Found in the Inbox · Exposed Vocals
Forget Them Wendy have found a useful subject for a duo whose identity already rests on playful disagreement: the pressure to become culturally unavoidable. The new single “Next Big Thing,” shared with Exposed Vocals by LPR Agency, takes influencer culture and the competition for online attention as its starting point. The campaign describes the song as acerbic and self-effacing, placing the band inside the joke instead of treating fame as somebody else’s problem.
The duo brings together Newcastle-based songwriter Laura James and Edinburgh-born producer and guitarist Oliver Price, now living in London. Their name comes from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and their musical reference points include The Cranberries, Smashing Pumpkins and The Breeders. Those influences give the project a vocabulary of indie-pop melody and grunge texture, but the release’s central question belongs firmly to the present: how much of an artist’s life has to become content before the music itself can find an audience?
A joke with the artists inside it
In the supplied release, Laura discusses the constant effort to catch the zeitgeist while admitting that the pair do not particularly want to share their private business on social media. Oliver responds with mock confidence about their fashion sense and the song’s chances of becoming a hit. Their exchange eventually imagines a future festival crowd departing after the big song to pursue the next fashionable act. The joke carries a sharper concern underneath it: recognition can arrive attached to a version of the artist that leaves the rest of the work behind.
That dynamic also helps explain the band’s broader outlook. Their press materials connect the project to owning an uncertain identity and to the disorientation that can come with liking someone. Humor becomes a way of acknowledging contradiction, including the desire for attention alongside discomfort with the machinery that produces it. The concept is specific enough to give this release a clear editorial angle without requiring a prediction about whether it will become the success it satirizes.
Building beyond one moment
According to the campaign, BBC Introducing named “Dead in the Water” among its Tracks of 2025, and “Plug It In” was selected as a Track of the Week. The duo are working toward a debut album while releasing songs individually and reconsidering the sequence. “Next Big Thing” belongs to that continuing story: a band using chemistry, skepticism and self-awareness to examine the culture in which its own music must circulate.
Original press photograph supplied by LPR Agency. Photographer credit was not specified in the supplied campaign materials. Editorial reporting based on the supplied campaign materials.
