If you’re a fan, you’ll know Teddy Swims wears the best sunglasses in the game. They’re bright, colourful, and often transparent.
“I just feel like it allows me to still hold eye contact with whoever I’m talking to. Which is polite,” he said.
“We were raised with eye contact and treating people with like holding the door, ‘Yes ma’am, no sir’, stuff like that… Hat off at the dinner table, you know stuff like that. Open the door for a lady.”
The 31-year-old, known for his viral hit song Lose Control, is touring New Zealand at the moment performing sold-out shows in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.
He recently made a surprise performance in Christchurch — shocking students after a “tough year” for Te Aratai College in Linwood.
‘We were awful when we started’
With more than 6.1 million Instagram followers, Swims’ meteoric rise to fame has been one in the making for many years.
“We were awful when we started, man.
“Me and my boy Jesse, he just played guitar with me. We were not good for a long time.
“You get good at it. Not to take away from the gift, because I think the gift is like, I think the gift is like the urgency, or like the burden to fill a calling to want to pursue music, and then, you know, I think eventually we played so much that we got good… it wasn’t like I opened my mouth the first time, it was just like, ‘whoa dude, why haven’t I not been doing this?'”
“I studied a lot of YouTube videos, watching singers sing… learning and picking up whatever I could along the way, and so I think we are finally getting decent at it.”
Swims, real name Jaten Dimsdale, grew up in a small town in the US state of Georgia called Conyers — a place he describes as beautiful.
“I mean, being from Georgia, we have the best music ever, you know, from Ray Charles to Otis Redding, James Brown… some of the best country ever,” he told 1News.
“We’ve had everything from soul to country, RnB, hip hop. We have Usher and Outkast… that’s the best music in the world.”
Swims said he was only 12 years old when he first discovered this was what he wanted to do.
“I was just a fat kid from Conyers, and to be able to do this for kids across the world that are that same age, or maybe that same little fat kid, and maybe inspire that out of that, and see beauty in himself. That’s crazy.
“If I would’ve had somebody that came in and did something like this… it could’ve really inspired me and made me keep going.”
How Aotearoa helped his success
In 2019, after finishing a Michael Jackson cover song, Swims went to sleep and woke up a viral sensation.
“We just posted this cover to just kind of pay homage to him being dead for 10 years, right? And the next day we woke up, and it was going viral, and it was like overnight.
“All these comments we saw, it had like, I think like 150,000 views or something on it, and it had all these comments like ‘kia ora’ or ‘from New Zealand’, ‘the Kiwis love you’.
“We were just up all-night commenting back to anybody who would comment on Facebook, and then people, I guess it was daytime for you guys here.”
This led to him putting out a cover of Six60 song Rivers – which blew up and “started everything”.
“We got our butts over here first, and made sure we’ve been here. I think this is the third year now,” he said.
“We have everything to give to New Zealand, everything, my whole life to give to New Zealand. This is the best place in the world. I cannot lie to you about that.”
Surprising Te Aratai College
Te Aratai College principal Maria Lemalie said it was an “absolute privilege” to have Swims perform at the school.
“We were humbled to have someone of this international status at our school.
Lemalie said this year has been a tough one for the Linwood high school.
“In the first term, we had two staff members pass away as well as a student. One of the staff members that passed away, was a key advocate for drama, music, and dance.
“Term two for our kura is around art exhibitions, music festivals and school productions. So, on the final week of our term, it was really special to have this superstar come to our school.”
The students were ushered into the assembly hall with no knowledge a world class act would be playing right in front of them. “We kept it a secret.”
“The look on their faces, including the staff, was just absolutely in pure shock.”
She told 1News her left ear was still sore from the screams — not only from the students, but the staff.
Watch the full interview with Teddy Swims tonight on Seven Sharp on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+
