THERE’S A REASON CUPID SHOOTS ARROWS. LOVE IS SHARP, AN ALL-CONSUMING PANG OF PAIN AND PLEASURE. CHASE HUDSON IS PIERCED THROUGH FROM EVERY DIRECTION. HIS NEWEST EP, LOVE BITES, IS THE BLOOD-RED PROOF. IT’S BANDAGED IN CHEETAH PRINT. IT’S CHEMICALLY EXPLOSIVE, DRIPPING NEON. THE OPENING TRACK, MUGSHOT, IS INSPIRED BY BONNIE AND CLYDE AND SETS THE INTENSITY OF THE ENTIRE EP, SPLATTERED WITH INTOXICATING GUITAR SOLOS AND DEEPLY CUTTING LYRICS. CHASE TELLS US THAT HIS EP SHOWS THAT LOVE ISN’T ONE THING. NEITHER IS HE. LISTENING TO LOVE BITES IS LIKE WATCHING A HIGH-SPEED CHASE, WHEREAS TALKING TO CHASE IS LIKE WATCHING BONNIE WRITE POEMS SITTING SHOTGUN IN THE GETAWAY CAR. A SELF-DESCRIBED “INTROVERT AT HEART”, BUT AN EXTROVERT AS AN ARTIST, WE ALSO CHAT ABOUT THE QUIETER SIDE OF LOVE - ITS UNSPOKEN SAFETY, NIGHTLY DEBRIEFS WHEN THE WORLD FALLS AWAY, AND RAISING PUPPIES.

Hi Chase! I listened to your new EP, Love Bites, and I want to congratulate you because it is so well done! On X (formerly Twitter), you wrote that 21 captures who you were at a moment in time. Now that you turn 22 with the EP release, do you think a song about being 22 would sound totally different?

It’s funny you mention that because 21 captured such a moment in time, it stands alone and can’t be rewritten. I couldn’t go on and be like, “I’m 22 now…I’m 23 now…” for each year. Being 21 was such a fulfilling age for me. Being in LA, I couldn’t do much before I turned 21. I couldn’t get into clubs. I never had a fake ID. I wanted to turn 21 so badly, and as soon as that happened, I was thinking how it’d be embarrassing if I didn’t have a licence. People were like, “Are you sure about this ID?” because it wasn’t horizontal, like how a driver’s licence looks. I thought to myself, “Dude, this is so embarrassing! Get that damn licence!” [Laughs] I needed to grow up completely. I live at home with my girlfriend now and my two dogs are my world. It’s such a turn-around compared to what I was doing at 18 with all my friends and partying. Now we live through each other and talk about our days at lunch. I’m starting to slow down and get to the core of who I want to be. When I was going through things, it was so much easier having my friend group around telling me it was okay and that they would have my back when I wasn’t able to have my own back. Now, I feel like I’ve finally stood up for myself and I’ve grown into myself. Turning 21 felt like a coming-of-age movie, I feel like I’m there.

Yeah, it really sounds like a turning point for you! I think it’s a great mentality too to let music be a moment in time because sometimes artists are reluctant to finish a song because they worry about how it will carry forward rather than letting it be a singular moment. In 21, some lyrics are, “Yesterday is a burning picture of the past.” You seem like a very in-the-moment person. If that is true, how does that affect your overall artistic process?

I’m an introvert at heart but an extrovert as well because I was forced to be, in a way. I have ADHD but I’m an introvert. Having those two things balance each other out always made me quick on my feet. Now, I’m seeing the world from a different lens. I’m trying to be self-aware and process how I feel about things. I feel on a deeper, heavier scale than a lot of people do. I’m very protective of my heart and feelings. So when I started this new relationship with my girlfriend, I wanted to go into it with self-awareness. I wanted to know that it was right before I sealed the deal and asked her to be my girlfriend. I was very careful because these days people date for whatever reason but, for me, I’m dating for marriage. I’m dating for a life-long partner. Giving myself space before dating somebody helped me understand what I really wanted.

You’re mentioning being really intentional and careful with your relationship which obviously underscores a lot of the EP. I really enjoy how cohesive Love Bites is. It feels like watching a short film from beginning to end which goes along with you saying that 21 is like a coming-of-age movie. Was it intended as a story from start to finish?

