Singled Out: Of Virtue's Hypocrite

Keavin Wiggins | 06-07-2022

Single art

Michigan rockers Of Virtue recently released a video for their new single "Hypocrite," and to celebrate we asked vocalist Tyler Ennis to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

We were in Ohio working with Andrew Baylis and Evan McKeever. It which was our first time working with them and one of our first times in a room together as a band writing new music since the pandemic began. The only ideas we went in with were that we wanted to write a "softer" song and a "heavier" one. Nothing else. No demo, no lyrics, we went in with a blank slate.

We took all day to work on the music portion - so it wasn't until about 10 pm that we started tracking the vocals. When we got to writing lyrics for what turned out to be "Hypocrite", Evan leaned in and shared a few lyric ideas he had written - we all agreed these would cool to continue with - and from there things just snowballed with ideas being thrown back and forth between us, Andrew, and Evan. In all honesty, my takes were pretty bad, ha! I was in a bit of a creative rut. A funk if you will. So we decided to call it a night, have some dinner and we came back to it a couple days later. That was what we needed because once we started we knocked it out as if we never stopped tracking.

Once the song came back mixed and mastered, once we got the video back from Dana & Orie, once we got the single art ... everything really came together! Today this song might even be one of my favorite from all of those which we've written. There's something really special about writing music with people for the first time and getting out of your comfort zone - "Hypocrite" really is a product of that.

Lastly, a fun fact about "Hypocrite". The track was actually our first pick for the lead single. The only reason we chose "Sinner" is because we knew that no one would expect it from us. Hopefully people feel the same way about "Hypocrite" but for the completely opposite reasons!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here