Up Late doesn’t give a fuck.
Good news for fans of genre-spanning artist Up Late AKA this week – the Wollongong based electro-emo-rap connoisseur has just announced that he’ll be releasing his debut EP STARS December 18th and, along with that, he’s gifted us his biggest single to date in the form of gritty, drop-heavy banger ‘Fuck You’. Don’t be fooled by the emotive punch and noirishly euphoric synths on the track though, the lyrics actually stem from a positive place:
“Fuck You is our chance to literally say fuck it to the rules and parameters placed on artists and creators,” he Up Late says. “When I originally wrote this it was just four guitar chords because I honestly suck at guitar. That’s the DIY hardcore attitude – ‘who cares if I can’t play guitar? I can play four chords so fuck it that’s my song’.
The track explodes with energy from the opening seconds, with Up Late maintaining the heat throughout and even enlisting indie-pop up and comer Hearteyes who rises to the occasion and delivers a fire verse. Whether you’re headbanging, searching for that tearjerker moment, or ready to lose yourself in an electronic soundscape, it really feels like Up Late has you covered on all bases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELQFdFeSip4
We caught up with the multi-faceted artist to find out about the tune that inspired ‘Fuck You’ and, as you would expect, it’s a real mixed bag. Check it out below and head here to pre-save STARS on Spotify:
1. Lil Peep – ‘Benz Truck’
I first started playing in bands when I was around 13 – I was pretty terrible at most instruments so naturally I just gravitated towards screaming/singing. The only musical thing that ever came remotely easily to me was making beats on Garageband – so naturally most of my teens I spent making trap beats but also playing in hardcore bands. I would trawl Datpiff and Soundcloud looking for new artists and new sounds and that’s when I came across Lil Peep before he had dropped ‘Star Shopping’.
It was artists like him, Bones and Lil Tracy that were pushing this kind of crazy emo-meets-rap sound that I’d never heard before – it was like this crazy mashing of worlds. I never could successfully combine all my influences like they could until I started writing for Up Late. ‘Benz Truck’ is my favourite song from this genre, although ‘Fuck You’ might not sound all that similar to this, there’s still this kind of rap/Soundcloud semblance that both songs share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rkJ3L5Ce80&list=LLPR7E7L4U0hKesfJqQDyIGg&index=1435
2. Silverstein – ‘The Afterglow’
If I had my way I would start every song with a filtered chorus and there’s just something so deathly catchy about this intro in particular. I wrote the original demo for ‘Fuck You’ in late 2019 – I really wanted to flex my rock muscle on a song and I remember I was listening to a bunch of pop punk including this song in particular. That chorus man… it just loops in your head over and over, I love the cliche pop punk sound – and Shane Told’s voice and some power chords is just an unbeatable combo. It’s funny as I’m signed to the same record label as them now, UNFD let’s make the Up Late/ Silverstein song happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKg3XMsLQ_g
3. Blackbear – ‘Me & Ur Ghost’
Blackbear was my most listened to artist of 2019 – there’s something so ridiculously catchy about his tracks. I really love that he rarely uses more than just four chords to write a song because I suck at guitar so playing anything more complex than four chords is normally way too hard for me. When I originally wrote this demo I recorded each chord one by one and re-sampled it in so it sounded almost like a sample. ‘Me & Ur Ghost’ in particular has this incredible infectious energy – I loved that he was singing about something so emo but he did it with such an upbeat/majory feel. I really wanted ‘Fuck You’ to come across as a kind of tongue-in-cheek fun upbeat song as opposed to a full on emo rock song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQM_T-ijA_I
4. Hearteyes – ‘Born Annoying’
I originally wrote ‘Fuck You’ by myself in my bedroom in 2019 but I then brought it into the studio in early 2020. I had my old band friends + Jake Sheath from Sinclaire and my producing/co-writing partner Nat work on it in the studio over a day or two, I loved it when it was finished but it never felt quite right. Fast-forward to the release of ‘Friends’ and I was exchanging music with Hearteyes, he sent me this song and I knew he had something crazy going on. I sent him ‘Fuck You’ and asked him to sing on it and his verse was just the icing on the cake. I think ‘Born Annoying’ is his best song so far but I’m soooo hype for everyone to hear our next track together after ‘Fuck You’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTd0RPbh-nM
5. Jxdn – ‘Angels & Demons’
‘Fuck You’ was one of the first tracks we did where we actually tried to make it feel like an actual rock band was performing the song behind me. Even though everyone in the room came from a band background it was just really hard to make it feel like a band but also still feel like Up Late… I was so adamant on all the music not sounding like a band that we kind of got stuck in this paradoxical loop of ‘no too band, not band enough’. We’d just finished Hearteyes verse and we were getting ready to mix it and we were struggling with the drums and their place in the song. They either felt too heavy or too tinny – there was no middle ground – we needed something to give it that rock feel without it straying too far into full on rock band territory. It still needed to be fun and cheeky in a sense.
I’ve always been a big fan of Travis Barker and I’ve been following his new record label pretty close so when this new artist Jxdn dropped on the scene I was pretty quick to listen. ‘Angels & Demons’ came out right around the time we were trying to put the finishing touches on ‘Fuck You’. This song in particular just has that huge grandiose rock band feel without shying too far away from its emo rap core. I played it for my producer Nat and he hopped right onto Splice and grabbed a Travis Barker drum sample. We killed all the drums we created and just ran the Travis Barker loop through distortion and that was it. The song was done.
