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00:00There are now more than 7.5 million views on YouTube alone, it's on Spotify, Billboard have
00:06got in touch with the Kieffners as well, he's selling out too on a European tour in Germany
00:11last week, heading to Paris via Luxembourg, be in Paris here on Wednesday and he joins me
00:16now on France 24. The Kieffners, great to have you on the programme, hello to you this evening.
00:21First of all, take us back, September the 10th, what was going on exactly where you were and that
00:28eureka moment you had that you thought, that's it, this is going to make a brilliant tune?
00:34Well, I was actually getting ready for tour, you know, I was meant to be rehearsing and just
00:39getting everything ready and, you know, my fans started sending me this video of Donald Trump and
00:44I thought, oh my goodness, I have to do this now, don't I? And, you know, I think it was Wednesday
00:52that I had seen the clip, Thursday I started working on it, had the song done by Thursday
00:57evening, Friday morning I woke up, I shot the video, I edited it and then put it out on Friday
01:04afternoon and I knew it's already travelled around the world. The thinking process, I mean, for those
01:11that, you know, you clearly have an audience, an audience out in South Africa enough to have
01:16a European tour, but just tell me about, first of all, your life before that moment, it went viral
01:23and your life now? Well, during the pandemic, in COVID, I decided to, you know, make YouTube
01:32videos, I had nothing better else to do. I was a live performing musician and I started making
01:37videos and remixing people and animals around the world. I also dabbled in political satire,
01:45I was making songs about what was happening in South Africa and so I feel like it was a sort of
01:52collision of both worlds, both the satire and, you know, obviously with my background in remixing
01:58cats and dogs and Donald Trump talking about cats and dogs, it just felt like the two worlds of
02:03satire and, you know, my other videos collided in the most unexpected way. But the beat is incredible,
02:12the beat is brilliant, I mean, is it in keeping with some of your other stuff? Did you have it
02:16ready? Did you work it in? I mean, I'm really interested in your whole musical inspiration,
02:21how it worked, where it came from. Yeah, well, in South Africa, Afrobeat is obviously, you know,
02:28a driving force in our music and, you know, living in South Africa and kind of being surrounded by
02:35other artists who are making Afrobeat and Amapiano, which is, you know, the biggest export out of South
02:41Africa, I feel like it's just a rhythm that South Africans are familiar with and, you know, just
02:47appreciate. So it wasn't in the original song and then I decided I'm going to try it with Afrobeat,
02:53see what happens, and that's what I knew. As soon as I heard it with the Afrobeat, I thought,
02:59this is going to go far. When you saw, David, that you're in the middle of the tour,
03:07I've seen your tweet where you said this, I've decided I'll no longer perform
03:11Eating the Cats on my Europe tour because it gets stuck in my head. It gives me insomnia.
03:16Please respect my wishes at this difficult time. Wink wink. And then Berlin demanded the song
03:22I Succumbed. Let's hear that moment in Berlin with the audience. Yeah, I must say it's a proper
03:28earworm and it has been driving me crazy because, you know, I'm performing the song every night
03:33and, you know, people are singing along. There's a there's a sort of call and response moment where
03:38I'm going, wow, wow, wow, wow, sing it. And then everyone just goes meow, meow, meow, meow.
03:42David, we can see it. Let's just see. Here's the call and response of in Berlin that night.
04:03David, it's lovely. Also, you're not missing out on the fact you've got the Simpsons in the background,
04:22the Springfield connection as well. Just tell me about the people that come to your gigs as well
04:27and whether that's changed with this viral sensation, what the atmosphere, we caught a
04:32glimpse of it there. It was really, really nice, really special. Just what that atmosphere is like
04:36as well on your tour. Yeah, I mean, I've never seen anything like it. I think the people that
04:42came to the show were going to come regardless of whether the song was out or not, because the shows
04:47throughout Germany were already sold out. I think people had bought tickets to see the remixes
04:53of Animals and all that kind of stuff that I'd done live. But I think obviously with the new
04:57song, it just had to be done. And yeah, as soon as I intro the song, you just see the
05:05phones come out, you see people getting excited and it's bizarre. I mean, you never quite
05:12know what's going to happen. I didn't want to perform the song because obviously bringing politics
05:18and showing someone like Donald Trump in a live show would ordinarily be a bad idea.
05:26But I think just everyone is loving the song. And I spoke to my manager and I was like,
05:31should we do this? And we thought, no, maybe we shouldn't. But we are seeing nothing but love
05:36online and we decided to do it. And I think it was definitely the right call.
05:41Yeah, I saw it politically. I'd seen that you had said people seem to be misunderstanding me here
05:46and putting words into my mouth. This is about parody, trying to separate it from the politics
05:51of the moment. Do you think you've done that? Do you think it's actually taken it somewhere else
05:54so we don't automatically... it becomes a song which one side can use against the other? Or do
05:58you think actually it still potentially can affect the political outcome over there?
06:04I think the magic ingredient in the song is the fact that we're not making any money from it.
06:10We're donating all the streaming revenue to the Springfield, Ohio SPCA. And I think
06:19that fact alone has brought people from both sides of the political spectrum,
06:23especially in America. Normally politics is so divisive there. The fact that both Republicans
06:30and Democrats are loving the song and they respect the fact that it's going to a good cause.
06:36And I mean, everyone loves cats and dogs. And that was very important to me to make sure that
06:44it was a unifying factor to the song. I can see why. Yeah, I can see also why you're
06:50selling out with people who can't come to you like me from this song and why you would be selling out
06:56in Europe right now because you end up falling down a rabbit hole and look at your other music
06:59as well. It's giving an example of another song that I'm hoping you'll be able to hear on the
07:03European tour that you've sampled.
07:20It's very cool, David. David or the Keithness? I've seen that aka the Keithness or just David,
07:45what do you prefer? I think when I'm, you know, when I'm speaking to you
07:49face to face, David is probably the better one. If I see you in Paris, it's the Keithness, right?
07:55Yeah. Tell me about, I mean, just tell us a little bit about this song and also
07:59just tell us about where you're heading next, what you're planning to do.
08:04Well, yeah, we're currently on tour, you know, just taking it day by day. We've got,
08:12I think, another 12 shows ahead of us. Really looking forward to being in Paris again,
08:18being in Poland, Prague. We're going all over the place and it's just amazing.
08:23Wherever we go, the crowd is just always so diverse. They're young people, old people,
08:30people who look very liberal, people who look conservative, and it's just a common thread.
08:37The fact that the crowd is just always super diverse and it's very rewarding to bring,
08:47you know, people from all backgrounds together.