Superheaven singer-guitarist Taylor Madison isn’t entirely comfortable standing in the spotlight. Problem is, his band is only getting bigger these days.
When Revolver catches up with the Pennsylvania-based singer-songwriter, his acclaimed post-hardcore band are on the verge of releasing their stellar self-titled album — their first new LP in a decade and likewise their first since their music started blowing up on TikTok.
While the group’s first two albums — 2012’s Jar and 2015’s Ours Is Chrome — built up a cult following, Superheaven generally ground to a halt in 2016, at least until Jar deep cut “Youngest Daughter” went viral on socials. Fans have since scored numerous TikTok reels while using the song’s powerfully driving slow-groove, which in turn led to its multi-million streaming status on Spotify. Superheaven started touring again in 2022.
Though Madison and his bandmates are appreciative of the enormous traffic-bump, the singer-guitarist feels a bit conflicted about how “Youngest Daughter” exploded online. He admits that it’s been cool to see the song, which hadn’t been a single, grow in popularity. But at what consequence?
“It’s done a lot for our band,” he admits. “It’s resulted in more ticket sales, and more eyes on us, which I guess in a way I kind of resent. In my mind I think I like attention, but then I get it and I’m instantly put off by it. I don’t want to be the focal point of anyone’s attention, I guess.”
He continues: “But as far as the song going viral, there’s really no downside. I don’t know if this sounds cocky, but if I thought it was our only good song, or our best song, I would be like ‘Damn… now what?’ But I don’t even think it’s in the top 5. I think we can write better songs than that.
“So, I feel like it’s put us in a spot where people are paying attention, and we can be like ‘Alright, well, now we’ve got to give them an even better song!’”
The better songs, one could argue, are found all throughout Superheaven, an album that plies quasi-political heavy shoegaze grooves (“Humans for Toys”) as well as sigh-worthy, love-locked post-hardcore bounces (“Cruel Times”) and distortion-blaring grunge-punk heaters (“Hot Head”).
While the full-on return of Superheaven has had the online fanbase eagerly anticipating the release, Madison isn’t going out of his way to create a ton of additional Superheaven content to sate the ever-hungry algorithm. He admits he doesn’t even have the passwords to his band’s various accounts. He’s not too motivated to plug his pop-rock-styled Webbed Wing project on Instagram, either — someone else handles the promotion for his wildly irreverent, rarely band-related Quit Your Band While You Still Can podcast with Superheaven co-vocalist-guitarist Jake Clarke.
“It’s tough, because [with] the economy on the internet, you’ve constantly got to be out there, or else you’ll be forgotten about,” Madison says. And even while there’d been plenty of hype ahead of Superheaven’s long-awaited new album, being terminally online to enjoy the praise just isn’t in his DNA.
“I… try not to read too much of the things being said about us online,” he says. “I don’t want to read all the comments. I’m not popping in on Reddit to see what people have to say about our new songs.”
Speaking with Revolver, Madison reveals his thoughts on Superheaven’s viral explosion, the bad stuff he sees in his feed, his general hot-headedness and more.
It’s interesting you mention the idea of not wanting to be the focal point, because of the way that these [songs] traffic on socials. People are bringing [“Youngest Daughter”] into TikTok reels of them walking through the snow. They imbibe this song of yours and take in their own direction. Is it interesting to see how people react or reinterpret the song with their posts? Have you gone down that rabbit hole?
TAYLOR MADISON No, not really. If anything, I kind of love the fact that it has a life of its own. The thought of having any notoriety is overwhelming to me. If there was a music video for the song that went viral, and people knew what we looked like, that might be a little different. But the song wasn’t even a single. We have the good fortune of being separated from the song. People know that our band put it out, but people don’t really know us. We have fans that know me and Jake, and they know about the podcast. But a lot of people that are new to the band don’t know that we’re in our late thirties.
It’s been a journey towards getting back to Superheaven. At what point in the process did you decide to start making new music again?
We stopped touring in 2016, but we’ve played at least one show a year for almost every year since then. So, it’s not like we broke up. But then we played Outbreak Fest in the UK in 2022, and then we started talking about playing some Jar 10-year anniversary shows, and those shows went over really well. And when we were practicing for those, we were like, “Do we wanna record or another record? Do we want to try and write and see how it goes?”
It was pretty low stakes. We all agreed that if we don’t like the music, then we don’t have to record it or put it out.
What was the first new song?
The first two songs were actually the ones we released [in 2024]: “Long Gone” and “Numb to What Is Real.” I just felt really good about ‘em. You know, Joe [Kane, Superheaven bassist] came with a couple of ideas for “Long Gone” — like, he wrote the main riff and a couple of other parts — and we started molding that. Same thing with “Numb to What Is Real.” Jake had most of that song written and I think we tweaked a few things. I felt really good. It felt like “Ok, this sounds like two Superheaven songs.”
I don’t want to make it sound like we reinvented the wheel, but I think they sound like us… but a little better. I think we’ve sharpened our songwriting [through] the years that we weren’t very active [as Superheaven]. I feel that way about the whole record. We couldn’t have written this record 10 years ago.
The lyrics don’t seem to be about this implicitly, but “Long Gone” is kind of a cheeky title for your first song in almost a decade. How intentional was that?
It was just happenstance. I wanted that to be the first song [we released], but because of the name I was also like, “I don’t want [the band’s return] to be [the focus].” It’s obviously not about that.
What’s it about then?
A few of the songs on the record have this same theme, [about] the way that everything is right now. I mean, I open any app and my timeline is filled with videos of people in road rage incidents shooting each other, or a guy jumping off a building and his bones shatter on the ground. Everywhere you turn, it’s bad.
