Under the blistering Californian sun, 3OH!3 take to the stage at Warped Tour Long Beach: a set that sees the electropop act serve up a nostalgia-drenched set for a crowd of thousands on the infamous shoreline.
The duo and their band, dressed in matching blue and black ensembles, approached the show with a strong sense of fun and self-awareness. Of course, this is a group responsible for lines like, “You tell your boyfriend (Boyfriend) / if he says he’s got beef / That I’m a vegetarian / and I ain’t fucking scared of him” becoming part of the pop culture zeitgeist in 2008.
3OH!3 have always put humour together with a pure sense of fun when it comes to their music. And while it looks like they don’t take themselves seriously (they don’t), when it comes to the shows and energy their music conjures, the duo doesn’t play around.
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Speaking with Rolling Stone AU/NZ, both Motte and Foreman agree that the enduring impact of 3OH!3 is largely due to the environment they are able to curate. Almost 20 years in, keeping that same fire alive is a feat.
“We’ve never taken a break since we started making music,” Foreman explains. “The point of connection for us, ever since we started, was live music. Playing live. Bringing the energy ourselves, but also getting the energy from the crowd. I think that’s the most tangible way for us to see what’s going on in terms of our music and who it’s reaching. It’s been really interesting.”
Motte adds: “Our mindset towards music has always been the same: just make it a collective, fun experience. The live element of our music is very important to us, it always has been. It’s that sense of fun, energy, inclusiveness; whether it’s our recorded music or our shows, everything we do is about bringing people in. There’s nothing better than seeing a crowd full of people who haven’t seen us yet and introducing them to the party.”
With six studio albums to their name, 3OH!3 have continued working on new music while enjoying the recent waves of resurgence their earlier material has been experiencing.
Most recently, 3OH!3 have embraced a new wave of viral success on TikTok; their 2008 track ‘RICHMAN’ blowing up courtesy of a simple dance trend that put the duo back on radars for a generation that, for the most part, wasn’t even alive when the original song first dropped.
Foreman laughs at the irony.
“Since we’re in the experience, I think there are moments of reflection,” he says. “There’s a line that goes: “Run it like a marathon / party ‘til I’m fifty / wake up on my parents’ lawn / them cops out to get me” I wrote that when I was 21 or 22 years old. 50 seemed like a long way away!
“I’m 41 now and every time I say it on stage I inwardly grin, because it’s like…what happens when we hit 50? Come and see us now, we might only have nine years left!”
Connecting with new audiences, whether it’s online or in person at headline shows or at festivals like the Warped Tour – an event that both Motte and Foreman hold especially close – is something 3OH!3 have never taken for granted.
“We’re one hundred percent down with the term “legacy”,” Motte grins. “Call us a “legacy act”, hell yeah! It means have songs that people want to listen to, that people fuck with. I think it’s amazing. At our live shows, we’re leaning into old stuff, we’re leaning into the songs people want to hear, while also sprinkling some new stuff in as well. For us, it’s a super high form of flattery.”
In 2026, it feels like 3OH!3 has engaged a fresh sense of validation: for any naysayers in the 2000s who thought WANT or Streets Of Gold didn’t have classic potential, the band’s endurance now is proof that there will always be an audience hungry for it.
“I feel really fortunate with our entire arc, it’s kept on going,” Motte admits. “We’ve been able to revel in that, to be honest. It comes from us not taking ourselves too seriously, but also being very serious in how we take our music itself. It’s so liberating, in terms of being able to do whatever we want, and not feeling pinned down by certain things. Certain contractual obligations. Certain genres.
We grew up cutting our teeth on the Warped Tour, and we’re not necessarily Warped Tour music. In the UK, we were getting played on BBC Radio 1…that was an early radio service that really mixed genres, but we weren’t necessarily the standard band they played either. On the flipside, we’re never going to win a Grammy or play Coachella, just ‘cause…I don’t think we have that “cool” factor that others have – that’s plain and overt. We’re fine with that!”
He offers a sly grin, “We’ve been able to play Coachella during our buddies’ sets anyway, so we found a back way in! For us, it’s always more important to put smiles on people’s faces without worrying about any other bullshit.”
Foreman looks back on the aforementioned Warped Tour Long Beach set, noting that while the crowd demographics look different now – the vibe remains the same. Balancing the nostalgia with a fresh take on their shows is always the challenge but for 3OH!3, they remain conscious of how they can keep their own chemistry entertaining for themselves and the audience alike.
“We’d ask the crowd whose first time seeing us this was…it would be 70% – 80% of the crowd, which is wild for us,” he remembers.
“It doesn’t change our approach. It’s not like we’re going out there and phoning it in because people have seen us a number of times. Every time we go out there, we’re trying to make it an experience that we can have fun with and hopefully in turn, it gives someone else the opportunity to do so too.”
Inevitably, conversation always turns toward the possibility of new music. Do new waves of success push the artist to churn out new music to capitalise on the visibility?
Both Foreman and Motte are candid. For fans, a new 3OH!3 album is finished; but the duo are happy taking their time, enjoying the experience and life as it comes.
“We’re intentional,” Foreman says. “Long story short, we have an album that is basically wrapped. We’re tying a bow on it, we have the new music there. Yet at the same time, we are not a heady band in the sense that, we’re not going out there like, “We’re just going to play our new album… if we wanted to just cash out, we would have done that a long time ago and tried to get whatever guarantees we could.
“We understand that a lot of the fun for people is hearing our OG tracks, so we try to find the balance of creating new music and pushing the needle forward, but also understanding the nostalgia element. The nostalgia is weird for new fans, because it’s not a place they lived in with the music…they’re only just finding it for the first time. It might be 20 year old music but for them, it’s a new experience.”
Both members have families as well, which takes natural priority.
“Our focus right now is our kids,” Foreman adds. “We both have young kids and we just enjoy being there with them. We’re not trying to pick up our stuff and leave for the entirety of the year, and miss the opportunity to be with our families. We’re trying to find the balance and have a good time with it.”
“Like Sean said, for us it’s strange because we’ve never stopped with music,” Motte says.
“During those first years when we came to Australia a few times, we were touring nine months out of the year…we don’t do that anymore, but we still do a lot of shows. Here in the States we’re doing a lot of shows, a lot of colleges and universities too, which is amazing. We’re still doing it, though. Even to the point where some of the kids we’re performing to now, they weren’t even alive when we were popping the first time around! It’s been so flattering and amazing to be able to curate that experience for folks.”
