Julian Casablancas Says The Strokes Stayed Together “Solely for Financial Reasons”

Julian Casablancas has admitted that financial pressure played a key role in keeping The Strokes together in recent years, and that it ultimately came at the cost of their creative energy.

Speaking candidly in a new interview with Rolling Stone Italia, the front man opened up about the shifting dynamics within the band, revealing that the project eventually became something quite different from the thing that first drew him to music.

“My journey with The Strokes became something different from what initially attracted me to music,” Casablancas said, adding that they had entered a cycle where staying together was driven more by necessity than artistic connection. “We had entered a mechanism that kept us together solely for financial reasons, pushing the band’s creativity into the background.”

It has now been over five years since the band’s last album The New Abnormal, with no concrete release date in sight for a follow-up. While producer Rick Rubin confirmed in 2022 that a new record was in the works after sessions in Costa Rica, even guitarist Albert Hammond Jr has since said the timeline remains unclear.

Casablancas has increasingly shifted focus to his work with The Voidz, who released a new EP MęĞż øF rÅm earlier this year. In contrast to The Strokes, he described the project as offering freedom to explore unfamiliar ground. “There’s a beautiful Miles Davis quote: ‘The real risk is not changing.’ That’s why I always want to feel like I’m searching for something unexplored. If I make money, that’s fine, but I don’t want to stay still.”

His distance from The Strokes has also been linked to a sense of detachment from their biggest hits. Back in 2020, he said he had grown tired of playing old songs live, explaining that after enough repetition, “you feel phoney.”

Despite all this, The Strokes are still active. They’ve just announced two warm-up dates ahead of their headline slot at this year’s Austin City Limits, marking their first confirmed live appearances in 2025. Whether new music follows remains to be seen.