Shinedown Rules of the Road

Posted on by joshwurz

If traveling 90 percent of the year sounds fun instead of stressful, you might get along with Shinedown frontman Brent Smith. I had the opportunity to sit down with Brent at the legendary One on One Recording, in LA, to discuss everything from his very detailed supplement regimen to how his upcoming 18-song studio album, EI8HT, came to be in a year and a half, to his famous “Doo Doo Time” pre-show ritual (and yes, I did try the ritual). 

One thing is for certain: when you’ve been on the road as much as the guys from Shinedown, you create systems and routines that help maintain any type of sanity. The “no rules” approach that birthed EIGHT helped shape the approach of both releasing and sequencing the album. EI8HT feels like an album you personally can create and relate to. With familiar driving guitars and powerhouse vocals, EI8HT tells a story of personal mental health struggles that an AI would never be able to replicate. 

I hate to say that a “100 percent human approach” is going to become less and less of a normality, but for Shinedown, not using AI is imperative to their work. From writing songs because it was “cheaper than therapy,” Shinedown has made an album that is truly human.

Hit Parader: I want to talk to you about your discipline, your fitness, and your mental health. You are on tour 90 percent of the time. We were just talking about how you live in hotels mostly. When did that start, and how have you been able to maintain some sort of discipline while you are in constant rotation?

Brent Smith: I will be honest with you, it just came down to the fact that everybody in music, it seems like it is a cliché, but we all have a past. I had some substance abuse challenges in my life, and I have been clean for roughly a decade. But before that, I had periods where I would get clean, I would relapse, and then I finally got serious about it.

Cred. Ebru Yildiz

It was never about obsessing over a scale. They always told me, remember, whatever you feed your body, if it is alive and flourishing, then you are feeding your body life. If it is dead, you are feeding your body death. That was an interesting way of looking at it.

The hard thing on the road is trying to limit the things you eat that come out of a bag, which is almost virtually impossible at times. But we are very lucky in how we tour now because we can bring catering with us. When you have that, you do not really have an excuse. 

I just started to feel better. I looked better. I could fit into clothes I could not fit into before. I think there is a confidence that comes with being in shape. And for me, there are a lot of people who depend on me, so I need to be as healthy as I can be.

Not only that, but for the audience too. We have got one boss in the band, and it just happens to be everyone in the audience. They paid their hard-earned money to watch you go out there and throw down, so you have got to be in shape to do that.

HP: Why is it important for artists, especially men and specifically men in rock, to speak openly about mental health, especially on the road?

Brent: Because your mental health is just as important as your physical health. The mind is a really powerful part of you.

I am 48, so men of my generation and men in general were often told not to be emotional. Do not complain. Do not talk about your feelings. If you do, you are weak. I think for a long time, there was this idea that being vulnerable somehow made you less of a man.

But honestly, I think it is a lot more manly to talk about your feelings, because you are trying to work through them. If you do not talk about them, they fester. They boil up. It becomes a pressure cooker, and a lot of times that breeds anger and negativity.

Sometimes you just need to talk about it to feel better and let it go. Even crying, if you get emotional to that point, you are releasing something. You are trying to work through whatever those subject matters are.

Being on the road, people sometimes say, well, you are around a lot of people. But it is also the idea that I have been everywhere, but I have seen nothing. It is still a job. There is still a lot of pressure in the daily grind of being on the road.

I love it because it is all I know, but I am also in a band that has been talking about mental health for the better part of two decades. Even before it was being openly talked about, it was in the music.

Our audience is broad, eight to 80, every walk of life, every color of the rainbow, every background, every ethnicity, male, female, whatever your sexual orientation is. It does not matter. You are an individual. Anyone from anywhere is welcome in our world.

And rock and roll, to me, is not necessarily a genre of music; it is a way of life. It is super inclusive and very open and welcoming. It may seem aggressive from the outside, but there is a reason for that aggressiveness. It builds confidence. It pumps you up. It makes you feel stronger.

A lot of times, when you listen to the angst in that music, you are hearing men and women pouring their hearts out. I often tell people I started writing songs because it was cheaper than therapy. And we listen to songs because it is cheaper than therapy, too.

HP: Are there any songs on this next album that you feel especially connected to in terms of mental health or personal subject matter?

Cred. Ebru Yildiz

Brent: Every single one of them is personal in some way, but there is definitely one particular song on the album called “Impostor.”

That song came from experiences I have had over the years, my addictions, my issues with mental health, depression, anxiety, all of those things. But it also came from something I have heard from a lot of young people, especially teenagers, male and female, who come up to me and say, I just want to let you know, you saved my life. I am here because of you.

And it is like, no, you are not here because of me. I may have helped you, or the band may have helped you see things from a different perspective, but that is all you. At the end of the day, the world is way cooler with you in it.

A lot of young people are trying to figure out what their purpose is. And now with social media, everything is under a microscope. Sometimes you look in the mirror, and you do not even recognize the person staring back at you.

The first line of that song is basically I feel like I am an impostor. And it is not really about asking for help from outside, it is about trying to recognize yourself again and not giving up on yourself. In the pre-chorus, it says do not give up on me, and really, you are talking to yourself.

So, from a mental health standpoint, “Impostor” is probably the heaviest song on the record.

HP: How does this record differentiate from your last collection of songs?

Brent: Probably the biggest thing is that the last two records were conceptual. Attention Attention was our story record; all of those songs intertwined into one larger story. Planet Zero was not supposed to be a concept record when we started, but it ended up becoming maybe the most conceptual piece of our entire catalog.

This time around, EI8HT took a year and a half to make, and it is more of a traditional record in the sense that it is a collection of songs. None of the songs necessarily relates to each other, but they belong together as one body of work. They are all individually their own thing.

That was probably the biggest difference.

It was also one of the easier albums to sequence, because we did something a little differently this time. For the longest time, it was always make the record, turn it in, here is your single, here is your great track, the record comes out, and then here are your next singles. I was like yeah, “We are not going to do that.”

Part of that was because we did not have time to wait around; we needed to get our crew back to work. We are one of the rare bands that keep nine people on retainer throughout the year. That is expensive. So, we had to start playing shows, and I also wanted to design the “Dance Kid Dance
stage from the ground up.

So we released songs in phases. We had 365, Dance Kid Dance, Killing Fields, Searchlight, and then Safe and Sound to help announce the record.

I think a lot of people assumed we were just doing singles. But then they saw 18 songs on the album and realized, “Oh, this is essentially a double record.” And in my opinion, there is no filler on the album. We do not put album tracks on our stuff just to fill space. If a song does not resonate with you, if you are not waking up the next day singing it, it gets discarded.

You cannot make a record like this in three months. That is one reason it took the time it took. But the other goal is that with this record, we want to play on all seven continents. So, we wanted to make sure there was a lot of substance there.

HP: Nobody really puts out 18-track albums anymore. Why did you want to go that big?

Cred. Ryan Camp

Brent: We are definitely an album band. I think everybody thought last year, “Here we go, they are just doing singles.” But no, there was always a bigger body of work.

And honestly, there are no rules. At some point, people started acting like music has to be done one certain way. It does not. The industry is not what it was 10 years ago, and it is not going to be the same 10 years from now either.

The one thing that does hold true is the interaction when human beings actually create something. That is another huge aspect of this record. There is a stamp inside the album packaging that says 100 percent human. It also says no AI was used in the making of the record.

That is important because software on its own does not have a heartbeat. There is no blood flow. There is no consciousness. When real human beings get into a room and create something together, there is electricity there. There is energy.

That is why I think a lot of AI music kind of faded as quickly as it appeared. People can tell when something is not real. It may hit certain frequencies or seem novel for a minute, but if it is not human-made, there is a disconnect.

And with this record, Eric [Bass], our bass player who also engineered, mixed, and produced the last three records, including this one, really pushed for every song to be played through. We were not just going to copy and paste sections together. He wanted us to actually learn the songs as we wrote them, lock in as a band, and perform them.

We would still punch in certain parts if needed, but the core of each song had to come from a real playthrough. He did not grid everything perfectly either. Some of it is tighter than others, but you need the push and the pull; that is what gives it attitude.

HP: It sounds like you guys really have the vision for the project. Do you feel like that is something artists need more of now?

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. Our story is a little Shakespearean in that way. There is a lot of loyalty in our camp because we are kind of an anomaly.

We have been on Atlantic Records for 24 years. I was signed to Atlantic with a different band, got dropped, re-signed nine months later, and then spent three years building what would become Shinedown. So, I know both sides of it.

We have had the same manager for over 20 years. Same label for over two decades. Same booking agent pretty much the whole time. Same business management team. That continuity really matters.

Over time, you learn what you like, what you do not like, and how to navigate an industry that is frankly one of the most cutthroat and difficult to navigate out there.

At the same time, younger artists today often do not necessarily need a label if they know how to build a brand on social platforms. If they know how to market themselves, the labels come to them.

Really, the artists need to remember nobody is going to have their plan for them. You have to have it. It takes time. You have to be able to make mistakes, throw things out, see what sticks, and stay authentic.

You have got to hustle it. Bottom line.

Cred. Sanjay Parikh

HP: After thousands of shows, is there still a moment on stage that gives you chills?

Brent: Absolutely. I have played in front of five people, and I have played in front of 500,000 people. And I am still completely terrified when I walk on stage.

People ask me if I get nervous, and I am like, I am almost inconsolable internally until I get to the first chorus. Once I get to that first chorus, I settle in. But if the day ever comes when I am not nervous, that is the day I will know it is time to stop.

That nervousness lets me know I am alive. It tells me I still care.

HP: Do you have any preshow rituals?

Brent: Yeah, we have a pretty silly one. We have this thing called doo doo time. It is not what it sounds like.

Basically, one hour before showtime, if you are invited, you come into the room with whatever you are drinking, a shot, a beer, water, Coke, whatever it is. If you do not make it in on time, you are out.

Barry leads it. He will say something like, let us have a good show, wherever we are, how many people are out there, it should be a good night. Then everyone puts their glass in the middle. He counts down three, two, one, and everyone screams as loud as they can in one breath, doo doo doo. You are supposed to go until you are basically lightheaded.

