The Sunny Side of Life: hey sunny are on a mission to spread positivity and make you smile.
Culture & Music . InterviewWhat started as a casual, fun hobby for Sunny and Marty, the Munich-based couple behind the indie-pop-folk duo hey sunny, shifted their lives in an unexpected direction.
Their journey began in 2015 during a trip to Australia, where casual living-room jams turned into busking on the Melbourne city streets. By 2020, they had transitioned into original singer-songwriters, writing, recording, and building a loyal following across social media.
Today, hey sunny live, travel and tour across Germany and Europe in their campervan, and are producing two upcoming studio albums. All while looking at the sunny side of life, smiling at the universe no matter what.
hey sunny performing live, courtesy of the band.
How did the music between you start?
Sunny: We have been together for 13 years now, but we didn’t meet in a musical context. At first, we only played music for fun.
Marty: We went to Australia to “find ourselves” – work, travel, study English and have a good time.
Sunny: Marty has family in Melbourne, so when we were playing together in their living room, his uncle suggested that we go busking. We didn’t even know what that was! Once we learned that we could make a living from music, we didn’t want to do anything else.
Was that when you decided to form hey sunny?
Marty: We didn’t really think about it at first. We did some social media content with our music, but it wasn’t out of the purpose of becoming famous. We earned some money and we had fun. Back then Sunny was mostly busking alone, and I was managing… When we eventually started playing together, we had a completely different name – “Baylee Streets”, it just sounded cool to us.
Sunny: We changed the name when we returned to Germany in 2017, and at first it was Sunny Accs, as in acoustics.
Marty: But people in Germany didn’t get it, so we changed it to “hey sunny”, which came from social media. Our video concept was that I would walk up to Sunny and say “Hey Sunny, let’s play a song by Green Day” or something like that, and people were commenting “Hey Sunny, play this and this song…”, and then we would play it. It worked really well.
hey sunny, Julian Bächer, courtesy of the band.
You’ve stated that in your live shows you make a special connection with the audience. How do you do it?
Sunny: That’s my favorite part about our job. That’s what we learned when we were busking, you must read the audience to know what song to play next. So we hardly ever have a fixed set list, and we hardly ever play songs in the same order. We read the room, what do people want to hear now? Playing live on stage is an exchange of energy. So, we send out energy, but we also receive it back – which makes it amazing.
So you don’t have a setlist?
Sunny: No. We have an opening song and a list of songs that we want to play. But no particular order.
Marty: If people are ready to sing, then you go for the singing songs, if its more relaxed, then we take it easy.
Your main message is to always be optimistic. How do you do so when the world can often be so negative?
Sunny: Honestly, don’t read the news. That helps a lot.
Marty: For me, if I have something bad that I can’t change, I try to give it less weight in my life. So, I try to focus on the good and the problems I can change.
Sunny: There’s so much negativity in this world, that all we want to give is positivity – a little sunshine here, a bit of glitter there. We want people to leave our concert with a smile. It also helps that we ourselves live a very happy life.
Marty: If you think negatively in your life, you attract negativity, and you fuel it, and then it gets worse. However, if you spread positivity, you’ll get it back.
In your song “Optimist” you sing about a very pessimistic person, while you stay optimistic – is this about someone specific?
Marty: It’s quite funny, actually. We were filming in a big meadow, and suddenly incomes a herd of sheep and a shepherd. We set up the camera and were filming for a few minutes, and then the shepherd came to us and said “Hey, you can’t film my sheep. They haven’t given their consent…” and I just thought, “Hey, look around, you’re a shepherd, the sun is shining, it’s good weather. Why are you so mad?” The idea came from that. “I’m sorry that your life obviously sucks, even though it doesn’t – it’s only your perspective that it sucks”.
You live and travel around Europe in a van, how is that?
Marty: It’s very nice and very comfortable. We have shows all over Germany and Europe, so it makes sense, traveling is a lot easier.
Sunny: It really helps that we like each other a lot and like spending time together. We honestly have everything we need and it’s an incredible feeling of freedom and going with the flow. We have a little studio in the van and have great writing sessions there.
What’s next for hey sunny?
Sunny: We are currently working on two albums – one in English and one in German. The English one is called “The Sunny Side of Life” and is planned to release in 2027. We are still unsure about the name of the German one, and still thinking about the physical and digital release schedule, as we are also pressing vinyls! Which is a huge childhood dream of mine.
Marty: We also have some cool upcoming shows in 2027 to support the album.
Sunny: We’re on a mission to spread our music, positivity, and play live.
hey sunny in Munich, Watslav Protchenko.
Catch hey sunny live: https://heysunnymusic.com/#termine
Listen to hey sunny on all platforms: https://heysunnymusic.com/#musik
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