Salt Lake City, UT · indie pop · bedroom pop

Ritt Momney

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Jack Rutter's Salt Lake bedroom project, which went unexpectedly viral and then made the interesting record anyway — the cover paid for the experiments.

Ritt Momney is the work of Jack Rutter, from Salt Lake City, Utah. The project started as a band of high-school friends before Rutter continued it largely alone, recording at home and building songs from layered synths, drum machines and processed vocals alongside guitar. The name is a play on that of the Utah senator Mitt Romney.

Rutter was born on October 12, 1999, in Dallas, Texas, and moved to Salt Lake City with his family at about two years old. He grew up in a heavily LDS community, an environment that shaped his early musical outlook, and graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City.

The 2019 album "Her and All of My Friends" drew on Rutter's experiences leaving the Mormon church and the departure of his bandmates, and set the project's mix of downcast indie pop and bedroom-recording textures.

A slowed, heavily reworked cover of Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On," first released independently in April 2020 before Disruptor Records and Columbia picked it up, spread widely online after catching on through TikTok that September. It reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted in the top 40 in fifteen countries, going top ten in Australia and New Zealand.

Senator Romney responded publicly to the coincidence of names, wishing Rutter well in his career, and the two met on Capitol Hill in March 2022 when Rutter was in Washington for a show. Rutter, who identifies with the political left, has noted the contrast with the senator's own politics.

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indie popbedroom pop