Then everybody cheers, gives each other a weird look, and you have to finish your drink within five minutes. If you are not in the band, you have to leave after that.

After that, we all get into our own routines. I wrap my ankles before every show because I run around a lot, and I do not want to roll one. I learned that the hard way years ago, and now it is just part of the process.

I only do about a five to six-minute vocal warm-up. I am not the guy doing scales for a long time because I need to save it for when I go out there.

Cred. Press Provided

The guys go into a separate room and warm up on their instruments, usually running through parts of the first few songs just to get loose.

Then we all huddle together. It is usually me, Zach, Eric, Barry, and sometimes security and crew. I will say something like, “We will not fall because we have each other. We will not fall because we are each other. We will not fall because we will rise above.”

Then everyone puts their hands in, and someone yells out something random, and that becomes the chant. Then we head backstage and do what we call the dance, where everyone in the band and crew does their own handshake and gets locked in together.

That connection between the band and the crew is really important. When everyone is in sync, the whole show just feels different.

HP: As we close, is there anything else you would like to add?

Brent: The biggest thing I would say is just thank you, especially internationally, to all the fans who have been patient for years.

If you have been there from day one, thank you for still believing in us and understanding that we are never going to phone it in. More than anything, thank you for allowing us the platform that we have, because you put us there. And thank you for allowing us to be ourselves.

Shinedown’s new album EI8HT is out now.

Alana Springsteen Helps With Stunning New Album

Posted on by nyocum

Alana Springsteen is one of those artists. You know the ones, the type of artist who completely sneaks up on you. You hear a song or two, think, “Oh, this is cool.” You like it enough to go just a little deeper and find that as you keep mining the material it just keeps getting better. The more you listen to, the more you recognize the honesty of the lyrics and vocals, the consistent quality, the depth of the songwriting and the power of the emotion in every song.

Before you know it, Springsteen, no, no relation, has gone from cool to a must-see live. Springsteen’s tour de force new album, I Hope This Helps, out tomorrow (May 29) is an absolutely stunning collection. Throughout the masterful record, Springsteen weaves deeply personal and intimate stories into tales everyone can relate to all well.

In the opening lines of the stark and powerful “Feels Good,” Springsteen sings, “Last night I was two more shots away from trying to talk myself into Heaven’s Gate/Some regret tastes better at the bar.” She repeatedly does that through the record, capturing the highs and lows of being human. Springsteen understands the best work is intensely personal and, at the same time, universal.

Hit Parader spoke to her at length about the writing of the record, heroes like Sheryl Crow and Patsy Cline and much more. 

Hit Parader: What makes a perfect Nashville day? 

Alana Springsteen: First of all, the weather, no humidity, the sun being out, 70 degrees, no crazy pollen giving you allergies, seeing a bunch of friends, connecting with people. It’s just been a really, really great day overall. 

HP: This is one of those albums that just screams therapy in the best way possible. So, was this an awakening for you?

Springsteen: Massively. The last two years have been the most transformative of my life. I feel like I had to pull myself apart and put myself back together to write this album. And these songs have been my roadmap through all of it. They’ve helped me understand myself and have healed me, have shown me the sides of me that I’m insecure about, and allowed me to make peace with it. And I’m walking out on the other side, just a much better version of myself. 

HP: I was looking at the title; I Hope This Helps. Do you mean this for other people or for yourself? 

Springsteen: I love that. It’s actually both, which is why I love the title. It’s kind of simple, but it really touches on all the parts of it. I hope it helps me make peace with my inner child and get to know myself better and just be a better version of myself for me, and for the people around me. But I also hope it helps. The people out there that hear it.  There were so many times writing this record that I truly didn’t know if I could continue. I was in the middle of therapy, on one of the biggest tours of my life with Keith Urban, trying to be in the studio, write this record, just doing it all at once. It almost broke me many, many times. And the thought that kept me going and got me back in the studio was that maybe the next song that I would write would help someone out there feel less alone in what they were going through and give them the courage they needed to choose themselves and to ask life for more and to do the hard work, knowing that it’s going to be worth it on the other side. 

HP: I saw Joni Mitchell at the Gorge a few years ago. And Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides Now” at 80 is one of the most beautiful things in the world. But Joni Mitchell wrote that song when she was 23. What the hell? Can anybody understand writing a song like that when you’re in your 20s?

Springsteen: I didn’t realize she wrote that song when she was so young. That’s another one for me that I heard again for the first time in a while, a few months ago, and I was just sobbing in my car. It’s so emotionally deep. But I think there’s something about being young that allows you to get out of your own way. You don’t know what you don’t know, so you don’t overthink it. And you’re just feeling it. And I think that’s kind of what I’ve tried to focus on with this record; just getting out of my own way, not trying to write a perfect song, but just write something honest. 

HP: Nick Cave said something so interesting to me. He said that as a writer, you always write what it is you’re longing for. And to me, this album screams that.  Do you feel like you were writing for the questions that you needed answered?

Springsteen: Yes, 100 percent. I think my debut record asked a lot of questions, and I was just starting to really get to know myself. And I wrote songs like “Chameleon” about the way that I’ve always been a people pleaser, just constantly shape shifting. But I didn’t understand why until I wrote this record. So, in a lot of ways, Twenty Something asked the questions, and this album helped me find more of the answers. And obviously, we never fully finished the journey of this. We’re constantly asking questions, but I think I started to get to the root of a lot of these patterns in my life. And I had to go back a long way to that inner child, to sometimes four or five, six, seven years old, to rewire these truths that I believed.

HP: What were the questions and answers that surprised you the most when you were writing this? I was interested in a song like “No Man,” which was very interesting to me. I will not ask if that was autobiographical or not, but I was thinking about it. And sometimes it’s probably easier to write autobiographically when it is in third person.

Springsteen: That’s true. I do feel that. I’ve written a couple songs autobiographically from third person. And that’s a really interesting theory. I’ve never really dissected that much. That song specifically isn’t exactly to the tee my story. It’s one of the few songs that I’ve written where all the details aren’t about me. I pulled from several different people in my life and different stories and created this character that I very much identify with. I was able to get lost in this person in the song in a way of just not feeling like you fit, wanting to escape, wanting something more for yourself, wanting to get out, and not wanting to be tied down. So badly wanting love and wanting connection, but never wanting to be limited by it. And I think for a while, love always felt conditional for me for most of my life. And I’m just now getting to the place where I’m realizing that love should never ask you to be something else. It should never ask you to be small. It should just empower who you are and make you want to be better and just chase your dreams down and know that you’ve always got a place to come back to and a soft place to land. But that song, I’ve always loved country music because of the storytelling. So, I wanted to write a song that was just an incredibly beautiful story about a girl choosing herself and refusing to stay small.

HP: Who are the country storytellers that are some of your favorites?

Springsteen: I think Emmylou Harris is at the top of that for me. There are some of her songs that are just hauntingly honest. I think about her song, “Red Dirt Girl.” It’s one of my favorite country songs. And it’s just this beautiful snapshot of what it’s like to be from a small town and maybe never get out, and some of the things you face and the people that you meet along the way. And you’re like, “I see myself, I see my family members in that song a little bit.” And I love when songwriters can just put you in a place like that and make you relate maybe to something you’ve never experienced, but it’s so emotional that you can’t help but feel yourself in it. So, she’s up there for me. Maybe you wouldn’t consider her country, but Sheryl Crow is one of my favorite artists. And to me, she’s country. I listen to those songs now. I listen to her self-titled record, and I’m like, “That could be on country radio right now. It’s all about storytelling.” She’s an incredible musician. She produced it all herself. She’s just this outlaw in so many ways. She paved her own path, and she has inspired me so much and continues to do so. Another songwriter that always inspires me is Hayley Williams. Again, she’s not considered country, but to me, she’s done such a great job always of not being afraid to write about these nuanced subjects and her own truth and stand behind it and say things that a lot of people are afraid to say sometimes. To me, that is the definition of an outlaw. So those are all people that I’m inspired by.

HP: You look at a song like “Selfish,” which I love. Is that a song that you could have written at any other time in your life?

Springsteen: I don’t think I would have had the courage to write that. And it sounds crazy, but I think growing up, as a woman, as an eldest daughter of four kids in the South, you’re just raised with these expectations and these requirements and pressures that are put on you. To act in a certain way, present oneself a certain way, to always be kind and serve other people, be gentle, not rock the boat too much, just be quiet, defer to other people, on and on. But I think a lot of my life, when I started to learn to set boundaries and to choose myself, it ruffled a lot of feathers early on because that’s just not what people expected from me. It’s not what they were used to getting from me. So, I was called selfish a lot. And I wrote this song as a reminder to myself that it’s not selfish to put yourself first. And you can’t take care of other people or show up for other people in your life until you know how to show up for yourself, until you meet your own needs. There are so many women in my family, strong women — my mom, my grandmother, people that I’ve looked up to my whole life, that I’ve watched sacrifice so much at the expense of themselves. So, this song was a reminder to me and hopefully a reminder to all the women out there and people in general, it’s not selfish to choose yourself. And sometimes you just need the reminder because it felt so against my nature to write that song. But it’s something that I needed to hear in the moment for sure. 

HP: Who are those artists that you really admire for the way they were able to break out of whatever shackles they had and set their own course? 

Springsteen: You think about throwing it back to Patsy Cline. When she was releasing music, she was creating a type of music that just wasn’t, quote unquote, country at the time. She redefined country in the way she used her voice, the way it was more of a soulful R&B flow, to the way she sang, and the way she had strings and orchestras in her production. It was much more of a pop approach, but it was the first time people had heard anything like that. And she redefined the genre and really opened up a whole new pathway. That was just from staying true to herself, leaning into how her voice sounded best, and the music that she loved. I think that is a massive example for me of a woman going, “No, this is the music I want to make. I don’t care if people don’t get it or if they do get it. I’m just going to. pave my own path and trust that the art I love is going to cut through.” I think about Miley Cyrus, too. I’ve always loved her music and the way that she is constantly able to redefine herself. She’s had so many different eras, and this latest record that she just put out felt like pure art to me. Coming off the previous record, Endless Summer Vacation, which was full of hits, this latest record just felt like it was pure art, like she was making it for her. And sonically, she made some choices that were just so off the wall and unexpected. I love artists that are fearless that way. And a lot of times they’re ahead of their time. That’s the kind of artist I want to be. I want to constantly push the boundaries and live in that space. I like to color outside the lines. I’ve never been a black and white person. I’m more of a gray area person. 

