“Sorry, one second—I’m grinding coffee.”
Sally Boy is standing in his best friend’s kitchen in Hollywood, pouring coffee and smashing avocado on toast as the early morning sun streams through the windows. It’s one of those classic L.A. mornings—warm and bright, even at 8 a.m.—and he’s enjoying a rare day off from touring as a guitarist for Ekkstacy, which recently opened for Blink-182 and $uicideboy$. His hair is tousled, and his eyes are still heavy with sleep—it's clear I’ve caught him early, but despite the grogginess, there’s an easy calm about his energy.
Sally Boy—born Erez Potok-Holmes—is about to make his long-awaited return with "New New," his first release in over a year. The Philadelphia indie/alternative artist, who gained widespread attention with his TikTok viral hit "Margo," has been steadily cultivating a devoted fanbase since his 2020 solo debut. Over the past year and a half, he’s been adjusting to the delicate balance between nurturing his own musical identity and contributing to the rise of another breakout artist. “We have so much time in between shows, but when you’re in a van with six other people, there isn’t really space for you to write a song,” he says in between bites of toast.
I ask if he's nervous about releasing music again after so many life changes. “I’m pretty nervous about it, and like, it’s a weird situation where it’s a song that I’ve had written for maybe six years, and I just recorded it for the first time a year and a half ago… I’m also scared because I’ve fallen by the wayside of promotional shit and so I don’t know how it will be received, or if it will even be received.”
In 2020, Sally Boy released his debut EP, EREZ, catching the attention of Loud Robot, filmmaker J.J. Abrams’ new label under RCA Records. He was signed as their second act, and his follow-up EPs, Lies I Tell Myself and music 2 crash 2, were released through RCA. However, while early reactions to Sally Boy’s music were promising, they weren’t enough to satisfy label executives. As the industry slowly began to recover from the impact of the pandemic, RCA dropped him. He felt like he lost sight of his identity.
“I became a victim of LA. Sessions, wanting to be a pop star, getting signed to a label and being like, ‘This is what I do…’ Now that I’ve left LA and met the right people, I’ve realized that I love playing heavier shit. I played in a rock band growing up, so it’s almost like I forgot who I was for a while…”
Sally Boy began touring with Ekkstacy in 2023, and he hasn’t looked back since. “I remember when I first played music and would get these out-of-body moments where I would come off stage shaking. The first few shows with Stacy, when I came off stage, I had this insane adrenaline rush, and I was like, Oh my god, this is why I do this. I still feel that sometimes, but it showed me that, oh, music can be like this.”
Sally Boy gets a text from an ex-girlfriend and sighs. We’re talking about relationships, and how touring has affected his ability to “have a life,” a difficult reality to face as a hopeless romantic. But he has found love before in this chaos: “I wrote ‘Margo’ about such an interesting time in my life. I was back in my hometown for a few months, and I met this girl, and we were pretty much together from day one until the end,” he says. “Sometimes relationships aren’t meant to last forever. I think that relationship was exactly what it was supposed to be.”
He tells me that “Margo” is the most honest thing he’s ever written, the kind of song you can never replicate. The love embedded in the song is evident, from the lyrics about mundane, everyday tasks that are recontextualized by love, to the dramatic, orchestral instrumentation.
His latest release, fittingly titled “New New,” feels like a tongue-in-cheek nod to the dawn of a new era in his career, almost as if he’s signaling to the world that he’s hitting the reset button, even though it’s with an older song. “I just have the worst ADD in the country. I’m like, oh, this song rips! Then I want to release it, and then four years go by and I’m like damn—I didn’t release that song ever, what happened to it? I have a whole album right now, but I might chop it and write a new one because I feel like the album was something I needed to write out of necessity and for myself, but it doesn’t feel accurate or what I’d want to put out now, but we’ll see.”
He’s finally learned not to take life too seriously, and “New New” certainly reflects that shift. “The song is basically like, ‘Oh, you’re depressed? I don’t know what that’s like,’ which is pretty ignorant,” he says with a laugh. “But it’s more of a track you vibe to, not one you overanalyze. It’s simplistic in that way. Still, I think it’s sweet that, as a teenager, I had no idea what depression was. It’s kind of cool I made it that far without experiencing it.”
As he finishes his last bite of breakfast, Sally Boy leans back in his chair, his go-with-the-flow attitude still lingering despite the uncertainty ahead. With a few new singles lined up for release, he's eager to step back into the spotlight—this time on his own terms.
“I better get ready for rehearsal,” he says, standing up and stretching. There’s a quiet confidence about him now, a sense that he’s come full circle. “I get to play music for a living, and that’s something everyone at these shows—the thousands of people—wish they could do.”
