Luke Hemmings talks about his new solo song “Shakes,” stepping out on his own as an artist, finding his own sound, feeling nervous about performing on his own for the first time, what he wants fans to learn about him from this new solo project, whether the 5SOS guys have heard his new solo songs and more!

Luke Hemmings:
All these emotions I have inside of me … get get them out. And I think I’ve learned that I’m a very emotional person. And I think I have something to say, as an artist of my own. Hey, it’s Luke Hemmings, and this is Billboard News.

Rania Aniftos:
Everybody, it’s Rania Aniftos, and welcome back to Billboard News. We have such an exciting guest in studio today: We have the one and only Luke Hemmings! Welcome.

Luke Hemmings:
Hell yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Rania Aniftos:
So the new single — “Shakes” — it sounds so great. I love this next era for you. Tell me a bit about the inspiration behind it, the songwriting process.

Luke Hemmings:
“Shakes” was written, like, maybe a year ago, at this point, and started in New York. I already had, like, a few ideas for the album from, like, writing on the road. And, like, a lot of it was written in hotels and, like, planes and all the sadm boring places. That’s where a lot of it came from.

Rania Aniftos:
Introspective places.

Luke Hemmings:
Very introspective. And this was written, the chorus was written in New York, and it was like experimenting with pitching my voice. That’s why the chorus kind of sounds like me, but it also has like other layers of like pitch vocals. Anyway, very boring nerdy stuff. But I was getting, like, more, I don’t know, just trying out stuff. So experimenting with different perspectives.

The first album was very, like, coming from what I … my experiences, and like, how I see things. So I was like, let’s try something else, not thinking that it would turn out to be the first single. And then, like, nine months later, wrote the verses for it. And yeah, I was trying to just listen to a lot of like, The Verve, and Blur and M83 and Beachouse and stuff. So that’s kind of where the inspiration came from.

But the way I write things for this project is very chaotic. So it will be like, I’ll write a piece here. And then, like, won’t write anything, the rest of it for, like, nine months. So it’ll, like, turn out to be this mishmash of, I don’t know, a story, but it still has that same emotion and feeling.

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