Alana Springsteen’s new album I Hope This Helps is out tomorrow 5/29.

Circle Bar Is Back At It Again: Santa Monica’s Legendary Music Dive Bar Returns

Posted on by joshwurz

The local Santa Monica watering hole that served Jim Morrison is back open for the next wave of music lovers. When I first moved to LA in 2014, Circle Bar wasn’t just A stop of the night, it was THE ONLY stop of the night. Finding a place I could drag my Universal Music Group colleagues to was a feat in itself, but we could always agree on Circle Bar as the place to meet. If you know nightlife, you know how a perfectly un-curated curated bar stands apart. And apart from the obvious, the giant circular bar creates a sense of community, whether you like it or not. Strangers become dance partners and dance partners become regulars. 

Since 1949, Circle Bar was a music haven. What started as a neighborhood watering hole on Main Street evolved into one of Santa Monica’s most important nostalgic bars. As rumored, the dance floor has a gravitational pull that seems to be a magnet for artists and musicians who understand that the best nights happen in small rooms with the right people. Jim Morrison knew it. Truman Capote knew Anthony Kiedis knew it. The crowd always knew it. 

Now, under new ownership from Mark and Addie Van Gessel, the Westside hospitality duo behind Venice’s Hinano Cafe and Santa Monica’s Tavern on Main, Circle Bar reopened its doors on May 22nd, 2026, with a music program built to honor that legacy. The original floor plan, unchanged since 1949, stays intact, but the sound? Completely reimagined. “We made the DJ a centerpiece,” said Mark Van Gessel. “They were sitting over here, to the side, you really didn’t even see them. They weren’t spotlighted. So, we wanted to make sure that the DJ was the center and focus, and we made the booth just for that. The result is The Halo, an elevated DJ booth positioned at the heart of the room, making it clear music is at the center. 

A fully upgraded QSC speaker system fills the room so you can hear the music better than ever, while a newly digitally controlled Chauvet lighting rig wraps around the venue’s iconic disco ball. A rotating roster of local and regional DJs will be leading the programming, along with future guest appearances. 

This is a dance floor that demands to be used. A sound system that rewards it and a room with seventy-plus years of stories soaked into its walls. The feeling is back. The locals are ready. The dancing will continue. Main Street has Circle Bar back. 

Circle Bar is located on Main Street in Santa Monica. Open nightly. 

Skylar Grey Finds Her Full ‘Potential’

Posted on by joshwurz

Skylar Grey has shared a Grammy stage with Eminem and Dr. Dre, written numerous hit songs for the likes of Celine Dion, Eminem, and more, and collaborated with big names like Illenium, Macklemore, Kaskade, and Deadmau5. 

Yet, with her superb new album, the intimate and raw Wasted Potential, she says with no hesitation at all, “I’m absolutely enjoying music more than I ever have. Music to me has always been about getting my emotions out, and it’s therapeutic for me to write a song.”

For Grey, she has reached that magical point in her career where she is answering to herself and just making the music she needs to make.

“There’s been a period of time in my career where I didn’t do that because I felt forced to do sessions I didn’t want to do and write songs I didn’t want to write just to try to make money and stuff, but I shut all that down, and now all I’m doing is writing from the heart,” she says. “I sit at the piano, and I make music and write lyrics, and that’s how I get through stuff. And I think that is the best way to connect with people. It ends up always being the best music when it’s just honest.” 

Cred. Shervin Lainez

Part of her aging process is feeling much freer to not only be more honest, but also to follow her instincts more and not overthink things.

“I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to give less fucks about what other people think. And that helps me stay truer to myself. And I’m also taking everything less seriously than I used to. I’m not exactly sure I’ll get the quote right, but Post Malone said something about how he just makes a bunch of music and then puts out whatever vibe he’s into and whatever he’s feeling in the moment. And he doesn’t think too hard about it. And that made me realize that for a lot of my career, I was always just overthinking everything way too much,” she says.

Growing older also inspired one of the album’s most memorable tracks, the homage to the ‘90s, “Nirvana.”

“I think for me personally it was turning 40 and feeling old and wanting to go back to my childhood,” she says. “The whole song is about how I didn’t appreciate my childhood and so many things that I hated back then that now I miss.”

The ‘90s are a recurring theme on the record, according to Grey. 

“Most of my musical influences came from the 90s because they were my formative years. And it’s when I was the most excited about discovering music,” she says. “And so, ‘Come,’ for example, is an ode to The Spice Girls to become one song. And then there’s just a lot of little elements of what I do that I think are inspired by the ‘90s. The song called ‘Bullshit’ on the album opens up with a strumming acoustic guitar that reminds me of Oasis.”

The album was co-produced by Danny Majic, whom Grey said she first worked with on “Last Man Standing” from the soundtrack to Venom.  

“We have such great chemistry, and we have such a great workflow. It’s like, ‘Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken.’ Why do I have to go out and search for more producers? I have one that is amazing right here, and we work so well together. So, I hold those relationships really near and dear to my heart,” she says.

Cred. Shervin Lainez

As someone who has experienced the highs and lows of collaborating, Grey has an especially deep appreciation for those people she clicks with, like Majic and Marshall Mathers (Eminem).

“That’s why I’ve written so many songs with Marshall, because we do have such good chemistry.”

Many artists will talk about self-fulfilling prophecies, about making their dreams a reality. Whether or not you believe in the ability to manifest, Grey’s friendship with Em is a literal dream come true for her. 

“‘Stan’ was another [song] that was very impactful for me. It was the first time I’d heard a beautiful, angelic vocal mixed with hip-hop, and I thought, ‘Man, I love that combo.’ It was so unique at the time, and I think that was a huge inspiration for why I wanted to get into collaborating with rappers,” she says. “Because I can relate to these vocals that were more airy and unique. As a kid, I was in musical theater, but I never had the power as a vocalist to be up on stage without a microphone. And so, the artists that really inspired me early on were the artists I could relate to vocally. Sarah McLachlan, Dido, they’re the artists that showed me a path in music that I could take.”

Though if Grey were to pick one song from her childhood that changed her life and shaped her musical vision, it would be a true ‘90s classic. “There are so many songs that I’m obsessed with and love. One of the most impactful songs from my childhood was Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop.’ I first heard it when I was walking up the hill to my best friend’s house. She had the windows and doors open, and it was sunset. And that song was just blasting in the house, out the windows. It was magical. I don’t know how else to describe it. The feeling that song gave me in that moment. It was completely life-changing,” she says. “That airy, dreamy vocal and the beat and the darkness, but also the uplifting feeling it has to it. That was just a super powerful moment for me in music discovery. Then I was obsessed with Fiona Apple’s Tidal, the whole album.”

Cred. Shervin Lainez

As someone who experienced huge stardom in her early career and chose to then follow an unconventional path of releasing music whenever she wanted, the brilliant Apple still inspires Grey tremendously.  “Somebody like Fiona Apple just inspires me to always stay true to yourself. It’s easy to get swept up in the Hollywood of it all. And she’s just one of those artists that’s always stuck to her guns and made the music she wants to make. That, to me, is very inspiring.”

That said, Grey doesn’t plan to follow her path of releasing albums as often as Halley’s Comet. 

“Instead of just putting out music as it came to me, I would try to curate the perfect album. And by doing so, I would limit myself to releasing an album every five years or something. As I’m getting older, I’m like, ‘Wait, I want to put out a lot more music before I die.’ So, I’m taking it less seriously. I’m having more fun, and I’m just making music that I love in this moment,” she says. “It doesn’t have to define me and my whole career and my whole sound in this moment. It can just be what I’m feeling right now, put it out there in the world, and then move on to the next project. That’s a new approach I’ve been taking. And it’s a lot more relaxing, a lot more fun. And I plan on putting out albums way more frequently because of that mindset change.“

Ivor Awards CEO Roberto Neri on Celebrating The Art of Songwriting

Posted on by joshwurz

I remember interviewing the late, great Tom Petty years ago at a BMI event where he was being honored for his songwriting. I asked him what it meant to be honored for his songwriting, and he said, “It means everything.” Then he joked, “It’s my job and what the guys keep me around for, to write the songs. Without them, the Heartbreakers would trade me in for Bruce,” referring, of course, to Springsteen.

Songwriting isn’t the most glamorous side of making music. But talk to a hundred singer/songwriters, and I promise you, at least 90 percent will talk about how much the songwriting means to them. As an artist, being recognized for your songs is one of the greatest honors there is, which is why artists like Elton John, Rosalia, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Lola Young, Harry Styles, a special guest to present Yorke with his honor,  and more showed up in person Thursday, May 21, 2026, in London for the 71st Ivor Awards, dedicated to songwriting.

Hit Parader spoke with Ivor CEO Roberto Neri about the awards, the mysterious art of songwriting, and more.    

Hit Parader: Do you feel like you have a little insight into the mystery of songwriting?

LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 21: Cred. Vianney Le Caer/Dave Benett/Getty Images for The Ivors

Roberto Neri: I think the creation of songs is something that is totally underappreciated by everyone. And it’s something that needs to be better recognized. And the Ivors Academy managed to do that in the most efficient way possible by putting on the Ivor Novello Awards and actually elevating and celebrating the incredible songwriters that we’re able to represent. We’ve been doing it for over 70 years. But to your point, yeah, the creation itself that’s within the blessed human that can conceive the incredible art that comes from them, whether that’s the lyric, the musical elements, or the production; for some, they have to think about it, others it just flows through them.

HP: How did you first get interested in the art of songwriting?

