3QUENCY Talk Winning Building the Band, Defining Their Sound and Debut Single, ‘Top Down’

This summer, as we got caught up in the excitement of Netflix's Building the Band, we found ourselves rooting extra hard for Nori Moore, Brianna Mazzola and Wennely Quezada of the new girl group, 3QUENCY

Bonded by the same vision and love for music, the three relative strangers soon united into a fresh pop-R&B trio with perfectly complementary voices, leading them not just to take first place in the competition, but to becoming one of the next big things in music. They ended the series giving off the impression of a seasoned group who'd been together for years, and things have really heated up for them recently with the group signing to RECORDS in partnership with Columbia Records. Today, they also released their debut original single, 'Top Down," flaunting their dynamic chemistry with a steamy and sexy confidence we haven't yet seen from the group. We got the chance to hop on a Zoom call to discuss everything they've been up to so far, and tease what's next. Keep reading for the full story.

Sweety High: Can you each introduce yourselves and the roles you play within the group?

Nori Moore: My name is Nori, and I feel like I'm just really funny. That's what I bring to the group.

Wennely Quezada: That's not all you bring.

Nori: One liners…

Brianna Mazzola: What do you bring vocally?

Nori: Vocally, I feel like I bring a brightness to this group. My voice is really high and really airy, but I have a little sassiness in there and a little attitude.

Brianna: I'm Brianna. I would definitely say I'm the mom of the group. I have my oldest and my youngest. I guess the "rock" would be the term that we normally use.  I'm the one that everybody can lean on and fall on and make sure the ship is sailing. Vocally,  I feel like I kind of jump around a little bit. Sometimes I can sit down in the lows sometimes I sit up in the highs. I do like riffs and runs a lot, so I feel I sometimes bring the abstractness with those things.

Wennely: Hi, I'm Wennely. They call me the golden retriever of the group because I'm always super up-here in energy. I just like to be sunshine. And vocally, just like Bri Bri, I can sit in the lows, I can sit in the highs, whatever, wherever you place me. I also love to do runs and riffs, adding vibrato wherever I can.

(Image courtesy of RECORDS/Columbia Records)

 

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SH: The group was formed on, and then won, Building The Band. Can you share what that experience was like for each of you?

Wennely: Honestly, it happened so quickly but so easily. We started talking in the booths and literally by day one or day two, we were already locked in. We were like, these are the people we want. This is who we want, and we don't want to talk to anybody else. It was very intuition-based. Like, we feel it. This is it. This is all we want. It's just been so easy with them. We just get along so well, and forming a band was was like nothing. It went by like a breeze.

Brianna: It was thoughtless.  Like I didn't take notes on anybody. I literally ranked people where I ranked them, and then after I had the conversations, I was like, whose names do I remember? Whose personalities, whose stories? Cool, if I remember them, that's how I know. Because everybody else, I think, was trying to take notes on people and trying to be more thorough, but I was like, if you can stand out to me, I'm not going to have to write it down.
I'm going to remember it.

Wennely: The thing is, I did write in my journal. I had four or five pages in my journal. But after all of us had talked, I never touched my journal again.

Brianna: Yeah. Once it happened, it was just instant.

Nori: I took notes as well, because I have brain farts (as you guys can see).After that brain fart, I was like, I need to start writing stuff down, because I don't want to keep doing that! I would write down different characteristics about different people, but my thought process never swayed from them. So the process was really easy. It was like butter on toast. It was real smooth.

 

SH: What does the name 3QUENCY mean to you all, and what do you feel is the glue that unites you as a group?

Brianna:  As far as the name, 3QUENCY, for one, we all have our own sound. We all bring something different that we can contribute to the group, whether it be fullness or power or space or texture or whatever it might be. We all have our own space sonically, and together those frequencies can come together as one. We wanted to find a way to incorporate the audio wave makeup that I've been doing for a minute now. Somebody had said something about like, "Oh, Bri has that frequency on her face," and I was looking at the girls, they're looking back at me. We're like, "Frequency has a cool ring, but it doesn't feel complete," and we wanted something that added the number three,  so we were like, "Oh my God, 3QUENCY!" Because there's three frequencies. There's three of us. We each represent something different. It was a way to tie the makeup in with our sonic story as well. And then it just stuck. Literally after that conversation, we were like, "That's it! That's the name! If they don't pick it, we're gonna go out with no name." It was just something that we locked in on in that moment.

 

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SH: What does it mean to you all to have a deal with Records/Columbia Records?