It’s funny you say that because actually, no, we didn’t have a plan for it to have a storyline. I think these are songs that are in different chapters of the book. It’s meant to make you feel like you are in a story but at the same time, there’s so much more to the story and many more songs that I wish I could have put on the EP. There’s a unique storyline where it feels like you’re picking it up in different places and hearing it from a different perspective. One thing I realised over the last couple of years was that theatre and drama are the foundation of my lyrics that come from telling a moment that I can shape a song around. So [lyrics] usually come with a concept and a moment that stuck with me. I keep a list of the things that really stood out to me in my notes app and think about it for weeks, maybe months. When I work with somebody who I think could bring that story to life, I am very careful about it. Certain producers couldn’t make what I made with Love Bites but could totally make what I did with 21 and Mugshot. There are different genres that I am tapping into with this EP so it’s really cool how it all shaped together. The songs are four different worlds but also live within each other.

Absolutely. I want to go back to you saying that you are an introvert at heart, but in terms of the music, the theatre and drama that you mention come across much less reserved. In what ways do you think your introversion comes out in your music?

Being an introvert in real life isn’t the same as being an introvert in the studio. For an introvert, being in the studio is where you can express yourself. It’s almost like free therapy. Showing up to a session and saying what’s on my mind means I have to have a different level of confidence and charisma in the studio to help orchestrate a room to work in the way I want it to. You have to leave your shyness at the door. It’s being able to express yourself in a way you wouldn’t normally and put yourself in a place you would never be in on a normal Tuesday with your friends. You bring out everyone’s mood in a room. You have to tell them the story, with all of the context. Whereas, when I’m home by myself, I’ll just be thinking about it in such a small sense. In the studio, I open my mind about what that idea means to me for everyone to get it. You can’t be an introvert in the studio. You have to show your artistry. Being an introvert is a great thing though because you are keeping your thoughts inside and then maybe writing them down or telling them to your safe person. But I also think you shouldn’t share your ideas with everybody. You need to preserve them in the way that they originally felt to you. You want to go to the studio with full confidence, but if anything, I’ll talk about my ideas with my girlfriend. She’ll give me very honest feedback and I appreciate that. Even if she were to tell me she didn’t love an idea, I would still give it a shot.

I think it’s great to put yourself first creatively like that and to trust yourself. I want to talk more about some themes on the EP. Mugshot has a very Bonnie and Clyde feel and I thought a lot of the record did as well. There is an adventurousness or a danger to the love represented in it. In Worst Way, the lyric is “viciously in love” which is so interesting. How do you think the EP defines love as you currently feel it?

This comes back to the title of the EP, Love Bites. “Love bites” can be a kiss on the neck or a hickey, but it can also mean that love can actually bite you in the ass in a way that you’re not prepared for. There’s such a double meaning to it. I think people have to see that love is not easy. Love is never easy. If it was, everyone would be in love, you know? I think it’s something worth fighting for and I think from the get-go you have to lay it all out on the table and tell them your flaws, what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. Being able to have that openness, even in music, is important. Love is never something you just start and never change - there are so many ups and downs. I mean that in the kindest way possible because so much intensity goes into love and I think you need to make note of when it might be harmful to your mental health. Like, “Oh my God, they texted me this, what does this mean!?” You’re trying to figure out what it means with your friends and those little things will mess with your head. You have to know what it means to be in love and understand how much it takes over your mind in every way. It is always a full-scale of emotions. If it’s that, you’re in love. The EP is about the fact that yes, there is a soft side but there’s also a sexy side and a mature side. Love is never just one thing.

The music videos for Love Bites and Mugshot both have a very ‘just the two of us’ energy. Can you tell me more about the idea behind these videos and what it was like to film them?

I always had a real idea of what I wanted Love Bites to be. It’s fully centred around the night Chiara and I met. It follows the storyline of our meeting. We met on Halloween at a club, and the music video looks nothing like that but if you would have seen how ridiculous my outfit was, you would understand! [Laughs]

Wait, now I need to know exactly how you were dressed!

I was wearing a Beetlejuice costume when I met her. I had the full makeup, the moss on my skin, and the crazy green hair. When we met, we hit it off right away and I felt like I was seeing her through the costume. I was just me. I was trying to make her laugh and as soon as I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s something here between us,” I realised how stupid my outfit was. It made me think about it so much more throughout the weeks. But the music video storyline follows from being in the club to going home that night and waking up and thinking how insane it was. I woke up at 6 am the next day and was ecstatic, “Oh my God, what just happened!?” I picked up coffee and came back to the house and saw her again. I was all dressed up and she was in her nighttime outfit. That’s how the storyline unfolds but we were also there with our friends so we wanted to include them in the music video. The colours are a big part of the emotions - it’s red and blue, neon colours of Chinatown at night. There was a disco ball at the club which I loved. Seeing it all come to life was surreal because it felt like I was reliving that moment.

That’s so beautiful. How about Mugshot?

