“This album marks the start once again,” Filipino Australian artist Grant Perez—aka grentperez—tells Apple Music. “As much as my initial music and EPs mean so much to me, I feel like this is another establishing point.” Key to creating the Sydney singer-songwriter’s debut album was his willingness to embrace change. “I believe that change should be more welcomed or at least understood from a creative and musical standpoint,” he offers. “I wanted to showcase that music should be fun and other genres should be explored if the artist chooses to do so. I wanted to flex my ability to create different types of music.” For an artist who has, over the course of four EPs, already embraced diverse styles such as indie pop, ’70s-inspired soft rock, and even bossa nova, flexing his creative muscle on *Backflips in a Restaurant* involved adding skeezy hip-hop (“2DK”), folk (“Everest”), and early 2000s R&B (“Movie Scene”) to his repertoire, all while singing about the many shades of love. “That is the through line,” he admits. “The last project, *When We Were Younger*, revolved around nostalgia and time and place. And while love was a recurring theme, it wasn’t necessarily on the money.” The album’s title reflects both its lyrical romanticism and its genre-agnostic approach. “I wanted to stretch my legs \[musically\] a little bit while remaining rooted in this croonery type of world, and that’s essentially what I did with it,” says Perez. “That’s kind of like the backflip. A restaurant’s really romantic; it’s also home to many different flavors, and that’s much the same with the music.” Here, Perez walks Apple Music through the à la carte sonic feast that is *Backflips in a Restaurant*, track by track. **“Nice to Meet You”** “It’s what you say when you meet someone. And to the many people who will discover my music, they’ll be meeting me for the first time. The song has such a lovely feel, and the sentiment is really cute; it’s very hopeful. You’re wondering where \[a future partner\] could be, and when \[you find them\] you’ll say, ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ It sets up the journey for the rest of the record.” **“Girl at the Station”** “This song was heavily inspired by one of my favorite anime called *Your Name.*. It’s about these two people who switch bodies, but there’s one instance in the movie where they actually lock eyes on passing trains. That was in my subconscious when I was writing this. Musically, I wanted it to feel a bit like a waltz.” **“Falling for a Friend”** “I wanted a bossa nova thing, but it shifted into a samba feel. For some reason, I think I was subconsciously inspired by Michael Bublé, especially with that theatrical ending. But I definitely wanted this song to feel like a journey, like a story within itself, to put you in the position of someone who’s falling in love and regretting this decision, but ultimately they can’t help it.” **“Fuzzy Feeling” (with Benny Sings)** “I just wanted it to feel really cheesy. I leaned into a lot of these clichés: ‘I’ve got a fuzzy feeling in my chest/Butterflies inside my stomach and I bet/You don’t have a clue what you’ve been doing to me.’ That feeling that I get either with the person I love, or cars, because I love cars. I wanted it to feel groovy, and the king of quirky groove is Benny Sings.” **“Headspace”** “This was during a time when \[my girlfriend\] was struggling with her identity and what she wants out of her life. When she gets into her own thoughts, like many of us, she gets very lost and very deep, and very insecure about certain matters. My response to that is to be there for her, whether it be a car ride or hanging out, just to clear her headspace.” **“12065”** “‘12065’ represents the distance between LA and Sydney in kilometers. This song is about long distance and the empathy you feel about your partner being at home, away from you. It’s one thing to be in LA and in a new environment, but it’s another thing to be in the same environment with something missing. I guess that’s what ‘12065’ represents.” **“Everest”** “To me this song sounds folky. It gives this feeling of \[Neil Young’s\] ‘Harvest Moon’ or ‘Stop This Train,’ John Mayer. I’m talking about my feelings of love and these cute heartfelt emotions—‘I’d climb up Everest a thousand times a day’; ‘I’d rearrange the alphabet.’ That’s a cheeky pickup line I remember from when I was seven years old: if I could rearrange the alphabet I’d put i right next to u.” **“Need You Around”** “That outro is my drummer, he’s Japanese. He was joking around saying all this stuff at the end of the song and I was like, can we please put this on the song? ‘Need You Around’ also talks about long distance as well. I was in LA at the time, and I was a bit sad and was like, ‘I want to write a happy song.’ I wanted it to be a little bit comical in a way: ‘I promise to pay your toll fee/Just promise you’ll come to me.’ That’s the sentiment. Doesn’t get too deep.” **“Reason Why”** “It’s the same kind of thing as ‘Headspace,’ talking about insecurity and whatnot, but more so on the beauty and self-worth side. Reminding this person what they’re worth, whereas ‘Headspace’ is like, all right, you’re feeling this way? Let’s have fun. This one is more somber and gentle. It is about beauty within someone you love, and that could be your partner, your parent, a sibling, a friend. It’s very open-ended.” **“Dandelion” (with Ruel)** “I \[wanted\] to have someone on this track, but I don’t like asking, I’m so embarrassed. I’d become friends with Ruel prior to writing this song, and we started hanging out more when we were in LA. I was telling my manager, ‘I feel like this song needs a feature, preferably someone Australian,’ and he was like, ‘What about Ruel?’ He immediately loved it. A feature is a big thing in an artist’s career, you can’t say yes to everything, it has to align with you. So the fact he said yes and was willing to do it made me so happy.” **“2DK”** “This came off a fit of experimentation. Ambition, you could say. I think it was inspired by a lot of UK spoken-word rap. I don’t know what I was trying to tap into. Was I trying to tap into a dumbed-down version of Little Simz or something? I was very hesitant to release this song, but a lot of my close friends and my team were like, ‘You should just release it.’ So I did it on behalf of artistry, because I know it’s sonically super different to my project, but to my surprise a lot of people liked it too.” **“Movie Scene”** “It’s been a dream of mine to do an R&B song because of what I listened to growing up. I listened to a lot of Ne-Yo, and a lot of neo-soul stuff. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Miguel, Lupe Fiasco, and I was watching a lot of movies. I guess I was just mixing two creative worlds, movies and music. The whole premise is trying to ask someone out, fumbling and messing up your words, but the good guy wins at the end, just like a movie.” **“Yours to Keep”** “This song brings it back full circle to this sweet, romantic, wholesome side of grentperez. To me this is the wedding song. After this journey of romance, of meeting someone, seeing them on the train, falling for them, going through heartbreak, going through insecurities, you re-meet with ‘Movie Scene’ and eventually you finish it off with marriage! ‘Yours to Keep’ is this whole testament of love; it’s that act of giving oneself to another person.”