Nori:  It's such a blessing. I feel like we're literally living our dreams right now and we're super grateful for all of the opportunities that we've gotten. It's so fun. We're really excited about the things that we're working on and for everybody to finally get to see what we've all been prepping and busting our butts for these last couple of months, this past year. It's kind of like a gift being brought back to us, being able to sign with Records and having a deal with Columbia. We're really excited about it and so grateful.

Brianna: They've been really great. We come up with a lot of ideas and we're very strong creatively in the things that we want and what we want to achieve, and they've been really great in letting us soar and do our thing exactly how we want to do it. It's been an amazing experience so far and we can't wait to continue to do more with them. We're excited to see what the rest of this year brings.

 

SH: Tell us about "Top Down"? What does the song mean to you all, and how do you feel the sound establishes who you are as 3QUENCY?

Wennely: I keep saying that it's like our introduction to the world. In the show, we really touched on sweetness and confidence and cool, but we never touched on the grown woman, sexy aspect of each of us. We are grown women and we have that side of us sometimes,  so I feel like it's a good way to introduce ourselves to the world. It embodies confidence and being bold and, how Bri Bri mentioned, not being afraid to be out there and own who you are.

Brianna: Each week on the show we were set on reinventing who we
were. We did not want to do the same thing twice or do the same thing so consistently that we just perfected the one thing. We wanted to constantly grow and evolve, to constantly reshape with 3QUENCY, because we're never the same thing twice. We're different every time you experience us. Yes, we have our foundation and our core values and all of those things, but our expression is constantly changing, just like fashion and makeup and jewelry and all of those things. I don't think that music necessarily has to be any different. There's always room to explore and to grow. We were set on seeing another evolution of 3QUENCY after the show.

Even though we had done a lot of covers on the show and that was our base of exploring our sound, with our original, we were like, what's the only energy left that we really haven't like tapped into in that way? It's that more sensual, soft side of us that, one, people don't really one experience in our lives, but also experience as viewers as well. We wanted to shape that narrative.

We went in trying to write a song called "Lover Girl,"  and it completely changed. We were like, "Let's write about how we're each different types of lover girls," because we're so different, and then the conversation started taking a turn, and we heard some strings being played and we were like, ohhhh. That's not gonna work. It wasn't giving "Lover Girl" anymore. The convo, the tempo, everything changed so quickly. From there on, with the space that we were in and the mood that we were in, it just kind of wrote itself.

Wennely: It felt so right in the moment, and when it flipped we were like, yeah.

 

SH: Do you each have favorite lyrics from the song?

Nori: The fans just asked us this, too! Mine is "Drive the stick, shift the gears, flip it and ride reverse."

Wennely: Mine would have to be, "Got you wrapped around my finger, I can tell that you need it."

Brianna: I would say, "Like a dog with a bone…"

Nori: I knew it!

Brianna: "…I can tell what you're on." It has the right attitude for me. There are so many little moments in the song where I'm like, oh, that was cute. Whether it be the girls, mine or the chorus. Even the "pull up on me in an SRT." But I think that's more for the pocket. I like the bounce of it. But there are so many little gems hidden the song, even vocally, like things in the back that are kind of tucked away that are really cool.

 

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SH: Can you tease anything else you have coming up? Any plans to return to "Lover Girl"?

Brianna:  "Lover Girl" might put on pause for a second! Something we've spoke about a few times before is following like TLC, Destiny's Child—we're boundary pushers. They opened conversations that weren't open before they released certain records or wore certain outfits or did things the way that they did. We very much see ourselves like that. We have a couple other cans we want to open before tapping into our "Lover Girl," but the lover girl isn't far away. There are definitely some songs for the lover girls and some softer moments as well. But we want to shake some things up first, I think.

Wennely: You gotta have a song for the lover girls because I'm definitely one of them.

Brianna: Yes, Wennely is our designated lover girl. She is the lover girl of the group.

 

SH: Is there anything else you want your fans to know?

Nori:  Fans, we love y'all. We love y'all real bad. Thank y'all so much for supporting us. Thank y'all for the love—the reposts, the likes, the comments, the edits, everything. We see all of that stuff and it literally makes our day, so we love y'all.

Wennely: It means a lot.

Nori: And we have something coming.

Wennely:  Yes! Just be patient.

Nori: Just hang on a little bit.

Brianna: They're warriors out there. They fight for us, they ride for us in the same way that we ride for each other. It's really beautiful to see what that community is building outside of us, because of us, and also alongside us. It's great. We love them down and we're excited to hopefully get on the road and see some of them in person.

(Image courtesy of RECORDS/Columbia Records)

 

For more on our favorite new music out today, click HERE to read our interview with Avery Lynch on her new EP, Glad We Met.