Neri: I started writing myself from a very early age. It’s always been there for me to get me through the darkest times of my life. And then I went to have this amazing career in music representing songwriters by way of being a music publisher, working at different organizations, downtown Believe, and others, and represented some of the greatest songwriters. And it was a blessing to represent them. Now I’ve been at the Ivors Academy just over two years, where we represent over 14,000 songwriters and composers. We can protect their interests by lobbying and having strong advocacy, and then we can empower them to make sure they’re equipped for the music industry, which is very challenging, as we know. And then lastly, the celebration side is the awards, where we celebrate songwriters and put them on the platform, and then later in the year, we do something separate for composers. I’m very fortunate to represent them. There are so many different partners you can have as a songwriter and composer, but we are fortunate to be that real force for good to ensure their interests are being looked after to make sure they can actually push themselves forward and equally be awarded appropriately. We’re fortunate to do that well.

HP: Talk about the importance of honoring those who create the songs.

Neri: You have some artist-songwriters, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Joni Mitchell, where their own song creation and their interpretation of their own music is something exceptional. There are, of course, artists who manage to pull off that authenticity of feeling in every lyric. And we’ve got some incredible greats like Adele and others who do write music but have had big assistance with co-writes. They managed to pull off those works as their own, even though they didn’t completely create it. Yeah, songwriting is the most important ingredient that doesn’t always get the appreciation, like I was saying earlier, but people see the artist, they hear what’s coming out from the artist, the voice, but maybe need to think more about where that was conceived and its true meaning and how it lives on in many different guises outside of that one particular snapshot. 

LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 21: (L to R) Lauren Laverne, David Furnish, Sir Elton John, Roberto Neri and Sam Fender.
Cred. Vianney Le Caer/Dave Benett Agency

HP: I was just looking at an article the other day that mentioned the number of people who think that Adele wrote “To Make You Feel My Love.” Adele is amazing, but that should be credited to Bob Dylan, who is the only person to win the Nobel Prize for literature. So, talk about the importance of educating people on the art form that comes behind it. 

Neri: Completely, and for 71 years, the Ivor Novellos have been doing just that. The thing we need to do now is to make sure the whole world really understands that these exist. Bruce Springsteen picking up the fellowship two years ago, being seen as a songwriter, being proud to be a songwriter. We’ve got other names like that coming in the room this year doing exactly the same. They’re known to the public as artists, but they really are these geniuses and they’re so proud to be recognized for their songwriting and the craft of it. So that’s why we’re very fortunate to be at the Ivors Academy delivering these awards and showing that respect.

HP: Do you hear from the artists how much it means to them when they get recognized for their songwriting?

Neri: Absolutely. And one example of one songwriter/artist we are recognizing is Rosalía, whose Lux album has blown up globally. She really considered carefully how she would approach the album. She spent a year writing the lyrics in 13 different languages. She then worked on the music and in the third year, bringing it all together by way of production and just making it a body of work, which is cohesive. There was a lot of thought and consideration, and she’s so proud that we are recognizing her as International Songwriter of the Year this year, where everyone else is just seeing her as this magnificent artist. She’s going to be turning up next week, picking up International Songwriter of the Year, and extremely proud. This is the Oscar equivalent in music. And there isn’t an actor out there who doesn’t want an Oscar. 

LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 21: Roberto Neri and Sir Elton John.
Cred. Jed Cullen/Dave Benett Agency

HP: How do you deal with AI?

Neri: I think there is a genuine threat for some of the sound bed music you have out there. I don’t think John Williams has got anything to worry about, but there are some real concerns around how music’s used within the score. For your songwriters, though, for your Joni Mitchell’s, for your Bonnie Raitt’s, this is something that just can’t be replaced. The soul within the lyrics and the music and the way it’s conveyed is just something I can’t see being replaced by AI. And I think already, most of the public is starting to recognize, “I need to lean in further into human creativity now and try to avoid what’s being pushed towards them.” No one asked for this creation of AI. No one asked for a replacement of artists and songwriters. So, it’s being pushed on the public, but I think the public is already starting to push back, and I think people are going to go and see more concerts. I think they’re going to buy more physical products again. I think people are starting to rediscover what they were taking for granted as they started to get everything in their pockets. They’re starting to reverse that trend; the next generation, between 13 and 20, is already starting to disregard what those in their early 20s have taken as the normal way of consumption. I think this threat of replacing your average songwriter is something we shouldn’t be too overly concerned about. That said, of course, we are doing everything we can to fight back on the policy level and to ensure we’re safeguarding their rights at all times. 

YUNGBLUD at The Greek Theatre

Posted on by joshwurz

Seeing YUNGBLUD’s sold-out show Friday at the Greek Theater made me realize how important family, community, and human connection really are. 

That feeling started when the opening band, The Warning, came out and instantly caught my attention. At first, they just seemed unbelievably in sync. Every drumbeat, every guitar riff, every pause felt perfectly timed down to the millisecond, yet somehow effortless at the same time. I couldn’t figure out why until Daniella Villarreal introduced herself along with the other members, Paulina and Alejandra, and I realized they were sisters. 

Suddenly, everything clicked. 

They’ve been performing together for over 13 years, starting as a small cover band from Monterrey, Mexico, after their cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” went viral. Now they’re touring arenas around the world. Watching them felt like watching a sibling connection come to life. They were peaceful yet chaotic, intense yet completely connected. And honestly, that’s what siblings are. There’s arguing, forgiveness, chaos, and love all mixed together. Every loud drumbeat almost felt symbolic, like every past argument floating away into the air while they created something beautiful together. 

It only felt fitting that my older brother was there with me. 

As the loud rock music filled the arena, I started noticing something quieter underneath it all. As I looked around, I realized how many families were there together. Parents with kids, siblings, friends with their arms around each other. For a generation constantly glued to phones, this felt different. This was the only concert I’ve been to where I saw more people cheering together than on their phones recording. People crave real community now more than ever. Everyone was actually living in the moment instead of watching it through a screen. Music was bringing people together in real life. 

Then it was finally time for YUNGBLUD to come out. 

Cred. Tom Pallant

Before he even stepped on stage, the word “hello” appeared across the screens in multiple languages. It instantly made the entire arena feel welcoming, like no matter what your background, everyone belonged there that night. We were all there for the same reason: to let go for a few hours and just feel alive while jamming out to some rock n roll. 

Then, suddenly, confetti exploded through the crowd. 

It felt like all of our worries were being thrown into the air alongside it. For a second, nothing else mattered besides just being there in the moment. 

And once he hit the stage, the energy completely exploded. 

Besides making amazing music, he is one heck of a performer. At one point, he randomly jumped off the stage and started climbing the arena handrails while yelling, “ARE YOU MOTHERF***ERS READY?!” The crowd went insane, everyone cheering, some even holding their breaths… Hoping he didn’t fall. Eventually, he ended up standing on a chair in the middle of the crowd, continuing to scream. From that moment on, I knew this concert was going to be unlike anything else. 

Cred. Tom Pallant

When he started performing “Lowlife,” the entire arena loosened up even more. Everyone screamed the “La-La-La” lyrics together, and for the first time, I fully looked around the crowd and realized there wasn’t a single empty seat in the place. I really tried to find one for a good minute, but I couldn’t. Thousands of people from all over Los Angeles had come together for this moment. 

One of the most emotional moments of the night came when YUNGBLUD dedicated Black Sabbath’s “Changes” to his late mentor and friend, Ozzy Osbourne. Before starting the song, he told us we needed to sing loud enough for Ozzy to hear us from heaven, especially because Ozzy’s family was in the audience.  As soon as the crowd heard this, they instantly understood the assignment. This is one of my favorite songs, so I was screaming at the top of my lungs.  Everyone sang together like one giant family. You could hear the raw emotion in YUNGBLUD’s voice during that performance, and honestly, it gave me chills. 

Of course, in true YUNGBLUD fashion, he made the crowd stick out their tongues. My brother and I doing that together reminded me of when we were little kids. YUNGBLUD even started calling out people who refused to do it, projecting them on the giant screen until they finally gave in. The entire arena was dying laughing. At one point, the cameraman showed this one kid absolutely rocking out with his tongue out, throwing devil horns, and headbanging so hard that it caught YUNGBLUD’s attention enough that he not only brought him on stage, but he put him on his shoulders. I’ve never seen an artist interact with fans so personally before. 

But beyond the chaos and fun, what made this concert really special during Mental Health Awareness Month was how openly YUNGBLUD talked about mental health. 

Cred. Tom Pallant

When he performed “The Funeral” and the crowd screamed, “I hate myself, but that’s alright,” it didn’t feel hopeless. It felt real. YUNGBLUD has always been open about his own struggles with intrusive thoughts and insecurity, and instead of pretending those feelings don’t exist, he talks about learning how to live alongside them without letting them completely take over his life. I think that honesty matters a lot right now because social media makes it seem like everyone else has everything figured out when they really don’t. He serves as a reminder that even successful artists struggle with their mental health.  

He constantly reminds fans that they are not alone, and he backs those words up with action. He has worked with organizations like Mind, where he pledged to donate £1 (up to £25,000) split between Mind and Sound Mind Live for every use of the “Breakdown” CapCut/TikTok template. He continues encouraging open conversations about mental health instead of avoiding them. 

One of my favorite moments of the entire night was when he told everyone to turn to the strangers next to them and say, “Hello motherf***er,” and then, “I love you.” It sounds ridiculous, but in that moment, it actually felt genuine. For a few seconds, thousands of strangers became one giant family. 

The concert ended with “Zombie,” a song inspired by watching his grandmother struggle with alcoholism and slowly losing herself. The song captures something so many people are scared to admit: the fear of becoming a burden, the fear of appearing weak, and the universal feeling that you have to go through your darkest moments alone. But standing in that crowd, surrounded by thousands of other people screaming those lyrics together, I didn’t feel alone at all. 

Cred. Tom Pallant

That’s what made this concert so powerful to me. 

In a world where social media usually only shows people’s happiest moments, YUNGBLUD doesn’t run away from the darker emotions. He dives directly into them. He talks about grief, insecurity, loneliness, anxiety, and self-hatred openly instead of hiding them. And I think that’s exactly why so many people connect with him so deeply. 

By the end of the night, there had been screaming, laughing, crying, and complete chaos. But more importantly, I walked away realizing something I think a lot of people need to hear during Mental Health Awareness Month: 

No matter how alone you feel sometimes, you never truly are. 

