Ricky Montgomery

Ricky Montgomery was born in Los Angeles. His mother was a teacher, and his father was a gaffer.[2] When Montgomery was young, his parents got a divorce,[4] and in 2005, he and his mother moved to St. Louis, Missouri.[2] At the age of 14, he began to play in various bands.[3] In 2014, he gained a following on Vine, a short-form video service, posting comical original songs.[5] He found the site the day after the app had launched from a CNN news article. He saw the site as a potential "springboard for a possible music career."[4] After finding success with Vine, Montgomery released his first EP, Caught On The Moon.[2][5] Soon after, he dropped out of college and returned to Los Angeles to pursue a musical career.[3]

He has a sister.[4] His pronouns are he/they.[6]

In LA, he released his first studio album Montgomery Ricky on April 1, 2016.[3][7] Montgomery founded indie band The Honeysticks with a childhood friend of his[8] to experiment musically.[3][5][9] The band name was derived from a snack Montgomery ate every Saturday morning when he was a kid, made of sticks of honey.[4] In 2018, he took the year off from making music and started social media marketing companies to earn more money. By 2020, he considered quitting making music entirely.[3][5] However, in mid-2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, his two singles—"Mr Loverman" and "Line Without A Hook"—went viral on TikTok.[3] With his explosion in popularity, he was contacted by "virtually every single major label A&R in a matter of months."[5] In December 2020,[5] after a large bidding war, Montgomery signed with Warner Records.[10]

I think because we had a really traumatizing year, these songs kind of found a moment, because they're all, in their own way, about traumas in my life.

— Ricky Montgomery[8]

Since then, he has remixed two songs in 2021 from his debut album with fellow artists Chloe Moriondo and mxmtoon respectively.[5][8] Montgomery came in contact with mxmtoon after finding her perform one of his songs on the streaming platform Twitch, learning that she had been a fan of his Vine content before it shut down.[5] He found Moriondo from a song cover of "Out Like A Light".[11]