Acclaimed
singer-songwriter Luke Hemmings has released his highly-anticipated new
EP, boy,
via Arista Records. The record, co-produced with longtime collaborator Sammy
Witte (Maggie Rogers, Harry Styles, Freya Ridings), is a concise and cohesive 7-track coterie of songs, each
offering a new sense of maturity, growth, and humanity for Hemmings. Arriving alongside the project is a stunning
official visual EP consisting of all seven tracks which premiered globally for
eager fans on YouTube at midnight.
Hemmings today also released his deeply felt single “Benny” and
its companion visualizer. “Benny’s” dreamy soundscape is an ode to
family, but one that aches with the loss of a life sometimes lived on their
periphery.
“The song is about
guilt I spend a lot of time away from my family and live in a different country
than them. As you get older and life moves on, things happen at home and
it’s the guilt of not being there and missing moments. It’s hard to miss
the good moments, but even harder to miss the bad moments. You can’t be there
to fix it all and be there for the ones you love,” revealed Hemmings.
boy’s 7 dynamic new tracks, showcase Hemmings'
lyrical and sonic evolution right from the start with the EP’s opener,
"I'm Still Your Boy." Launching with the hazy strum of an acoustic guitar
and lashings of stacked vocal tracks, the production ebbs outwards, contracting
for the pre-chorus before exploding out on the chorus, Hemmings, mantra like,
repeating the phrase: “I’m still your boy.” Lyrically, the track anchors the
EP’s larger narrative theme of the liminal space between youth and adulthood.
Guided by an introspective Hemmings,
still grappling to hold on to his fading boyhood, each subsequent song draws
listeners further into the artists dreamlike realm where themes of youth's
departure, fear, solitude, and hope reverberate powerfully throughout the
project.
When asked about
the inspiration for boy, Hemmings explains, “The majority of the songs
for boy were written at a time in my life when I was a stranger to stillness.
The songs were born on planes and hotel room notepads, muttering under my
breath while walking through new cities each day. I was disoriented and
overwhelmed by the world and my place in it. Those emotions weaved themselves
through this project. The longing for more emotional understanding within
myself, the isolation, grief, love, sadness and hope. They’re not intended
to be consumed as autobiographical facts, but as an overly dramatic, cathartic,
poetic stream of my consciousness. As if you’ve opened my diary and can only
read a line from each page.”
boy Track List
- I'm Still Your
Boy
- Shakes
- Benny
- Close My Eyes
- Garden Life
- Close Enough to
Feel You
- Promises
Today’s multiple releases not only usher in a new and exciting sonic era
for Luke Hemmings and his fans around the world but they lay testament to an
evolving artist, who as Dork Magazine proclaimed, “bares his introverted soul, creating a love
letter to nostalgia and a quest for self-discovery.”
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