Hit Parader #1: Yungblud Edition

Hit Parader #1: Yungblud Edition

October 2025 — $12.99

YUNGBLUD is bringing the rock star back to rock. At just 27, the British firebrand stunned 45,000 fans and the world at Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show with a jaw-dropping, emotional cover of “Changes.” Critics and legends alike are calling it one of the greatest live performances of the past 25 years. In a genre starved…

In This Issue…

Rico Nasty By Nature

Rico Nasty By Nature

Too Hardcore for Pop, Too Pop for Hardcore: A Conversation With Scowl

Too Hardcore for Pop, Too Pop for Hardcore: A Conversation With Scowl

Controlled Chaos: The Rise of Die Spitz

Controlled Chaos: The Rise of Die Spitz

The Cost of Momentum: Nova Twins Reflect on the Years That Changed Everything

The Cost of Momentum: Nova Twins Reflect on the Years That Changed Everything

Don Broco: 3 Unconventional Influences on Nightmare Tripping

Posted on by joshwurz

Hit Parader: If you had to choose three songs, albums, artists, or even non-musical forms of media like books or shows or something that played some form of influence or some role in the creation of this record on your end, what do you think that would boil down to?

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once

Cred. Press Provided

Rob Damiani: I’d say one thing is that we’ve always had this mentality, or I have always had this mentality, of trying to create something fresh while still honoring the influences and the references that inspire you to do what you do. Like any artist, sometimes you lose faith in yourself, or you question, are you on the path you set for yourself? Are you happy? Are you approaching it in the right way? One of my favorite films of the last few years was ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once.’ That was one of those films that was very affirming for me. I love action movies, martial arts movies, philosophy, comedy, all these very disparate things that don’t always sit well with each other. Somehow, they created this super enjoyable, funny, but very emotionally led, thought-provoking film that brought all these crazy things that I love about film and media, and encapsulated them in a very original film. It was one of those things where I was like, ‘This is fucking awesome, I’ve never seen anything like this.’ I would love for people to hear a Don Broco song and get that response in any small way. If anyone could feel even a glimpse of what I felt watching that film, to have all these things in a movie, then I think I’m achieving what I want to do. A lot of the songs and records bring different ideas, themes, and feelings. For me, that is what the human experience is about. It is about experiencing all the crazy shit, all the different feelings that come with being a human on this planet, rather than boxing yourself into one thing. That film, for me, was like, ‘They can do it here, I’m going to give it a go and try and do it within our album.’ Whenever you have that worry and doubt, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ I think back to how great that movie made me feel, and then I go for it even harder.

2. Toxicity by System of a Down

RD: More musically, I’d say going back to one of the first albums that really stuck with me and influenced a big part of who Don Broco are was System of a Down’s ‘Toxicity.’ It is still a phenomenal record. You still put it on, it still feels so urgent and so fresh. Again, similar to the movie, it is hella fun, it is crazy, the lyrics are nuts, there is some weird shit in there that probably doesn’t make any sense, and there are also a load of very important lyrics about politics and what it is to be a human, and very spiritual songs. Somehow, they are all in there, and it works. I knew all the words, and I’d sing along, but I wasn’t thinking as much then. I was a kid when it came out, really young. It was one of the first records I went down to buy as a CD with my friend. I remember we put it on in my room and just listened to it three times in a row, our minds being blown. Going back to it, it is still just as amazing as it was then, and a lot of the lyrical themes are still just as relevant now as they were then. They nailed it on so many levels. It is a super varied album, but still really identifiable as System of a Down. That was the album that really launched them and catapulted them. When you think of System of a Down and what their sound is, you can find all of that in different forms within that record. That is a big influence on me in general, but also on this album. As a band as well, seeing how thick it is after all these years, they seem now like the biggest they’ve ever been. Seeing some of the shows they were doing in South America, it is insane, hundreds of thousands of people moving like an organism. It is crazy. It is really cool to see something that you love so much reaching another fan base as well. A lot of people are discovering them now for the first time, which is so cool.

3. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

Cred. Press Provided

RD: A third one; there is this author called Joe Abercrombie. I’ve just been reading his series, the first trilogy is called ‘The First Law.’ I was not reading as much as I could because I love reading, but I’m just pretty lazy. Unless I’m on holiday and have nothing to do, I’m so easily distracted. There is so much good TV around, so much doom scrolling to be done. You get to a point in the day, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m tired now, I’m going to read a book.’ Holidays, I’ve been really trying to, every time I go on a little holiday, kickstart the next book, and then that takes me through. I really recommend ‘The First Law’ trilogy as the starting point. Even if you’re not into fantasy novels, because it is set in this fantasy world, if you imagine a Game of Thrones-esque land, it is at the turn of the introduction of industry. You’re coming out of this fantastical pseudo-medieval world with magic and this and that flying around, and it is like, what happens when the industrial revolution begins, and how does that affect the world? That is the backdrop, but the character development is just so awesome. The duality between people, every character in it goes on such a journey. I wouldn’t say this is a blanket rule and this won’t ruin every character, but in the same way as in Game of Thrones and any sort of post–Breaking Bad TV show, if there is a main character that doesn’t go on a bit of a character development, whether he starts good and then does some questionable things, or starts the villain and redeems himself, it is really interesting how people and humans are capable of so much good and so much bad at the same time. The choices they make and the decisions they make, whether for right or wrong, can take them down certain paths.

This overall feeling is that life is so fragile and can so easily be taken away for a variety of reasons. In the books, people are getting killed left, right, and center through fights and wars and this and that, but in general, you take real life, it is a celebration, but at the same time, you’re living in this misery, but at the same time, all this great stuff is happening. It is basically about a world of contradictions. I was finding myself taking photos of lines and copying bits and writing them down, being like, ‘That’s a sick idea for a song,’ taking pages of notes of reference points to build into a song or various lyrics, various bits in the book of cool lines to steal. I wouldn’t say any of them really made it into the record, maybe one or two. I think the general themes of the duality of people and the world being a shitty, dark place, but still good things can happen, is reflected in quite a lot of the lyrics in these songs. I’m still reading a new one of his books and writing down bits in case they come in useful. It is hard when you’ve got a load of melody ideas and a song, and then you’ve got this really cool lyric you want to fit in, but it doesn’t, and it just derails the song.

Listen to Nightmare Tripping by Don Broco out now.

Read the full article in Issue 5 of Hit Parader Magazine.

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

May 2026 — $12.99

The cover story of Hit Parader Issue #5 enters the temple of Sleep Token at the exact moment their mystery has become too massive to hide. One year after Even In Arcadia turned the masked British phenomenon into a global rock event, the album’s instrumental edition strips away Vessel’s voice and invites fans to hear the cathedral underneath —…

Krooked Kings Log Off

Posted on by joshwurz

The Utah-based indie rock mainstays Krooked Kings are at a point in their careers when various pressures from the ever-judging internet say the band should be ‘content creators’, but members Oli Martin (Lead Vocals/Guitar), Matt Monosson (Bass), Paul Colgan (Guitar), David Macey (Keys), and Quinn Casper (Drums) would much rather just be a band again. On their new record, In Another Life, produced by Yves Rothman (Kali Uchis, Yves Tumor, FKA Twigs), the five-piece lean into the new mindset, pouring months on months into tracks that would make up the album while simultaneously stepping back from the industry’s focus on making that next viral social media post. The result of all this is the loudest, most intentional, and hungriest version of Krooked Kings yet; one that wants to stand the test of time and do what a band should do: put the music first. Hit Parader got the opportunity to sit down with all five to talk about the amazing new record and the effort behind it. 

Hit Parader: You said on an Instagram post that the new chapter with this record is one where the ‘music comes first’. How has that mentality shifted the way that this record was created versus other records in the past?

Cred. Travis Frey

Matt Monosson: This record took way longer, I would say [laughs].

David Macey: Yeah, this record is a million times longer than any other.

MM: Previous times, it would be one day per song, pretty much, and the album would be done in two weeks, and then we’d mix and master it. But this one, yeah, as Quinn said, it was almost too much time, to be honest [laughs]. 

DM: I think in terms of the music coming first, maybe the phrasing of that could be interpreted in a few ways, but for me, I think we were kind of trying to make a statement about our content, and that we were trying to be more mindful with that and artistic with that, in terms of social media stuff, and really put the music at the forefront of the content and represent it in a way that feels artful to us. I feel like that’s what I imagined we were intending when we say, “Oh, we’re putting the music first.” Obviously, we’ve always taken care with our music, and we are proud of what we’ve done. But yeah, I think it’s more that we want to represent ourselves in a way where it’s like, ‘hey, this is an artistic endeavor’, and we want to portray it that way.

Oli Martin: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s easy to sell your soul to the algorithm. I think for this new chapter, we wanted the pressure to feel a little more old school, where it’s not so much pressure on… I don’t know, if our social media is performing incredibly, I think that’s awesome, obviously, and that’d be great. If it’s not, I think we’re all in a happier space as a band knowing that we really cared about the music, and at the end of the day, if we don’t have a TikTok or Instagram that’s going viral and everyone’s excited about us for a few seconds, we’re still going to be happy with what we’re creating, and we’re not creating music for those moments. We’re creating for us, and what we really enjoy listening to, and hopefully what people want to hear. But yeah, I think it’s just hard, because with being a musician nowadays, you’re now a content creator and in all these other roles. I don’t know if we’re trying to say, “Oh, don’t do that,” but I think for us, we’re tired of doing that and tired of trying to perform as that, and really want to just perform more as artists and less as social media content creators.

HP: And then with Yves [Rothman] producing the record in LA, I’d love to know more about how working with him sharpened the vision of what you already had coming into the studio, without taking away from the core identity of you guys as a band. 

DM: I think the core identity of us is that we’re a committee of people. We all have similar tastes, but we’re not exactly the same. So I think having a producer that has his own taste and vision that can be a little bit of a leader or a tiebreaker for us was a helpful thing to have. Because when it’s a decision by a committee of five people, that can get pretty tough, but when there’s someone that you can almost look to as the authority figure, it’s like, oh, okay, this is a cool direction. I feel like he was super helpful with the writing and the production and everything. 

