Stephen Sanchez says it's an honour to be labelled a 'nostalgia act'

Last year, the most unlikely song went viral on TikTok. Until I Found You, an old-timey tune written and performed by 21-year-old Stephen Sanchez, has since garnered nearly two billion streams and has been used in more than four million TikTok videos. He wrote the hit for his ex-girlfriend, Georgia.

In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Sanchez says the idea for Until I Found You stemmed from time spent with his grandpa listening to '50s and '60s crooners. "As a 10-year-old, I [would] pull out records and show my grandpa what I'd found…. We'd sit upstairs and listen through these old speakers that he collected from 40 years ago."

Thanks to those early experiences, the process of making his debut album, Angel Face, felt exciting and natural to him. "[It] felt so intrinsic just out of the gate because it was just like, 'Oh, I've been listening to these artists, like Roy Orbison, for 12 years," he tells Power.

Sanchez says writing Until I Found You was purely experimental.

"I just bought this guitar, bought this amp that's very '50s and '60s sounding, and I just started playing around," he recalls. "And then boom, that song just existed purely out of the idea of like, 'I love that music so much, what if I wrote a song that sounded like that?'"

While most contemporary artists might shy away from being associated with musical acts from half a century ago, Sanchez thinks it's a "cool honour."

"Those guys did it, you know? They really shaped what music was going to turn into," he says. "I have such respect for them, the songwriting, the innocence of it. I think if I end up associating in any way with them, I think that's cool."

WATCH | Official video for Until I Found You:

Tiktok songwriters

Despite his song going viral on TikTok, Sanchez says he doesn't write songs for the sake of notoriety.

"It almost feels like the majority [of artists] write songs to go viral because there's this desire to be important and recognized in the world, and they will do that at any cost, even at the expense of actually writing something that means something and is an additive to the world."

Instead, Sanchez wants to be like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, who he says "were writing songs because it was like there was no other way to say what they were trying to say in the world."

"I have so much respect for that," says Sanchez. "It's such a difference in music now where it feels like there's not a survival mentality in songwriting like that. It's not this like, 'If I don't confess my soul in this way, then it's not good enough to be put out into the world.'"

WATCH | Stephen Sanchez's interview with Tom Power:

The full interview with Stephen Sanchez is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Stephen Sanchez produced by Vanessa Nigro.

30:30Stephen Sanchez: Writing a megahit, tackling imposter syndrome, and his 1960s crooner sound