British musician Matt Willis recalls his shock when he received a huge amount of money, 20 times more than usual in royalties, from the JoBros' 2006 cover.
- Aug 3, 2023
AceShowbiz - Busted's Matt Willis was able to pay off his mortgage, thanks to royalties from the Jonas Brothers' cover of "Year 3000". The 40-year-old bassist - who gets hitched to TV star Emma Willis - couldn't believe it when he received a much larger royalties' cheque than usually and was surprised to find out it was from the US pop trio's clean 2006 rendition.
"I got a message from my publishers because me and James [Bourne, bandmate] wrote that song, and so I got a message saying, 'There's this Disney band that want to cover 'Year 3000', and I was like, 'Cool' - you know Busted wasn't happening so I was like yeah, great," he said to the Daily Star newspaper's Wired column.
"Then I kind of forgot about it until I got a royalty cheque, and royalties cheques are always a certain amount per quarter, so I got this royalty cheque and it was like 20x what a normal royalty cheque was and I was like, 'What the f*** has happened?' Then that song just paid my mortgage for f****** years because of the Jonas Brothers."
The "Camp Rock" stars - Joe Jonas, Kevin Jonas, and Nick Jonas - made the 2003 hit less crude by swapping the line, "Triple-breasted women swim around town, totally naked" to "girls there, with round hair like Star Wars, float above the floor." They also swapped "Everybody bought our seventh album, it had outsold Michael Jackson" to "it had outsold Kelly Clarkson."
The groups have come full-circle, as they teamed up on a new rendition of the pop-punk hit for Busted's "Greatest Hits 2.0" album. Matt - who is also joined by Charlie Simpson in the noughties band - said, "We sent them the track and they just sung over it and they just sounded f****** amazing."
