david guetta

LYs music video breaks 100,000 views

19 November 2013

titanium coverOur piano-based acoustic cover of David Guetta’s smash hit song Titanium has now surpassed 100,000 views on YouTube. We’d like to thank our parents, our fans, and of course Jesus.

If you’ve been following us for a while, you may be aware that a fair old chunk of this traffic has come from Turkey, where the video has been on regular rotation on the country’s equivalent of MTV. Honestly, we now can’t walk down the street in Ankara without being showered in confetti. It’s a little disconcerting.

Powder Keg Sessions

The Lightyears’ Titanium cover came out of our Powder Keg Sessions, where we recorded similar versions of Coldplay’s Paradise and Rihanna’s We Found Love. If you like the look of the place in these videos, it’s actually a really excellent cocktail bar in Clapham called Powder Keg Diplomacy – you know, the kind of place where they serve gin slings in china teacups. Well worth a visit.

Now, as proud as we are of this frankly eye-watering level of success, we are nevertheless aware that there are still approximately 7,124,900,000 humans who haven’t seen our video, so we’ve posted it below. Quite what those people have been doing all this time, we have no idea.

A big hello to our new Turkish fans!

9 August 2012

The Lightyears performing in Istanbul in 2011.Isn’t the internet amazing?

Last week I noticed a spike of interest in The Lightyears – via Twitter and Facebook – from Turkey. The magic of YouTube analytics means you can chart these trends very precisely and, after a minute or two poking around our stats, this is what I discovered… at the time of writing, our cover of David Guetta’s Titanium has racked up 20,277 views – 4,907 of those are from the last thirty days and, of that number, 3,197 are from Turkey. That’s at least ten times more than from any other single country in the month just passed.

Now, look – I know statistics aren’t really that interesting, but my point here is that the internet truly is a wonderful global tool for reaching new fans. I’ve no idea what spiked this, but it seems like the folks in that part of the world really do dig sensitive acoustic re-imaginings of massive dancefloor anthems. So there you go. And if you’re reading this from Turkey, greetings from The Lightyears and… Dinlediğiniz için teşekkürler! (You gotta love Google Translate).

Oh, and after Turkey, it would appear we’re most popular in Albania. Which means it’s finally time to book that seventy-five date tour of Fushë-Krujë.*

*yes, I did Google that.

Titanium unlocked at Project LYs

25 July 2012

Ever seen Blue Steel that powerful before? No, of course you haven't.No, not the lustrous white metal (we’re not building a corrosion-resistant battleship, honest) but rather our live acoustic version of the David Guetta hit from his recent album ‘Nothing But The Beat’.

The track was unlocked when we hit 25,000 views at www.ProjectLightyears.com. Massive thanks to everyone who has been sharing our videos on social networking sites and so on… you’re a huge bunch of legends. Click here to claim your delicious free prize.

We’re still (ahem) a short distance from our eventual target of 10 million, but these things take time! The more hits we get, the more content we unlock – so do keep spreading the good word.

And if you haven’t had a chance to check the site out yet, give it a gander (as in slang for ‘look’, not an adult male goose. I’m not doing well today, am I?) for recent LYs music videos and a trilogy of readings from my upcoming Lightyears novel, Mockstars.

Archive of tour photos now online

8 July 2012

'Tony... Tony. Are there still 800 people standing behind me? Yes? That's what I was afraid of.'We’ve just posted a comprehensive archive of our tour photos on The Lightyears’ Facebook page, stretching all the way back to 1996 and covering tours to the USA, South Korea, Thailand, South Africa, Istanbul and more…

Click here to visit the archive and venture into the mysterious and terrifying world of The Lightyears On Tour. Yes, that’s right – mysterious and terrifying. If you can call photos of me gawping with my thumbs up and Danny draping himself across parked cars mysterious and terrifying.

Which I think you can.

Feel free to leave disparaging comments, or perhaps the occasional ‘Like’ for the ones that take your fancy.

And if your day is still left wanting for entertainment, mosey on over to Project Lightyears and help us reach our next target – just 2,000 more views will unlock your free copy of our live acoustic cover of David Guetta’s Titanium.

Project Lightyears has arrived…

1 July 2012

Project LYs - it's not really this small. In fact it's massive.People of the world… Project Lightyears is upon us.

No, not a NASA space initiative, but a social-media storm aimed at spreading the word of The Lightyears to all corners of this good green Earth.

It’s all go here at LYs HQ. Work is moving on apace on our new album, which we hope to release later this year along with my Lightyears novel, Mockstars. We need your support to make this happen, and that’s what Project Lightyears is about.

Click here to visit the Project LYs mini-site and you’ll find a host of video content including live acoustic performances and brand-new novel readings.

Our message is simple – we’d like you to share these videos with as many people as you can. The more our fanbase grows, the closer we will come to making this release a reality.

Our ultimate aim is to reach 10 million views, and as the counter climbs we’ll be unlocking delicious free downloads for your listening pleasure.

To kick things off, we need just over 500 more views to unlock an unheard acoustic version of “This House Will Burn”. Click here to pay your first visit to Project Lightyears.

Thank you, as ever, for your support.

New LYs music videos now online

6 February 2012

'OK boys. Whoever perfects Blue Steel first wins a fiver.'Earlier this month we recorded a series of live music videos in our favourite local bar, Powder Keg Diplomacy.

The first two videos are now online – click to view our acoustic covers of David Guetta’s Titanium and Rihanna’s We Found Love.

More videos to come, including a dusting-off of Lightyears favourite Girl on The Radio and three readings from my new LYs novel, Mockstars.