Cred. Travis Frey

MM: He also really wanted to capture the essence of us live. Kind of going back to what I said, we were so plug and play before, but we always did great live, where he heard us play live and was like, there’s something there. And like Dave said, he was able to lead us in the right direction. I feel like I’m proud of this record. I feel like it really sounds like us live, when previous stuff has been a little bit more computer-ish. 

Paul Colgan: I was gonna throw out there, I feel like Yves kind of pushed us to have an idea sonically of what the whole thing was gonna sound like before it was even pen to paper. I think he threw some names out there initially, like Cage the Elephant, Arctic Monkeys, those big rock bands of the early 2000s where it feels like you’re in a live room with that band. And I think that was nice to have that general idea of what it’s going to sound like before we had even recorded a single note. 

HP: And then with the tracks on the record, there’s definitely a wide sonic range with “Damage Control” and “In Another Life” and “Fix This.” How did you approach choosing what tracks made the record, as well as the pacing of the record and making it flow the way it did?

PG: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I feel like it was really broad. We were all in the studio, and we had probably 20 songs that we were choosing from. And I think everyone has a little bit of a sense of what’s going to be a strong [song]… I think we had eight songs that we felt really strongly about, and then kind of had to whittle it down to a few others to fill in the blanks. I feel like every album needs a little bit of a slow moment to close it out and needs a big crescendo moment. And, yeah, I feel like it was just picking the right songs that painted that entire picture of a holistic-sounding album.

Quinn Casper: Yeah, I feel like, if I remember correctly, we were having some beers in the Airbnb after we had just finished recording everything, and our manager was like, “All right, we need the sequence. We need the track list.” And it is kind of a hodgepodge. There’s some different-sounding stuff, for sure, but I feel like we just listened to songs back to back and then just kind of trusted the gut and were like, that feels like a natural cool snare hit into a big song after a smaller intimate moment or whatever, and it all just came together and felt like a natural progression.

DM: Yeah, it’s funny that you say that there is a wide sonic range, because thinking about it, that is true. But I think in my mind it’s funny to think about that. It all feels very in the same world to me, but you are right. 

PC: In that world, I always like it when there’s some range to it too. It also didn’t really occur to me how many different-sounding songs there are because they all just live in the same world for me, like Dave was saying. But I think there’s a fine line between having an album that lives in the same world and having all of your songs sound the same, and I think we kind of walked the line on this one, and I’m happy with how it turned out. A lot of variety.

Cred. Travis Frey

HP: And then, on the new record, what felt different, if any way, about the way that you approached the lyricism compared to past projects, from themes to the way you wrote or anything?

OM: I think we took a lot of time. Yves was a little bit of a stickler, I think, on lyrics. And, man, at the end of the day, it was definitely up to us as to what we were writing, but I think in previous records, not that we didn’t think about lyrics really deeply, but I think this album, Yves just really challenged us with everything. It’s also about saying what you want to convey, but then there’s the singability, stuff we never really thought about before. He’d be like, “Okay, that kind of sounds weird to sing,” and it was frustrating at times because I’d think, man, I cracked it. And then he’d go, “Yeah, it’s the right word, but it just doesn’t sing right.” There were random lyrics where we definitely fought back on, but I think a lot of time was spent on lyrics, whereas in the previous albums, they were written so fast. We used to put vocals down last, and it would kind of all happen in a week. So at the end of the day, you only had that week, and there wasn’t much time to edit the lyrics. With this one, though, there was a lot of editing.

PG: Yeah, a lot of revision.

DM: It’s kind of crazy, honestly, how little editing we’ve done in the past, and then to jump to this, where it’s months and months.

QC: Yeah, I feel like Yves, and I mean this in an endearing way, was such a bastard sometimes [laughs], because every day, no matter what, if the lyrics were done, even if Ollie just did scratch vocals, he’d be like, “All right, that’s cool, but let’s see if we can beat it.” Even if it ended up being the final lyric, he was always like, can we beat it, is there something better? Which is a really good trait to have in a producer, he’s constantly trying to have everything be as good as it could. But it just ended up being more work and really racking our brains and pushing ourselves, which ended up being good. 

HP: Awesome. For everyone individually, what individual song or part that you played on the song are you most excited for, proud of, that is on the record? 

MM: I can go first, yeah. I think “Sleep Tonight” I’m really stoked on. I feel like I was just fiddling around, and the band really resonated with it, and the song came together really quick. It’s a really cool line. Quinn said it also… I think every other part does a good job, and so I’m pretty stoked on that one. It was not too much of me twiddling my hair, it kind of just happened. 

DM: “Ugly Love,” that one is awesome. It’s cool to have a song that was more keys-based first. Maybe that’s probably why I like it, but I think the key part is cool. I’m hyped about it. I’m just like, this is my moment [laughs].

Cred. Travis Frey

PC: That one was cool too, because in the original mix, it was not super prevalent, and then we kind of flipped it on its head, and it’s the main thing now.

QC: Yeah, that’s cool. 

OM: You finally got a moment, Dave [laughs].

DM: Finally. It’s only been six years [laughs].

QC: For me, probably “Rancher’s Daughter,” because I don’t do anything so I can just hang out and catch my breath during the show [laughs]. Have a beer too. No, I’d say I feel like “Parking Lot” is just fun, just straightforward groove, rock song, loud open hi-hats. There’s this one drum fill that I don’t even remember doing. I don’t know if I did do it, honestly. 

OM: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I think the vocals are a little different for this record. We have some doubles on some, but with Jackson on our old records, we had a lot of layered vocals and stuff. So I think the vocals sound pretty different. I’m excited to see what people think. I think it was definitely a little scary to switch it up so much, so I think I’m just happy we did and see how it goes.

PC: Honestly, I think “Ugly Love” is my favorite song on the album, and for that reason, that final little slide guitar at the end has got to be up there for me.

HP: And then, just for the last question, if the listener, after checking out the record, had to have one takeaway/message, what would you hope that to be after they listen to it?

DM: They would feel a strong urge to start an email chain that says, “Send this album to 10 other people, or you’ll die in the next month.” [laughs]

OM: I think that that’s pretty good [laughs].

PC: I like that.

DM: I don’t know. I can’t think of some grand takeaway. Maybe you guys have something more poetic than that.

OM: “I want to give Krooked Kings a million dollars.” [laughs]

In Another Life by Krooked Kings is out now.

Read the Article in print in Issue 5 of Hit Parader Magazine.

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

May 2026 — $12.99

The cover story of Hit Parader Issue #5 enters the temple of Sleep Token at the exact moment their mystery has become too massive to hide. One year after Even In Arcadia turned the masked British phenomenon into a global rock event, the album’s instrumental edition strips away Vessel’s voice and invites fans to hear the cathedral underneath —…

Vacations: Bringing the Scene With Them

Posted on by joshwurz

Over the span of a few short years, Vacations frontman Campbell Burns has watched his band transform from small shows in Newcastle, Australia, to packed rooms around the world. Yet Burns still discusses Vacations as if the band were a small project that just ‘happened to take off’. While the beautiful indie rock tracks are easy on the ear, there is much more lyrical intentionality hidden if you listen to the fantastic lyricism crafted by Burns. With a new chapter on the horizon, including new music, many shows, and their very own festival, MATES Fest, it becomes clear that Burns is less interested in chasing the abstract concept of success and more focused on making sure that Vacations’ artistic vision lives on, and that Vacations has always and will always be a band that you can discover and claim as your own. Hit Parader sat down with Burns to discuss more.

Hit Parader: So just to start off, while in Vacations, you’ve lived in Newcastle [Australia], Los Angeles, and then you recently, last year, moved to New York City. I’d love to know how each of those individual cities and the creative worlds around them kind of reshape the way you write, think about the band, and approach the day-to-day process as an artist.

Campbell Burns: So when I was in Newcastle, I kind of felt like I was in my own creative bubble. I was a part of a really strong, unified community of musicians, artists, and creatives. And I was young at the time. I would have been 18 when I was coming into it. So 18 is the legal drinking age, going-out age in Australia. So I started going to shows, meeting more musicians, and meeting a lot of like-minded people. And so with that in mind, and starting Vacations and then all these other bands coming together, that was really special and formative, especially in my earlier years, because I was really influenced by what people were doing around me, because it was real and it was tangible. Sure, I was influenced by things overseas or on the internet, but in terms of my own music career, I never really thought about much outside of Newcastle, which is kind of funny to say, because we’re now an international band, but when I was releasing those first couple of EPs, I did not consider anyone, even as far as Sydney, which is only two hours away, that people would be listening to it. And then it started going somewhat viral on the internet through YouTube, people like David Dean Burkhart, a huge 2016 bedroom pop kind of guy, getting that music out there. So shout out to him and everybody. 

Cred. Isaac Nuñez

But then, I guess, moving to LA was a different step. Moving to LA was honestly kind of a blur. I say that I lived there for a year and a half, but that was really a stepping stone into the US. The most amount of time I spent consecutively in LA was only two months. I was barely there. It was more of a home base because I knew that I had reached my ceiling or my limit in Australia with what I could do, especially in terms of Vacations, and opportunities as a songwriter and producer on the side if I’m in my off-season. So LA felt like the next logical step. And it was eye-opening. It was very overwhelming as well, because I was dealing with culture shock. And then as I settled, I kind of had reverse culture shock going back to Australia. It was this double life. It was a bit strange at first. I’ve gotten a lot more used to it as I’ve settled into somewhere like New York, simply because I enjoy New York as a city to live in. I like LA, don’t get me wrong. I feel like LA is very much a city where you go to work. I just love living in New York so much, and it kind of reminds me of being in Newcastle, in the way that there’s community, and it’s accessible, and it’s easy to meet people. Everyone’s very forward-thinking and hard-working. I really appreciate that, not that you can’t find that in LA, but I think you have to be a lot more intentional about it, and I at least found it a bit more difficult. But then again, also to my own point, I was only there for maybe two months at a time, so.

HP: With both Newcastle and New York specifically playing a pretty big role in your life, if you had to choose an artist, some experience, or some form of media from both of those places, that has impacted your or the band in any way, what would that be?

