Walk off the Earth

With their mix of uplifting folk, pop, and quirky experimentation, Canadian band Walk Off the Earth were already five years into their career when their ambitious cover of Gotye’s “Someone That I Used to Know” became a viral YouTube sensation. Quickly snatched up by Columbia, the group found chart success with 2013′s gold-certified R.E.V.O. and its 2015 follow-up, Sing It All Away, which won them a Group of the Year Juno Award. The band kept up a busy international touring calendar while issuing a handful of EPs and singles before hitting number 11 on the Canadian charts with 2019′s Juno Award-nominated Here We Go! After 2021′s Meet You There, they changed things up with a pair of children’s pop albums Romeo Eats, Vol. 1 and 2, the second of which won them a Juno. They returned to mainstream pop with 2023′s infectious “My Stupid Heart.”
Walk Off the Earth were formed in 2006 in Burlington, Ontario, by multi-instrumentalists Ryan Marshall, Gianni Luminati, Mike Taylor, Joel Cassady, and Sarah Nicole Blackwood. They initially became known for their innovative cover songs, which often featured the group members trading instruments with one another mid-song or doing elaborate one-take performances where the song is built piece by piece by a single member playing every instrument. Although they released two independent albums in 2007′s Smooth Like Stone on a Beach and 2010′s My Rock, Walk Off the Earth’s real success came by way of YouTube, where the band steadily built up a fan base with covers of Adele, B.o.B, and fellow internet celebrities the Gregory Brothers.
The group took off in 2012 after their cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” performed by all the bandmembers simultaneously playing one guitar, received 70 million views in two months, earning Walk Off the Earth not only praise from the original artist but a contract with Columbia, which released R.E.V.O. (an acronym of the band’s motto, “Realize Every Victory Outright”) early in 2013. Its lead single “Red Hands” hit the Top Ten in Canada, while the record reached number seven on the country’s albums chart and earned the band Juno Award nominations for Pop Album of the Year and Group of the Year.
The group toured on and off throughout North America and Europe over the next two years, and issued a holiday EP titled A Walk Off the Earth Christmas in late 2014. The stadium-friendly Sing It All Away arrived in mid-2015; thanks to its success, Walk Off the Earth won their first Juno Award for Group of the Year in 2016. The following year, a handful of smaller, band-related releases popped up in the form of the solo piano outings Walk Off the Earth Presents: Beard Ballads, Vol. 1 and Holiday Beard Ballads, Vol. 1, which were played by keyboardist Mike “Beard Guy” Taylor. Tragically, Taylor unexpectedly passed away from natural causes in November 2018. His bandmates honored him with a free 2019 memorial concert in downtown Burlington and released the single “Mike’s Song.” Later that year, they issued the uplifting single “I’ll Be There” in advance of the full-length Here We Go! Released in October 2019, the album hit number 11 in Canada and reached number 44 on the Billboard 200. It also earned the group two more Juno Award nominations, including for Pop Album of the Year. Two albums appeared in 2021, with Meet You There (featuring the feel-good anthem “The Farther We Go”) arriving in July and Romeo Eats, Vol. 1 (a set of children’s pop) that September. Also that year, they collaborated with former American Idol winner Phillip Phillips on the single “Hold On to Your Love.” The second edition of their children’s series, Romeo Eats, Vol. 2, appeared in 2022 and went on to win a Juno Award for Children’s Album of the Year. Walk Off the Earth returned in 2023 with the melodic earworm “My Stupid Heart,” a non-album single that cracked the Canadian Hot 100. ~ Gregory Heaney