Diamond Rings heads to “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”

On Oct. 26, Toronto, Ontario, electro-pop artist John O'Regan, who goes by his stage name Diamond Rings, stopped by "The Late Show with David Letterman" for his first late night television appearance and regaled the audience with a performance of his track, "I'm Just Me."

After the gig, O'Regan spoke with Yahoo! Canada Music about his experience on "The Late Show," and how he feels about his new album "Free Dimensional," which features his new single, "Runaway Love."

"It was the first time I've ever done late night television," the 27-year-old musician said. "We went in and did our thing and had a really good time. I was more nervous than I would have been for the typical show."

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"The whole experience to me felt really similar to running a sprint or a really short race where the gun goes off and you've got to go from zero to 100 right away, which is somewhat different than performing a live show where you're up on stage for an hour and you have time to bring people in."

Tonight, O'Regan has tweeted that he will again perform "I'm Just Me" this time for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

O'Regan said that the track has many similarities with his debut album, 2011's "Special Affections" but there are also striking differences.

"I think that 'Free Dimensional' is much more confident both sonically and lyrically," he said. "I have a clearer and more confident vision about what I want to express and how I want to express it. I've improved my technique and my ability as a performer and composer but I think what unites both of the records is this overriding sense of positivity."

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Highlighting themes present on the record, O'Regan said, "There are songs about making connections with people, whether that's on a romantic level or just on a friend-to-friend or heart-to-heart level. They're about relationships and about just being alive and celebrating being alive."

The Canadian artist worked with famed producer Damian Taylor (Björk, Robyn, The Prodigy) on his latest offering and cites trying new things like rapping on the album, having a 90 BPM R&B song present as well as big loud hand claps, 808 kick drums and dabbling with pop and rock songs.

"It's a bit unnerving to make an album that is broad enough in scope that it could potentially appeal to everyone but also potentially alienate everyone, that is kind of scary, but for me there's no other way," he said. "I don't think I'm ever going to be the kind of artist that's capable of really sticking to one sound or style; it's just not fun. There are too many things I want to try."

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An example of one of the rock songs on "Free Dimensional" is O'Regan's latest single "Runaway Love." The video was released on Oct. 23 and has already earned almost 200,000 views on YouTube.

"We wanted a video that fit the feel, grit and attitude [of the song,]" he said of the clip, which was shot in rural Québec near a drag racing strip in the midst of a muscle car rally. "We kind of crashed the party and filmed what was going on. After the 'I'm Just Me' video, which was very stoic and severe, I really wanted to do something again that had the spontaneity that some of my earlier videos had."

Check out the music video for "Runaway Love" here and tune in to see Diamond Rings rock out on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on CTV Two in Canada Nov. 7 at 11:30 p.m. EST.

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