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I am very inspired by the Viagra Boys' eclectic approach to creating music and the way they have borrowed from different genres they love to create their own unique sound. As someone with an diverse taste in music, this inspires me with my own music creation as I do not wish to be limited by genre and crave total artistic freedom.

Frontman Sebastian Murphy's lyricism is refreshingly honest and self-aware, using dark humor and satire to create social commentary within his work. To me, their music feels like catharsis - a release from the constraints of modern society and the roles we are supposed to play and masks we are meant to wear in everyday life.

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Sebastian Murphy originally got his start in music playing DEVO covers in his high school band (Fantano, 2022, 39:30). Murphy has cited DEVO as a major influence not only sonically, but in terms of DEVO'S artistic and conceptual vision. Murphy has stated that he wanted to follow in DEVO's footsteps in this way and through his own art and music aims to “create an alternate reality that's somehow a mirror of our own reality” (What's The Story?, 2022, 1:27).

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Sebastian Murphy confessed that a majority of songs on the band's album, Welfare Jazz were inspired by songs like ‘Ramblin’ Man’ by Hank Williams (Rogers, 2021, para. 8) . "I fell in love with Hank Williams, and that’s always been a huge inspiration to me. Just the spirit of country in general, this lonesome sound. Being a bit desperate, and also how country can be a bit contradictory of itself. A lot of these outlaw country artists, their lyrics were really fucked up, and I really love that. " (Sovelove, 2022, para. 6)

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As a devoted lover of country music and all things rhinestoned, queer and campy - there is no artist that could align with me more than Orville Peck. Orville blends theatricality with sincere vulnerability, subverting the trope of the typical macho cowboy through his sensitive and bittersweet lyrics. He takes typical 1970's outlaw country and fuses it with shoegaze, and dreampop to create the Orville sound. Orville Peck truly inspires me as someone who wishes to take a similar path in music and create a character that enables me to be my truest self - to create authenticity through artifice.

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Orville has said that discovering Dolly Parton and her music as a child, brought colour and magic into his isolated and lonely adolescence growing up as a questioning queer child in South Africa (Nashville Scene, 2020). "She kept a really beautiful balance between the theatricality and the campiness that country music innately has in it and she balanced that really perfectly with sincerity. That really framed who I wanted to be as an artist" (The Orville Peck Story, 2020).

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Orville attributes Patti Smith's 1975 album Horses with changing his life (Amoeba, 2019). He has said that hearing Patti Smith on that album made him realise he didn't have to make music in a technical way, but instead could approach music creation from a more visual standpoint (Grammy's interview, 2020). "Patti has an incredible way of creating a visual story with her songs. I remember listening to it over and over because I wanted to memorise everything she was singing about." (Edwards, 2019).

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Orville lists Merle Haggard as his favourite country singer (Amoeba, 2019). He has stated that he was inspired by Merle's highly stylised persona and aesthetic paired with his very sincere and genuine lyrics (Crowe, 2019, para. 7). When quizzed in an interview with Louder Sound, Orville listed Merle's 1968 album Mama Tried as a major inspiration for him. "Merle is the epitome of a cowboy to me: tough and tender at the same time" (Edwards, 2019).

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Murphy has called Waylon Jennings his musical hero (Konnemann, 2021). The band even covered Waylon's 1979 song "I Ain't Living Long Like This" on their album Street Worms (2018). When asked about his love for Waylon, Murphy said, "I love the way he sings, and I’ve always loved his lyrics, and his songs, and just the way he lived his life. He was a true outlaw." (Konemann, 2021)