STONE have spoken out about their exit from Polydor Information, writing: “FUCK the corps who try to management bands and alter their sound”.
The Liverpool band launched their debut album ‘Worry Life For A Lifetime’ in 2024 on the most important label, however as frontman Fin Energy made clear in a prolonged submit on X on Friday (Could 9), the group felt they have been constantly “silenced”, “undermined” and “ignored” by Polydor.
Explaining that the band at the moment are “deep into writing” their second album with a brand new label and that they’re now “fucking comfortable once more”, he stated he felt a duty to “speak truthfully” about their time with Polydor as a result of “some new bands want to listen to it” and “as a result of why the fuck would I shrink back from talking our fact”.
Energy stated that regardless of having heard the horror tales about main labels, the band have been instructed their imaginative and prescient could be supported and “that promise felt fucking good on the time”. However, he added, “they didn’t imply it”.
Hey Fin right here. I posted this on my Private instagram, thought I ought to share it right here too. STONE won’t ever be managed and we’re extra unified now than ever. FUCK the Corps who try to management bands n change their sound. We’re again.
This gained’t get deleted this time. pic.twitter.com/5fyOkdRSrL
— STONE (@STONELIVERPOOL) Could 9, 2025
“I keep in mind after signing, I examine one other artist who obtained utterly fucked over by the identical label. Their album obtained shelved. They weren’t allowed to launch it independently. They ended up leaving and doing it their approach, and now they’ve gone on to win seven BRIT Awards. I keep in mind considering that gained’t be us. We’ve obtained a imaginative and prescient. We all know who we’re. We’ll be fantastic.”
Energy was referring to RAYE, who made headlines in 2021 when she left Polydor after claiming that they had refused to launch her debut album regardless of having signed a four-album deal with them.
“ALL I CARE ABOUT is the music,” she stated on the time. “I’m sick of being slept on and I’m sick of being in ache about it this isn’t enterprise to me this so private. I’ve executed every part they requested me, I switched genres, I labored 7 days per week, ask anybody within the music recreation, they know. I’m executed being a well mannered pop star. I need to make my album now, please that’s all I need.”
Explaining why the truth on the label was not what he had anticipated, Energy continued: “Inside months of signing, every part modified. Each time we introduced up making an album, it obtained dismissed. Just like the phrase album had turn into soiled. Out of the blue, I used to be being despatched off to write down with strangers. We have been being guilt tripped into TikTok dances. I began questioning each phrase I wrote. We barely heard from the A and R who signed us. A telephone name each few months, if that.”
He stated their vlogs with followers have been changed with social media lip syncs and filters, which the band “hated”.
“We have been a undertaking. A product. Of venture. And that’s the reality. To most of those firms, artists are simply scratch playing cards. Purchase a stack. See which one hits.”
He continued: “We obtained signed instead rock band and slowly shoved towards pop. We have been caught in an id disaster. I keep in mind being despatched Combine 4 of a tune we recorded and considering, wait, the place the fuck is Combine 1? We weren’t even trusted with listening to the evolution of our personal sound.”
“We have been silenced. Undermined. Ignored into considering our instincts have been incorrect. Each no chipped away at who we have been. We weren’t even allowed to place our largest observe, Cash, on the album. We’d stated from day one we needed Depart It Out and Let’s Dance on there. However slowly, absolutely, every part we cared about obtained stripped away. We misplaced ourselves.”
Energy clarified that there have been “genuinely good folks on the label” who “actually did care and tried their greatest for us”, however stated they have been the “minority” who have been “simply as powerless as we have been”.
He additionally reiterated that the band are “massively proud” of ‘Worry Life For A Lifetime’, however stated “we will be proud however unhappy by how issues have been on the similar time”.
“To each younger artist: don’t let anybody change your core,” he concluded. “Don’t allow them to chip away at your id in change for some promise that by no means arrives. Don’t turn into one other line merchandise on somebody’s spreadsheet. In the event that they don’t see your price except another person is within the room, they don’t need to be in yours.”
“And to the system that attempted to show us into one thing we’re not – fuck you.”
NME have contacted Polydor Information for a response to Energy’s assertion.
NME awarded ‘Worry Life For A Lifetime’ 4 stars, writing: “Entrance-loaded with its three singles, the change after all in ‘Worry Life For A Lifetime’ ensures it closes on a colossus of emotion. Positive to be lapped up by their ever-growing, cult-like younger fanbase, this stellar debut album will solely add to the case that this can be a band with heaps of ambition, primed to stage up whereas staying true to their indie-punk roots.”
RAYE, in the meantime, has spoken extra about her personal break up from Polydor in recent times. Talking to NME in 2022, she stated: “While you signal with a document label, technically they be just right for you: you’re signing to an organization for them to work in your profession and take you to that subsequent stage. However as a girl, it simply doesn’t really feel like that. It feels such as you’re working for them. And you already know, among the issues I needed to put my physique by to even have the ability to that… it’s actually fairly unhappy.”
She later instructed Louis Theroux in 2023: “It wasn’t in any respect deliberate, it was extra of a determined cry to be free. It’s so deep, what I’d realised I’d truly been doing to myself as an individual, to try to be the any person that they needed me to be. It’s so unhappy.
“On the finish of the day it’s a enterprise and I wasn’t promoting what [the record label] needed me to promote.”
