In the stairwell of Electric Lady Studios a few weeks ago, Harrison Patrick Smith, 28, was handed a coat hanger carrying an unassuming pair of pants and a T-shirt. “Oh, my street clothes!” he said and laughed, subtly pumping a low fist by his side. “Yes!”
Smith, who records dance rock he characterized as “electroclash revival” with a “supersized attitude” as the Dare, isn’t always in his signature crisp black suit, and doesn’t always prefer it. But you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as he’s been spotted in it a lot lately: performing live, attending fashion shows, filming music videos, at parties.
“All of my musical heroes typically commit to the bit, and are larger than life, and the music is never secondary,” Smith explained earlier that day. “The bit” — in this case, the suit — “furthers the story of the music, or piques the interest or the imagination of the listener even more.”
He referenced David Bowie’s Thin White Duke persona. “If he was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans, would he be David Bowie? And would you even like the music as much?” Smith continued. “If there wasn’t that lore around the music, would you even like any of it?” he asked, not without earnestness.
Nearing the release of his debut album, “What’s Wrong With New York?” (out Sept. 6), mentioning the Dare to anyone with an opinion about him is sure to provoke a strong one.
Much like that suit and his previous output — much like its title, even — “What’s Wrong With New York?” is lyrically and musically audacious, big in sound, concept and character. It will be received as (depending on your persuasion) vapid and puerile, or a sincerely fun, joyous, laugh-out-loud, self-aware testament to the power of cheek; as a love letter to being young and hedonistic in New York, or as an overindulged paean to privilege; and as the product of either the latest in a long line of overhyped downtown darlings, or someone in the great tradition of pop pastiche, making music about music.
Or, maybe, all of those things at once.
But as his own lore continues taking shape, the reality is, if not as sexy, certainly compelling. The album is a tight 10-song flex of Smith’s formidable production skills that ranges from winking to baldfaced in its referential debt to early aughts New York City dance rock (LCD Soundsystem, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fischerspooner). That epoch, itself, was in debt to 1980s post-punk and no-wave (Gang of Four, ESG, Liquid Liquid), all bands whose music once rang out in New York clubs like APT and Lit Lounge, at parties hosted by Todd P and Justine D.
In conversation, Smith traffics seamlessly in a fusillade of musical references: the Fall, Daft Punk, Kompakt Records, Art Brut, Kim Gordon, Verraco, Richard Hell, Sabrina Carpenter and even Third Eye Blind. Responding to questions via email, Charli XCX called him “encyclopedic about music in a way that I am just not at all.”
The Dare’s origin story is the stuff of determined, wide-eyed suburbanite dreams. He grew up outside of Seattle with a psychotherapist mother, and a father (since passed) who was a charismatic salesman of medical equipment. Not particularly musically inclined, they still had Smith learning violin at 4, which he traded in for a guitar at 12. At 16, he taught himself how to play drums. All the while, Smith spent time learning about music by digging through CDs in the library, and searching online.
Attending college outside Portland, he released a steady stream of music as Turtlenecked — occasionally twee, proficiently composed twangy rock — and continued after moving to New York in 2018 while substitute teaching to make ends meet.
In 2020, mid-pandemic, Smith took a more playful approach, and quickly wrote and recorded the song “Girls” in his East Williamsburg bedroom. Over a thrumming synth line with an exploding chorus, he sneered bawdy lyrical provocations — which was exactly the point.
“I just like music that rubs people one way or the other, and I dislike music that plays in the background at a cafe,” Smith said, “and I don’t think my music will ever be doing that.” Still, he added, “I don’t think my music is that provocative, to be honest.”
On that statement, mileage may vary. In the sub-two-minute run time of “Girls,” the Dare proclaims his affections for those who are pregnant, tall, small, homicidal, sadistic, recreational drug users, college educated, indoor smokers, orgasm fakers and who hate the Dare. Released in August 2022, the track took hold in New York, and by the end of the year, the Dare was filling small venues with audiences at fever pitch, bursting onto streaming playlists and critics’ year-end lists.
“Music is a special place where you can break free of these sort of traditional social norms and niceties,” Smith said. “It’s a freeing experience, to sit down and make things that are exciting and larger than life and not, like, beholden to reality all the time.” Indeed, another truth: Smith, unlike the Dare, is soft-spoken, well-mannered, bordering on bashful and prone to bouts of uncut earnestness.
After signing to Republic in May 2023, Smith dropped “The Sex EP,” on which the Dare suggests (among other things) that your mom might want to have sex (with him). The cover, depicting simulated (albeit clothed) sex, yielded outrage across the internet and in the media; it also yielded fawning press coverage, heralding the next big thing.
All that press over so little music could be the setup for either an extraordinary failure or an incredibly auspicious beginning. The experience — particularly the events of the past few weeks — has been “totally insane,” Smith said. “I just had no idea that it would happen at all.”
What happened was this: After hearing “Girls,” Charli XCX reached out over Instagram (“a total surprise”), and Smith produced “Guess,” her sultry thumper culminating in a scuzzy blast of distorted bass synths. In August, a remix featuring Billie Eilish dropped, catapulting the Dare into a new stratosphere of fame, just weeks before his debut album arrives.
His other famous fans include the journeywoman D.J. Avalon Emerson and Dylan Brady, of the avant-garde pop duo 100 gecs, who worked on “Guess” as well as several tracks on Smith’s album. Reached by phone, Brady pointed to “the boldness of the lyrics, and the melodies, and sound sources” of the Dare’s music. Smith, he explained, “seems to have a clear vision of what he’s trying to do, and he’s able to do it.”
Charli XCX agreed: “To write the kind of lyrics he writes, you need to have a certain level of fearlessness combined with humor, knowledge of how to write a song plus how to let go of all the things you’re ‘supposed’ to do to write a song,” she wrote.
“I really believe that Harrison will be one of the next big pop producers,” she continued. “Someone who helps artists find their sound, gives them their most exciting records, that kind of thing.”
“Give him five years. He’ll have had his fingerprints over many big albums.”
Back in Electric Lady, Smith queued up the final song on his album, “You Can Never Go Home.”
“I was thinking it’d be cool to end the album with — instead of putting a bow on it and kind of wrapping up the story — being like: It’s just begun, the prelude to something bigger,” he said, smiling and shrugging, as if to acknowledge the bombast of what he’d just said. “Which is the goal, you know? To do bigger things.”
The track opens with a large, sparse, electric piano line, builds from there, and is as close to anthemic as the Dare gets — a song about going out tonight, living in the present and not looking back. “I was trying to reference this Justice quote, actually,” Smith explained, “where they were talking about how they wanted to make music for when a wrestler enters the arena.”
Ever the showman, he’s saved one of his best tricks for last. If you’re a Dare fan or Dare detester, it’s hard not to crack a smirk — if not an outright smile — at the song’s opening couplet:
“Sometimes I only sing one note,” he croons, stretching out that last word, before continuing onto the next line, “sometimes I steal what others wrote.” When he sings it, he’s stretching out that last word again, though this time, ever so slightly, bending the pitch, changing the note.
Read More: What’s the Deal With the Dare?
