are merely bent into art.

And do you find those rules helpful in a professional or a personal capacity? 

PT: Both. We’ve known each other so long that these rules help us get anything done.

LN: I feel like limitation can be the most creative thing. You know, one synth, one guitar. It means you can’t keep layering and ruining it.

PT: There’s so much on social media, and seeing all the other artists makes me feel like it could be quite easy for us to have an identity crisis if we started letting other influences seep in. Limitations make it easier to ground ourselves, like, Oh yeah, this is why we started this project. This is what we wanted it to sound like from the beginning.

So one EP in 2024, one in 2025. Where do you go from here?

LN: When we put the first music out in 2024, it was arbitrary doing it right at the beginning of the year. We just did it because it felt natural. Then we released the second EP at the beginning of 2025. So sure enough, we’re going to be putting new music out at the beginning of 2026. I guess that’s the rule now. It’s coming soon. Yeah, a ‘new year, who dis?’ kind of thing.