You could say it’s politically driven, the division in our country, but I also think people are just generally fed up with each other. Overall, I don’t think life is going to get any better than it currently is. “Long Gone” is very much like, “We’re too far gone as a society to come back.”
Does that make a song like the new record’s “Cruel Times” a fantasy then? In that one you’re singing quite hopefully about how you can’t wait for people to move past this period. You’re looking forward to better days.
No, not really… That song is about my wife.
You’ve been making music with your Webbed Wing pop-rock project between Superheaven albums. Did working in another project influence how you hit this record in any way?
They’re definitely two separate things. But having written three-and-a-half LPs with Webbed Wing in the time that Superheaven wasn’t writing anything was exercising my songwriting muscle. It’s not like I haven’t written anything in 10 years.
I love writing music. It’s the only part of music that I really enjoy, to be honest. But I hate writing lyrics. I despise it. It’s fully a chore to write lyrics, because it’s so difficult to articulate your thoughts and feelings. But not only that, it’s permanent. Those are the lyrics forever! So, if you’ve half-assed the lyrics, you’re going to regret it down the line. There’s plenty of times where that has happened, where I wish I would have sat with [a song] a little longer. I do have a really bad habit of waiting until the very last second.
But yeah… writing with Webbed Wing over the years put me in a pretty good spot to write new Superheaven material. I’d been playing upbeat pop-rock for 10 years, so I was ready to write stuff that was heavier or a little darker. That was a nice change of pace.
This is a line of Jake’s on “Numb to What Is Real,” but he brings up the idea of hearing this “recurring sad tone.” Is that a fair way to look at the sound of Superheaven’s music?
That’s a good question. But I don’t want to speak for him. It’s weird — we rarely talk about each other’s lyrics to one another.
You’d mentioned you’d had regrets on certain lyrics, so what’s a line on this record that you really love?
I really like the opening track, “Humans for Toys.” The lyrics come off a little more political than I intended — because I felt like I was painting in broad strokes. I’ve been asked about the lyrics of that song a lot. I don’t really care to talk about that kind of stuff, but… the line, “Tyrants rejoice, the end is here” … I like the way that came out.
You’ve piqued our interest on where the politics lie in there…
I mean… I can talk about the subject matter of the song. It reads as political, but it’s just my stance on the world. The second verse is: “Children burned alive/Money’s everything/Watch the flames go by/What’s the hurry?” And its just like… yeah man, the world is at war all the time, whether we like it or not. I would imagine most people in the world, when presented with the option of wars or no wars, would be like, “Let’s try it without the wars.” Despite that, we’re gonna have wars until the end of time.
I don’t want to make it sound like I was writing an anti-war anthem. I just don’t have a lot of optimism for the future of the world. I guess I never really have.
Sonically, “Hot Head” is a bit of an outlier on the record — it’s a faster song than the rest, by far. But maybe on some level it taps into that same sense of conflict or aggression you’re speaking on…
“Hot Head” is about myself. I’m a bit of an angry guy. I always have been. It’s frustrating being grumpy, and I have a bit of a short fuse. I don’t think I do anything super crazy when I get angry, but it’s not hard to get me in a bad mood.
Basically, I feel like that song is me looking in the mirror and being like, “Dude… you’ve gotta figure this out. You’re angry because you’re not figuring out how to get past certain things.”
This is drawing it back to “Youngest Daughter,” and the increasing popularity of the band, but had any of that been in the back of your mind while you were writing this record?
I wouldn’t say it was a stressor. I think we were aware that this is going to be the first new Superheaven record for a lot of people. And I think we expected harsh criticism. I don’t want to say [fan] expectations are high, but they might be expecting one thing and getting another. The record is not necessarily picking up right where we left off with the last one [2015’s Ours Is Chrome].
I guess we’re just prepared for harsh criticism, but I wouldn’t say that colored the making of the record. From the beginning, we were like, “If we’re not going to make the record we want to make, then it’s not worth our time.” That’s part of why we self-produced the record. I think all four of us are very pleased with the outcome. If people like it, that’s good. If they don’t… it is what it is!
Since you’ve got these headline dates, how has it been bringing new songs to the stage?
It’s pretty cool, honestly. It’s tough, though… I think some [bands] are just happy to play the songs that people want to hear, because those are the ones that get the reactions. Don’t get me wrong, that does make sense. But at the same time, I think we [want] a bit of a balance. We’re not necessarily Bob Dylan, where we have resentment [towards the crowd]: “They don’t want to hear the new songs, but that’s what we’re playing!”
We’re going to play these new songs, and we’re going to give them some classics. We also have the luxury of being a band that has a lot of new people getting onboard right now, [so] I think we can kind of play whatever we want.
We also try not to lean to much into the “Youngest Daughter” thing. We don’t close with it. We play it early because we don’t want to lean into the virality of the song. It’s because I think we’re more than one song. And we know that we have songs that are just as good if not better than that song. So, how about we play them for ya?
This interview has been edited and condensed for flow and clarity.
Superheaven 2025 tour dates:
5/1 Las Vegas, NV – Fremont Country Club
5/2 Los Angeles, CA – The Belasco
5/3 Berkeley, CA – The UC Theatre Taube Family Music Hall
5/4 Pomona, CA – The Glass House
5/6 Mesa, AZ – The Nile Theater
5/8 Austin, TX – Emo’s
5/9 Dallas, TX – Ferris Wheelers Backyard And BBQ
5/11 Chicago, IL – Metro
5/13 Detroit, MI – Majestic Theatre
5/14 Toronto, ON – The Opera House
5/16 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
5/17 Boston, MA – Royale Boston
5/20 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel