From 'freak out' to FUN. to a No. 1

FUN. debuted their first album, "Aim & Ignite," in 2009, but for singer Nate Ruess it was actually a new beginning.

Before there was FUN. there was The Format, a band which Ruess co-founded. But when the fruitful success of The Format went sour, he panicked.

“In music, you feel like you only get really one chance to do it, especially in my position because I felt like the band was doing really well,” Ruess recently told CNN. “So just to uproot and start over? I was freaking out.”


For Ruess’ second chance, he knew exactly who to call: Jack Antonoff, guitar player and Steel Train's front man, and Andrew Dost, piano player and former member of Anathallo.

The three musicians first met when their three former bands ended up on tour together. And when it came time to start collaborating on music, Ruess felt like he was on the “dream team.”

Now two albums strong, FUN. released "Some Nights" in February. The single “We Are Young,” featuring Janelle Monae, topped Billboard's Hot 100 and the Digital Songs chart for multiple weeks.

CNN: "Glee" picked up one of your songs, “We Are Young.” What did it mean to you that "Glee" performed it?

Dost: The most important part about "Glee" for us wasn’t the fact that people started listening to it after that. I think for us, it was [that] we worked so hard to make it perfect, and then we saw it on "Glee" and realized, so did these people.

They learned all the parts. They made a new recording of it. They filmed it. There are camera people, there are audio engineers working on this. It made me realize the song wasn’t ours anymore. And I think that’s the best thing that can happen. The "Glee" thing, more than anything else, made me realize that the song had become bigger than we are, which is a really good feeling.