CB: At least with Newcastle, I was part of a collective when I was 18 through my early 20s called No-Fi, as a play on Hi-Fi, Lo-Fi, and that was myself and a bunch of other musicians and artists, and we would put on DIY shows, art gallery exhibitions, big parties, and really try to celebrate the local community. And that was, again, really formative in my early years as a musician. And I was like, This is what I’m a part of, nothing else matters. I am here, and whatever else is happening, it’s whatever, because I just want to be a part of this. This is my world. So that was incredibly influential.

New York’s just different. I think for New York, it’s the idea of potential, the idea that anything could happen, and there’s always something happening here every day. It’s a very attractive quality in a city, especially with where I’m at in my career right now, because if I go back to Newcastle, it’s different, and I’m further along now. It’s kind of that big fish in a small pond. People have moved on from their bands, they’ve settled down, or they’ve moved into other lives. And as that naturally happens, especially with a career path like music, it’s tricky. Although we’ve played a lot of really good shows in New York, I feel like I’m always exposed to new music in New York. There’s always shows, bands always come here, people, friends from all over are always passing through. I just love that aspect of it. I feel like just by simply existing in New York, you are inspired, which sounds cliché as fuck, but I really do get it.

Cred. Isaac Nuñez

HP: No, but that’s fair. 

CB: Yeah, now, after being here for a year, it’s only a walk outside and then anything could happen, whereas in most places, I probably couldn’t say the same.

HP: With you growing up with No-Fi, and doing a lot of DIY and community-focused things back in Newcastle, what would be one aspect of that DIY community-forward ethos that you would want to keep ingrained in your career as Vacations keeps growing?

CB: Putting a spotlight on artists that are up and coming, that are developing their craft, and always trying to build a community. I never want to be a successful indie or alternative, or whatever genre tag the record label wants me to say, but you know what I mean. I never want to be at a point in my career where it’s just like, ‘Oh, we’re not thinking about the opener, or we don’t care about those around us.’ There is always some aspect of those DIY roots that carry on into everything that we do now, because I care a lot. I think there’s a lot of really fucking cool musicians out there. All my friends are sick. I love them all, lots of talented people. I just want to bolster everybody. Because I’m in a point in my career where things are good, things are stable, and there are people around me that are making their first single, or maybe they’re an album in, and I’m like, ‘This is sick. Let’s work together,’ or ‘Come open this show.’ Or people will come to me and be like, ‘Oh, how did you get a manager?’ And then we can sort of trade stories. I think that the exchange of information is really important and valuable.

HP: And with that aspect of trying to bolster other artists that were once in the same position that you were in, you’re hosting the third iteration of the MATES Festival in June, which is super exciting, and the first one that’s in New York, if that’s correct.

CB: Yeah, first one in New York.

HP: With the past two iterations of the festival featuring a mix of Aussie and US artists on the bill, I’d love for you to tell me a bit more about the ‘bridge between scenes’ concept of the festival, and how the vision has evolved since you brought it to New York.

Cred. Isaac Nuñez

CB: There are so many good artists in Australia that I think more Americans need to be aware of, because in my time since being here, a lot of Americans will associate Australian music with maybe Tame Impala or maybe AC/DC. But I’ve also heard before that people thought that they were British. So it’s just trying to put a spotlight on artists that I really admire, I really love, and bring them to the US in front of an audience that we have down pat, just to make it more accessible, but also mixing that in with American bands that I really love. And long-term goal, I would love to eventually bring American artists to Australia and have them mix in with other Australian artists, and have this almost traveling festival. Maybe we do it again in LA, and then maybe in Sydney, and then it’s this back and forth. I think that’d be really beautiful, because I know a lot of people who I’ve met here like Australian music. So I just want to put them onto more bands that I’m connected with, or that my friends back home are listening to and telling me about, whilst mixing that in with what’s happening here in the US.

HP: Yeah, I looked at the lineup, and it’s a lot of stuff that I’ve already been a fan of. I’ve been a huge fan of Horse Jumper of Love for a decent amount of time, so it’s really cool to see them play on such an awesome bill. Grent [Perez] is also awesome. It’s really cool.

CB: And they did a song with my friend Samira, who’s in Winter. So I’m like, this is just a natural pairing. If you know, you know kind of thing. 

HP: And then you dropped a couple singles off of your upcoming record No Place Like Home (From the Motel), which is a rerecording of your 2024 record, No Place Like Home. And from what I saw online, you actually did track it in a motel. 

CB: Yeah, I mean, I gotta be real, it’s a set that we built, or that one of my good friends built, in Newcastle. But it was framed in a way where you can’t tell, like it looks like it’s actually shot on location. Which is cool, but that’s just that whole movie magic thing.

HP: I’d love to know where the idea to retract the record in a live setting originally stemmed from. 

CB: We did a live session in Newcastle a few years ago at Sawtooth, which is a studio that I worked out of for a number of years. We had a really positive reception to it. We just kind of did a set list of Greatest Hits. And I think it was around when Forever in Bloom came out. I think it was because of the pandemic, because a lot of people were doing that. We were like, ‘This is a way that we can stay active and play a show, but on our own terms’, and be active while the world is on fire. So we wanted to carry that idea, but make it more thematic and push the artistic boundary of it all. So being able to close the chapter on No Place Like Home and say, ‘Thank you for all your support. Here’s a live version of the album’, but it’s not just a live album, it’s filmed as well, it’s in a set piece. I think it’s a really beautiful thing to do. It’s something that we want to try and do for each record or each release moving forward, because it’s just really fun. I also get a kick out of it because I’m like, ‘Cool, we’re playing the album from start to finish’, but also fans that might not have ever seen us live can also experience that album with us.

HP: Definitely. And then I was listening to the record, and a lot of the songs take a different shape than originally on the record, which I think is really cool. 

CB: You know what, that’s cool, because you get so used to playing it live that I kind of forget what the album sounds like. You start adopting these small changes melodically, or the way I sing it is probably a little bit different, because singing in a studio versus live is always different for me, small things like that. So that’s actually cool to hear. I appreciate that a lot.

HP: When you’re playing songs live versus hearing them in the studio, what songs have changed the most once you’ve brought them to the live stage?

CB: At least out of No Place Like Home, I think it’s pretty faithful to the record, probably “Close Quarters” only because I sing that very differently, because so much of my vocal technique is stacking vocals. So in a song like “Close Quarters,” where it’s incredibly dynamic, I have to pick a lane and be like, ‘Okay, am I singing like this, or am I going to sing like that?’ And I remember playing “Close Quarters” live for the first couple of times. I did the more soft-spoken, almost talking kind of delivery, but it never really landed. And then I was like, I’m just gonna try shouting, I’m just gonna try projecting my voice. And that paid off a lot. There are other songs; it’s funny doing a song like “Telephones,” because for years, I was like, ‘Nah, there’s no way we can pull it off.’ None of us can play keys [laughs] You know, it’s like, how’s that gonna work?

Cred. Isaac Nuñez

And then, I don’t know, the first US tour, we were like, Let’s just do it. This song is going off, let’s add it to the set list. I’m sure it’ll be a fun time. And it exceeded all expectations. But a lot of the guitar parts that I will play for that are usually improvised on the spot. I’ll just pick some jazzy chord progressions that can harmonize with the original chord progression and layer them. So that’s always fun. But I think we’re not like some other bands where it’s a completely different rendition live. We try to keep it, I think, for our own sakes, very consistent, so we can give a consistent show, rather than each night being something totally different. We’re not a jam band.

HP: I understand that. And you said in a past interview that one of the most important parts of your writing and your songs is that the emotional weight of the track connects with fans, too, in a sense, and I’d love to know if that enters your mind when you’re actually approaching songwriting, or how much that plays into your lyricism. 

CB: It’s pretty funny, when I’m songwriting, I’m not really thinking about a whole lot. I’m just in the process of simply doing and trying to figure out what I’m trying to convey. I think as I’ve grown and matured as a songwriter, now I will actually ask myself questions and go, ‘Okay, what is this trying to say emotionally?’ Whereas when I first started out, I was like, ‘Oh, cool. I wrote a song. I have a sick riff or a good chorus, and I would just be stoked about that, but not necessarily, ‘What does this song actually mean?’ Whereas now I ask myself those questions, especially now coming up to our fourth record, because we’ve almost finished recording it. One of the things with that was there are some songs where I’m like, ‘Hold on, I’ve already said this before, or I’ve already used these exact same lyrics.’ What am I actually trying to say differently this time?

HP: That’s fair. And then, just to go back a little bit to the live record, for fans that have already listened to and like and love No Place Like Home, how do you want this project to feel different or convey a different kind of message or emotion, in a sense? 

CB: I’m not sure, that’s up to the listener. For me, I get the satisfaction of playing these songs with my best friends and having a visual component to it. That’s really satisfying, and it feels fulfilling for me as an artist, but I would be curious if, as a listener, some people feel differently about the songs live, whether they like it more, or maybe they don’t like it as much live, or some parts they connect with more. I don’t know. That’s an interesting question to think about.

HP: And then, just to start to wrap up, tell me a little bit more about what your 2026 is shaping up to look like. Anything you want to plug?

CB: Gotta plug MATES. Big festival, really excited. New album. Lot of singles in the lead up—actually, no, there’s two or three singles in the lead-up to it. Also, a little bit of touring across the world. I can’t say where. I’m sure the locations are pretty easy to figure out, but it will be a lot more this year, whereas last year I had moved to New York and was settling into that, and everyone was kind of doing things in their own life, whilst also working away on this record. So we had kind of a break last year, which I think was really needed, and this year we’ll just be slowly ramping up everything on all fronts. So I’m really excited by the prospect of it.

MATES Fest is on June 20th, at Knockdown Center in New York City. You can buy tickets here.

Read the article in print in Issue 5 of Hit Parader Magazine.

