Kids Losing Sleep’s latest emo-driven single is another one of those twist songs, written in the early half of 2019 only to find its relevance increasing the further we wander down this timeline. “We Are A Mess” is right on brand for 2021.
There’s a beautiful little nugget of wisdom at the core of this song: that if you’re going to be a complete disaster, and you’re going to own that disaster, in a lot of circles that counts for a certain level of imperviousness. It’s not quite seeing the light after finding rock bottom, but finding rock bottom and discovering there might just be gold down here.
As the band put it, “We Are A Mess” is meant to share their experience of “falling out with the rest of the world. What started as a song acknowledging the mess we’re all in, became a song of acceptance, and finding power in that acceptance.”
“I don’t know if I’m capable of writing not sad songs so it’s working for me,” laughs KLS’ Owen Williams.
“We Are A Mess” fits seamlessly into Kids Losing Sleeps’ current output of bittersweet noise; dancing that fine line between banger and the far more morose influences of emo-threaded lyrics. Curiously enough, the song and its title came into existence independently—just waiting for the right opportunity to get stitched together.
“The words ‘We Are A Mess’ were written down in some early notes as something we all knew would eventually become a song, and had become a bit of a mantra for us as a band,” says guitarist/vocalist Jarod Gallant. “It wasn’t until most of this song was already written that the idea to incorporate the line and title ‘We Are A Mess’ came.
“Owen had the entire chorus written and matched up to a demo based on a riff we had messed around with at some rehearsals. In an attempt to follow up the line ‘maybe my worst is my best,’ came the realization that this was the song that the title had been waiting for.”
“I’m pretty sure the title was something that just came up organically in conversation during a time where all four of us were struggling with a variety of things, balancing our personal lives with the band and just keeping up with life bullshit,” laughs Williams. “We’d sit around and vent to each other as friends and just laugh about what a mess we all are and how that kind of related to what was going on in the world around us; finding a bit of comfort in the fact that everything is a total mess right now.”
“We Are A Mess” is the second single that Kids Losing Sleep have released this year, following “Smile Away,”—both of us which have been self-produced and recorded, with John Mullane (In-Flight Safety) and Paul Edwards mixing and mastering, respectively.