No stranger to the music industry, Logan Henderson has already completed some of the biggest bucket list items a musician can dream of in their career. From the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball tour to performing at arenas nationwide, Henderson’s talents have already taken him far. One of four members of Columbia Records-signed hit boy band, Big Time Rush, Henderson spent years in the spotlight before ultimately taking a break after the band went on an indefinite hiatus.
“Sometimes it’s hard to break away if you’re in a serious relationship, no matter what that is. You need to really see things in a different way. You have to separate yourself from something that you see so close. So I felt very deep into what I was doing before and I thought that if I really want to get out of this spot and I want to continue to grow and change and evolve, I have to really separate myself and pull myself away from everything that I was doing before,” Logan Henderson told Beyond The Stage.
“[Taking some time for myself] is something that I thought was necessary for my growth as an artist and for my vision for what I wanted to do. And right when that happens, you don’t know if you’re making the right choice or not. Things happen the way they happen and I truly believe that. And that’s just kind of what happened for me. And I think that it’s really shaped me as a person and shaped my songwriting. And what I want to see out of myself and what I contHowinue to want to see for me in the future.”
Fresh off of that time away, Henderson’s solo project launched in January of this year, with single, “Sleepwalker” which took fans by storm. Added to dozens of Spotify playlists around the world, the song trended in Mexico City, Mexico, ultimately ending up on the country’s version of the Viral Top 50. With more than a million views on the music video alone (which premiered on Billboard), the song instantly peaked as a 2017 favorite among music fans everywhere.
When asked about the process for recording, Henderson noted that he’s working with Beyond The Stage-alum, producer and songwriter Nick “RAS” Furlong, who also wrote and produced for Big Time Rush among others.
Henderson spoke about the friendship, “He’s a great guy and we make music really well together. We’re really close and we have really wild taste in music so when I said I wanted to do something very different than what I was doing before, and we just decided to sit down and get going.”
Sharing a photo of the two on his then only active social channel, Twitter, Logan Henderson announced his return to music. The photo was captioned with “Chapter II” and now has almost ten thousand likes from eager fans. That photo, shared in early December of 2015, was when fans officially knew they were getting music from Henderson soon.
“‘Sleepwalker’ was the first time that I got back into the studio after my hiatus and my time away from music. That was the first initial idea I had. I had written before about relationships and past relationships, but never in the way that I wanted to speak so candidly and so openly. ‘Sleepwalker’ was the first time I had the idea to really put some type of idea and some type of concept together.”
With an alternative pop sound, Henderson then released two more singles. One of which, “Bite My Tongue,” is a pop song that’s driven by an almost too catchy rhythmic guitar part. With a building synthesizer dominated pre-chorus, the song instantly impacted playlists, with adds to playlists like “Best EDM,” which grabs the attention of more than 40,000 listeners worldwide.
“I remember hearing the guitar part of ‘Bite My Tongue’ and just thinking, ‘We need to write to this and we need to make this a song,’ because I was just kind of able to see what it could look like and the sound and the landscape.”
Followed by “Bite My Tongue,” Logan Henderson released “Speak of the Devil,” a surprise single that had a fake release date, ultimately leading to a release on Halloween. His most daring track yet, the track pulls from Henderson’s musical interests, which he stated, several times throughout our interview, are all over the place.
“‘Speak of the Devil’ kind of made me uncomfortable given the content that it’s about and the way that it’s laid out musically,” Henderson said about the single. “We were up late, going through sounds and thinking about what’s the weirdest thing we can do.”
Rather than release the three songs in an EP or release album details, Henderson has remained constant in the fact that he’s planning to continue to release singles.
“I think singles are just a little bit more. I think there’s something to a body of work and I love that. But singles are just my way to dip my toes back into music. I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on themselves and I’d rather write music when I feel like when I feel like writing music. I like telling stories when I feel like I have something to actually offer and say, instead of just trying to jam out records over and over, I really don’t like that vibe for me. So three singles was enough to kind of show the difference in musical background and musical taste. It allows people to kind of jump on board with what’s going on with me and start to get to know a bit more of me each time.”
Along with those three singles came album artwork, visuals and two music videos that continued to build Henderson’s personal career in the spotlight. Premiered originally on Billboard, both music videos were cited as parts of the project that Henderson has proved to both enjoy and influence. Released the same day as the single, “Sleepwalker” features an almost eerie countdown and an ending that’s the most dramatic part of the video.
Almost six months after the release of that video, Henderson shared the video for “Bite My Tongue,” a dramatic, intriguing, visual complement to his second single. Filmed in London, the video enters the highly relevant topic of alternate universes and romantic relationships.
Read the rest of our features with Henderson here.
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