For Mugshot, we didn’t have a concept in mind. We knew we were going to shoot a Bonnie and Clyde-esque music video and rented a car. We just drove it around and shot in a studio. We messed around in a parking lot and took it as it was. That was a really fun style because that’s something you should get out of love - not expecting what is going to come next. So I liked the idea of not planning it also because it was shot on film. I wanted to describe love in a way that you shouldn’t have a plan. Bonnie and Clyde were on the run, they just knew they were going somewhere together. The general idea was to take the chaos as it came at us. That’s also how our relationship developed - by not knowing what was going to come next and figuring it out.

Yeah, you can’t get much more unexpected than meeting someone while you’re dressed as Beetlejuice! Some of the lyrics in Worst Way seem to be about going against the norms of traditional romantic love. In a similar vein, do you feel like you went against any musical norms in this EP?

I think it goes against norms sonically, at least compared to my past music. This EP is guitar-leaning and more pop-alt. We leaned pop heavy and we wanted to expand on the idea that love isn’t just one thing. We had Love Bites and we knew what that was meant to be. I want love to come at me from all directions - someone to love me in the worst and best way. There is a lot in the song that caters to it being an intense relationship for me. We have great moments and reminisce together on the night like, “Wow, that was such a crazy night but now we’re just back at our place and happy and nothing’s going on, what do we do now?” There’s just such weird, crazy shit happening in LA all the time! We go from doing so much together to returning to our home as homebodies. It’s like, “Wow, it’s a crazy world out there, I think I like it better here.” We have to do a debrief on the night every time we go out.

I love a good debrief! When I listened to the EP, one of the first things I noted was that I can really imagine these songs played live. You’ll be performing at Lollapalooza in August. When you were creating the EP, were you thinking about how they will live on stage?

I did my first tour in 2022 and after that, I realised what it meant to have a song that you put out and a song that you perform live, and how those worlds intertwine. Ever since I went on tour, I’ve been making music to make live music. I’ve been seeing music in a new way and energy in music means so much more to me. I want to make music that people can appreciate live with lyrics that sink in. When I performed, I noticed certain lines people loved. People would be like, “That's the chorus!!” or “That’s the line!!” Seeing people take in the music live changed my perspective on how I wanted to write. In the gap between when I put out Teenage Heartbreak and now, I was able to understand what I wanted to say. It took a long time. Getting to the EP, the first song that made me feel like, “This is what I wanna say!” was Love Bites. Normally, the song that shapes the project is what I make the title track because we expanded from there. I knew there was so much more to say. We drew from different references and made a record that’s cohesive and stands alone.

What references did you draw from?

The only LA show I did was with Billy Idol and I really got into his music after I performed with him. Seeing him live made me understand his music more and how it made people feel in a live audience. I felt like I needed to make music like that. I referenced disco and rock. I was also looking up to older artists in the punk scene. My favourite band is Pierce The Veil. Their lyrics hold such depth. I got into Deftones over the past year or two. Lenny Kravitz is also a big inspiration and I recently got to be a part of his music video. I’ll also be appearing in Palaye Royale’s music video directed by Mod Sun so I’ve had the privilege to work with some of my idols. There is room for such diversity in music. There isn’t a box that I’m trying to fit in. I was able to accomplish that by listening to so many artists over the past few years.

Yeah, I think genre is becoming a much more fluid thing and it gives artists a lot more freedom. I want to end on a more personal note - other than music, what do you feel happiest about at the moment?

Over the last couple of months, getting a puppy changed my life. I got a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who is the cutest thing in the world. My other dog really needed a best friend to have someone to play with. Seeing how they’re meshing really well makes me so happy. They’ve been the centre of my whole world for the past couple of months. My girlfriend has been such a great help with raising her. Her name is Lady. Another thing that makes me happy is that I’ve been able to get close to all of my family. I’ve been hanging out with my cousins a lot recently. I’ve been talking to my sisters a lot more. Having the time to step back and figure myself out has helped me get closer to them. Everyone lives such busy lives so being able to catch up with them brings me back down to earth. I never realised how much I needed guidance while I’ve been in LA. I have really been able to rekindle how close I was to my family when I first moved here. I’ve even gotten close to my girlfriend’s family which makes me so happy. I’m going to her niece and nephews’ baseball games and they’re excited to see me and listen to my music! I’m able to show them my songs before they come out and they get so excited! And spending all the time in the world with my girlfriend is so important - we take on life together. That’s why Love Bites is what it is. We’re such a force and we want our lives to work together. The industry is tough so talking with her helps us progress so much as a couple.

It’s so nice to have such supportive people in your circle and it’s really radiating from you. That’s a lovely note to end on. Thank you so much.

Interview by Tessa Swantek

Photographer Hannah Sider

Fashion Nico Amarca

All clothes DIOR MEN

Groomer Chris Miles

Stylist’s assistant Kylie Dillon