No matter what obstacle gets in their way, 49th & Main refuse to be defeated. This hard-fought resilience to achieve their dream has long been ingrained in the dance-pop duo.

After meeting at school in Kilkenny, producer Ben O’Sullivan and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Paddy King began making music together one summer. However, O’Sullivan soon discovered he had developed aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease which prevented his bone marrow from producing enough new blood cells, making him chronically fatigued and prone to infections.

Nonetheless, just three months after he began treatment, 49th & Main introduced themselves to the world in early 2020 with lo-fi banger ‘Catching Eyes’, which thrust them into the spotlight internationally (and has since clocked up 50 million streams). However, at that time, they were faced with another massive setback – the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown.

Undeterred, 49th & Main powered through, and their jazz and indie-infused take on house found a global following. Post-pandemic, the duo quickly made up for lost time, as the energy of their live shows started spreading word-of-mouth; their raucous first ever show, which sold out in minutes, is still talked about to this day.

Far from just pressing play on a laptop, the pair always wanted the 49th & Main experience to be fully live. With King on guitar and vocals and O’Sullivan on the decks and drum pads, headline tours and a performance at Glastonbury followed. However, just as things were going well, the duo were separated when O’Sullivan was forced to take a year off the road while he underwent treatment for his illness.

Consequently, King toured alone with the band for much of last year. “I definitely felt shut out,” O’Sullivan recalls of missing the 2023 summer festival season. “Being up on stage is so much fun,” he adds; “it’s like an addiction. That adrenaline rush is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Without it, it was definitely tough.”

The show, as they say, went on. But,
despite receiving great support from fans, King says “it felt like a slow year, just waiting for Ben to get back”. One positive, however, was that having to fill in for O’Sullivan’s part meant that King’s own stage confidence developed. “It definitely didn’t feel like the same show without Ben there,” King recalls. “It took a while to get used to.”

Back at home, meanwhile, O’Sullivan spent much of his time – especially last summer – focusing on production. “I was experimenting a lot with weird sounds,” he says. “Just because I wanted to try and see if we could evolve a bit.” This resulted in him widening the band’s sonic palette, looking at more genres, such as drum ‘n’ bass and garage, and weaving those influences into the 49th & Main world.

When the pair regrouped, it felt like a reset for them. “It was a case of going back to the roots of what we started out doing, sound-wise, but also meshing it all together into what we hope is the next evolution of our sound – a bit of the roots, and a bit of the new stuff,” King adds.

‘self sabotage’ – their first release since last summer – is the perfect representation of this sonic evolution. “It’s a familiar sound, which I think is a nice way of easing people back in, but they’ll also hear something a little different,” O’Sullivan explains. A dark-themed house tune, it’s a club banger with an important message. “The theme behind it is someone in a club not knowing when to stop,” says King.

Despite the deeper context, the subtext is delivered over upbeat production and, as O’Sullivan says, “in our own 49th & Main fun way”. Consequently, the track can be received varyingly: “if you want to look a bit deeper there’s something there, but if you don’t and just want to dance that’s fine too”.

Armed with new tunes ready to play out, and having recently worked with underground dance favourites SHEE, Maya Randle and A Little Sound, the pair are more eager than ever to get back on tour together – especially O’Sullivan, whose last live show was in January 2023. “We’re going to take everything in our stride over the next few months,” said King. “The goal is to make a splash again: we’re back and not going anywhere.”

Because of the stunted journey they’ve had to get to this point, O’Sullivan isn’t taking anything for granted. “Growing up, it’s not something that I ever thought we’d be able to do,” he reflects. “And, because we started 49th & Main during such an uncertain time, and for me personally with my illness, it always feels like it’s about to collapse,” he considers. In reality, their career is ever-growing; the pair recently reached a milestone of 100 million streams.

Nonetheless, the duo remain humble. “The goal is just to make great music and take each day as it comes,” King affirms. “We don’t want to look at the future and be like ‘we’re winning a Grammy next year’,” O’Sullivan adds. “It’s more like ‘let’s just hope tonight goes well’.”