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

May 2026 — $12.99

The cover story of Hit Parader Issue #5 enters the temple of Sleep Token at the exact moment their mystery has become too massive to hide. One year after Even In Arcadia turned the masked British phenomenon into a global rock event, the album’s instrumental edition strips away Vessel’s voice and invites fans to hear the cathedral underneath —…

Tigers Jaw: The Long Game Behind Lost on You

Posted on by joshwurz

The Scranton Emo legends Tigers Jaw have always evolved and grown in parallel with their audience; quietly scaling and building what is Tigers Jaw while refusing to sand off the raw DIY edges that made their sound their own in the first place. On their seventh full-length album, Lost on You, Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins are most interested in proving how a small-town do-it-yourself ethos can take you when you let that mindset grow with you, and it shows clearly on the project. The record perfectly captures a fully dialed-in 5-piece band making art they want to create together, yet it remains grounded in that same hometown hunger that’s continuously carried them from MySpace show swaps to sold-out shows across the country. Hit Parader had the opportunity to sit down with Walsh and Collins to discuss the fantastic new record, the artistic vision behind it, and much more. 

Hit Parader: To start, you guys have often been hailed as one of the best DIY bands from this third, fourth wave generation. What aspects of the origins, the DIY origins, are you most proud of and that you’ve kept as a core value of the band as you’ve grown, toured, and made seven records?

Ben Walsh: I think Bree, you should maybe start with the art piece here.

Brianna Collins: Sure, yeah. I think because the band started when everyone was so young, it also was sort of this tenacity of doing what you can with what you have, and with album art specifically, it’s sort of how I stepped into a larger role in the band where there was a need, and I was like, Oh, well, I make art. And from that point, whatever year that was, 2008 to now, it’s grown into this sort of art director role, where now I am able to have this outlet of Tiger’s Jaw as a call to make art and express myself in that way, along with the musical side of the band, and having to learn how to do all these different things, make ad mats, we still do so much ourselves.

BW: Yeah, I mean, just the whole scene that we came out of was just a small town, everybody’s just bored and trying to make something that feels like theirs. And it was really inspiring to see people from all different types of music, all different interests and backgrounds, having a place to perform and having an audience to perform to. There would be really cool DIY shows happening all over the place on any given weekend. And so it was really cool to build out our own little corner of that scene. We started off just by playing anywhere locally that we could play, by throwing shows at places if you could rent out a place for the night, or there was a friend’s house, or wherever we could play, we would try to play a show. Once we started utilizing MySpace and email and stuff, we were able to start networking with people from right outside of our area, and we started doing show trades. We’d book a show in Scranton for a band, and then they would book us in their hometown, and we would trade off. So it was little by little, we would just propel ourselves into new places. 

And eventually it started feeling pretty real, we would play. We played in Brooklyn for the first time, and people knew our music. And I was like, wow, this is really fantastic. I never imagined anybody outside of Scranton would care about our band. So it was these little, little, little victories that kind of came really organically. And so with that spirit, we’ve sort of approached everything that way. I have been our band manager ever since we started, and still am to this day. We’ve always been self-managed. And as we kind of spoke on before, Bree basically handles 90% of any merch item, or album cover, or anything that you see. She has curated such a strong set of imagery for this band, which is a huge part of who we are as a band, in addition to the music itself. So I think when we did start working with labels or a booking agent, it just came very organically, and it was like, Oh, we meet these people that are very like-minded and maybe sort of have a similar background or similar ethics as us. And it feels good working with them when the time is right. Our first handful of tours, we kind of scraped together ourselves via MySpace and things like that. And then we played plenty of shows to nobody for quite a while, and then eventually you start seeing more people coming out to the shows. And then eventually we’re like, okay, cool, it might make sense to work with a booking agent. So it was this natural progression of when to outsource something, or if it’s something we can handle on our own, we handle it ourselves.

HP: That’s super cool. And then congrats on the new record, Lost on You. That’s super exciting.

BW: Thank you!

HP: You’ve talked about waiting until you can kind of feel confident in the material and letting the album progress naturally. How did that philosophy show up in your choices during the time before and during the new record started to take shape?

BC: Not putting pressure on a timeline per se, especially because the last record we put out, I Won’t Care How You Remember Me, came out during the pandemic, and we couldn’t support the release of that record in the way that we typically would. It’s been a longer period of time from that release to now than there has been between other releases, but I think just allowing ourselves to organically come up with the ideas for the songs and not trying to rush into the studio and giving ourselves the time to collaborate and work together, to build the foundation with demos and then do pre-production, and not just be like, ‘we got to get to the studio, we haven’t released a record in this many years’.

BW: Yeah, I think with the luxury of time, we were able to chase ideas that we might have given up on in other circumstances. It allowed us to really explore every possible idea that we had and spend a lot of time refining those ideas and making sure that it was something that felt good and felt like part of the same batch of music. But I think because we approached it this way, this record definitely covers a lot more ground sonically than in the past, but it still feels like us, but just there’s maybe a few more risks, maybe a few more ideas that earlier on as a band we might not have gone after.

HP: And with this being your seventh full-length, and while songs like “BREEZER” and your first single “Head is Like a Sinking Stone” kind of nod towards the earlier work, the record definitely also feels firmly rooted in where you guys are now as a band. How would you describe the version of Tiger’s Jaw’s sound that exists on this album compared to past releases?

BW: Well, this is the first release we’ve been able to do in a long time as a fully functioning five-piece band. The five people who perform the songs on stage are the five people who are in the studio. Last, when we did the last record, it was before Mark was officially a member. He had played a few shows with us, or played one full tour with us, but we were already writing the record at that point, so he wasn’t a part of that one. So this record, and by virtue of spending a lot of time all together, demoing ideas out, these songs really capture the spirit of us playing together in the room. And the way that we approached things in the studio was we first and foremost tracked each song, all the instrumentals for each song live, and we ended up keeping live drum and bass takes, and those are the foundation of all of these songs. So it started in a place of all five of us in a room together playing these songs. So there’s this energy and rawness to the songs, and then on the flip side of the coin, there’s studio polish where that is needed. So it’s a really nice juxtaposition of the two, and a really nice blend of the two, where you still kind of get the raw energy, and you also get the production value.

BC: I was just going to say every record is a sort of time capsule of the moment in time, the people involved, and we’re so locked in with how we are performing live, and on this record, it felt like we were really able to translate how locked in we are and how connected we are as musicians and friends with this record as a whole. It just feels well-rounded in that sense. 

HP: That’s awesome. And speaking of polishing in the studio, you recorded the record with Will Yip at Studio 4 in Philly, which is really cool. What aspects of keeping the producer consistent through records have allowed for more creative freedom/risks to be taken, and what aspects of the new record wouldn’t have really materialized the same way without his input being in the room?

BW: I don’t think it was intentionally trying to do this, but I think fewer variables can kind of be more freeing when you have a trusted voice in the conversation as the producer. We know Will very well on a personal level. And he knows our band really well. He’s familiar with our whole catalog, and he has a really good intuition of how to assimilate himself into our group as essentially an extra band member when he is contributing as a producer. So I think there’s this organic comfort. He’s a like-minded person, he’s a friend outside of the studio. So it just creates this level of comfort that, you know, I don’t feel tense when I’m in the studio, I feel relaxed and able to enter a creative headspace. So I think just in the overall approach, it’s really great to work with someone who makes you feel at ease and able to create without being judged, and to chase every idea that you feel is worth chasing.

BC: Yeah, I think my favorite part, too, about working with Will specifically and over the course of all this time, is that he might not necessarily be a part of the base of the writing process. Whereas all of us have heard the demos, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of someone called demo-itis, but it’s where you get maybe locked into the idea of the demo rather than challenging yourself to think of it in other ways. And he comes in as this best friend, additional bandmate ear that, like Ben said, knows our band so well and knows us, and just thinks of ways, also with his producer intuition, of how to challenge us and maybe emphasize or switch around, just maybe help you critically think about it in a way that maybe you wouldn’t have if someone didn’t spark the idea. I just feel like he always helps me, so that if I have a vision, it comes forward better than I even thought it would with the band in general.

HP: And now that the record is done, what part of this era are you most excited to experience from the stage rather than the studio?

BC: I can’t wait to play a show on the day that the record comes out and actually be able to see people and talk to people. I feel like I’m working on getting over just the way that the last release was, and then allowing myself to be excited about all of the things that we’re able to do, even just being on tour together again, all together when the record comes out, and, yeah, I’m very excited for that.

BW: Yeah, for me, it’s just being able to play the songs in front of people. And I know how it feels to play them in a room with just us; we did it a million times over, and the songs are still exciting to me, so I feel really excited to share that energy with a group of people in a room. And it’ll be just really great, on our last record, we weren’t able to tour right after it came out. So just having a more normal rollout for this one, it just feels exciting. I don’t want to overuse that word, but when you write and record and put out a record, it’s not really until you start performing it live in front of people that you close that creative loop on things. And so when you’re not really able to close that loop, it just is an unsettling feeling. You’re like, the record’s out, it’s just in the air somewhere, I hope people find it. But being able to literally play a show the day it comes out and be on a tour for the weeks after it, you get that immediate feedback of just connecting with people. So I’m really looking forward to that. 

HP: And then, just to wrap up, when you think of Lost on You as a whole, what aspect are you most proud of capturing on the record? 

BC: I mean, I feel very proud of it, and, like I kind of talked about earlier, just how locked in we are as a band feels really good right now. It feels great to play together. It feels great to write together. It felt great to record. It’s definitely like, I love this record. I love listening to it, and I feel like that’s something you should want to do if you’re making this art. I want to enjoy it, and I can’t wait to share it, especially because we all did it together.

BW: I think sonically there’s some familiar elements on this record, but there’s a lot of new elements, a lot of new guitar tones and keyboard tones and just approaches to songs that we really haven’t explored much in the past. So I’m just excited that we’ve really spent a lot of time working on these songs and refining them and making them as good as they can be. So just really proud to have it out in the world, because we’ve been on quite a journey already making this record. 

Lost on You is out now, via Hopeless Records

Read the article in print in Issue 5 of Hit Parader Magazine.

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

Hit Parader #5: Sleep Token

May 2026 — $12.99

The cover story of Hit Parader Issue #5 enters the temple of Sleep Token at the exact moment their mystery has become too massive to hide. One year after Even In Arcadia turned the masked British phenomenon into a global rock event, the album’s instrumental edition strips away Vessel’s voice and invites fans to hear the cathedral underneath —…