Y.O.G.A. Drops Epic Collab With Jimmy Barnes

Y.O.G.A., Peking Duk’s Reuben Styles’ country music project, has had one of his dreams come true: collaborating with Aussie rock legend Jimmy Barnes.

Back in July, Styles teased the unexpected collab with Barnsey on social media. Captioning a video on Instagram, “NO WAY,” Styles shared the following message he received from Jimmy Barnes:

Hi there,

Jimmy here. It would be great to do something together. Let me know when and we can work something out.

It’ll be fun. You dream it and I’ll scream it.

Jimmy

Today, the long-awaited song—Comin’ Up—has landed. It’s a country meets EDM banger, with Jimmy Barnes showing off his expansive vocal range.

The new number follows Y.O.G.A.’s recent collaborations with country artists Kaylee Bell and Blake O’Connor. The partnership with Jimmy Barnes, however, has been a long time coming.

“I first met Jimmy at the 2016 APRA Music Awards, and it planted a seed I’ll never forget,” Styles said in a press release. “He said something along the lines of “let’s make some f*ckin bangers!” and once I started dabbling in this cow☆tech era with Y.O.G.A., I started feeling like the right song for Jimmy was getting closer.”

He continued, “The song was co-written with Blake O’Connor and from the get-go, it was pretty apparent Jimmy Barnes had to be the vocalist. For years, I had been waiting for this moment. I reached out, thinking, ‘f*ck, imagine if Jimmy replies,’ then he emailed me saying, ‘You dream it, and I’ll scream it.’ It was quite possibly the best email I have received. It needs to be printed, framed and sent STRAIGHT to the pewl room.”

Revealing that the entire song’s writing session took “perhaps less than 20 minutes,” Styles added, “I'm now stumped as to how this much talent can live inside one person. What an incredible human being. It's Jimmy's world, and we are living in it!”

For Comin’ Up, Styles teamed up with MSquared (Michael Paynter and Michael DeLorenzis) to produce the track. Paynter, who tours as Barnes’ guitarist, knows him well.

“Michael knows how Jimmy operates and likes his voice to sound and just knows the man through and through, which was invaluable when we were seeing where to take the song,” Styles said. “The MSquared lads can do no wrong. Every time I get in the studio with them, it's more exciting than the last.”

Check out Comin’ Up below.

Barnes featured as the infamous “screaming cowboy” on the Kirin J Callinan track, Big Enough, which went global. Styles, meanwhile, has been steadily picking up steam with his country project and will perform at Queensland’s CMC Rocks festival for the first time next March.