Karmin on detractors: “We love controversy”

While Karmin’s hit single “Brokenhearted” has been rocketing up the charts, not everyone has had words of praise for engaged couple Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan – Rolling Stone went as far as to say that with their latest EP, Hello, “Karmin can make you hate pop music”.

Rather than taking it as a personal slight, though, Heidemann says that the pair is keen to hear feedback from all sides and takes it on where it feels relevant.

“We love reading how people interpret the music,” she says. “It’s really been interesting because the sound that we have is very… I would say it’s a new sound, so it’s been fun to watch.

“When Adele and Lady Gaga came out, I remember reading reviews of their first albums, and their sound was so different for the time and there were a lot of mixed reviews. It’s just cool to know that there are people who are really passionate about Karmin and then there’s people that are very afraid or negative about it, just because it’s so different.”

All publicity is good publicity in Karmin’s mind. “We love controversy,” Heidemann continues. “We think that’s what gets people talking and it’s good when people talk about us.”

Funnily enough, some of the strongest criticism that has come the group’s way isn’t so much about their music but more about the clothes they choose to rock.

“We do a lot of experimenting with our fashion and stuff. I ended up in the worst dressed pages in some magazines,” Heidemann laughs, “so I take that and try to tweak my style a little bit.

“But for the music we’re just so confident about our sound that I don’t wanna say we don’t listen to the reviews, but we definitely just stick to our guns and to what we believe is good.”

For the girl who up until recently worked in a call centre signing people up for music classes and the guy who held down a job at a boxing gym until this big break came, that’s not too bad at all.