From the outside, Paper Money's story looks like a band that renamed itself and dropped a single. From the inside, it's something that took nearly twenty years to arrive at. The five members have been playing together since high school in North Jersey, and guitarist Carlo Colasacco has spent that same stretch becoming one of the more quietly prolific songwriters working in rock and pop: a six-week Billboard number one with Shinedown, credits alongside Skillet, Jon Bellion, Julia Michaels, and Dashboard Confessional.
With their new single "Pretty Faces" debuting this week on the Pop Chart Carlo unpacks what it means to finally write without an artist to cater to, how a song like "Pretty Faces" came together when there were no label notes or brand questions to answer, and why a band that's been together this long still operates like they have nothing to lose.