A LETTER TO HEARTPUNCH

 A letter to HEARTPUNCH

By Tim Strong

FULL VERSION

Part I: 

Name changes, school shows and the albums that never were - 

the entire history of HEARTPUNCH, I guess

HEARTPUNCH has been an integral part of my life for the best part of three years now, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Let me give you a brief rundown of how it all began.

My name is Timur “Tim” Strong, I’m half Russian and half Canadian; I currently live in Spain, but I was born in 2005 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. That is also where HEARTPUNCH was founded and performs live to this day. Me and the guy who nowadays goes by Matt Brooks (he’s been through a few names, trust me) met in early 2021 because we were both invited into a band by someone who was a mutual friend at the time. It’s pretty clear that we both realized immediately that we had a lot in common, both musically and on a personal level. I speak confidently on this one from both of our perspectives because after what I pretty strongly believe was our first rehearsal together he texted me asking if I wanted to join him in putting together a pop-punk side project. Who knew that, on March 13th, 2021, when I received that fateful message, I would be gaining what would eventually become the only band I’ve truly felt reflects my heart and soul.

When I wrote the first song for “DON’T SAVE ME”, it was July 28th, 2021. The song I wrote was “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER”, because I thought at the time that making a song whose title abbreviated the same as a popular brand was a fun idea, and I had some 16-year-old boy angst to get off my chest. It was initially intended as something for me to do solo, simply because there was no roadmap for what was at the time a still theoretical pop-punk side project. The project was called SilverskiN and me and Matt hadn’t even played music together yet on our own. We vaguely took part in the creation of some rather regrettable music in the hard rock band we were in, and a couple of even more regrettable music videos, one of which never saw the light of day. That band would eventually let go its singer at the time, promote me from just the bassist to the frontman as well and change names. Through all this adjacent turbulence, our pop-punk ambitions remained unrealized.

A few months later, in October, we finally got together to write, because my school had offered me to play a show for their belated Halloween event, and I didn’t want to bring the entire bigger band (we were a five-piece at the time). So we sat down and churned out a really amateurish, this-is-my-first-song sounding track called “Trick or Your Heart” – as you can guess, it was a Halloween-themed song, which contained every classic pop-punk theme we could get into our heads - love, “this town“, growing up, partying - you name it, we fit it in. Well, technically the first song we made was a very crude, blink-182 style joke song, but it was about 30 seconds long so I’m not going to count it. 

The recording equipment was a mic I took from my dad and Matt’s old and worn out audio interface, and we were both very inexperienced, but it was our own, honest thing, and thus I stand by it to this day. It’s not the best song by any means, but it means a lot to me because that’s where our journey began. We also then wrote a second track, which I don’t stand by anymore, because it was an extremely cringy love song which was written significantly worse than the first track and was frankly just me being a bit weird. Thankfully the person who the song was written for had no idea that was the case, so I was saved that embarrassment at least. 

19th of November of 2021, We played the set, with our two originals and six covers. It was just the two of us, with me not even playing bass, so the bass and second guitar track played through the speakers, as did the electronic drums. Thus, though in a strange form, HEARTPUNCH, still then known as SilverskiN, was born to the world on a live stage. 

Our set was very popular with the school, both kids and teachers alike, so we were invited back to repeat for the Christmas event in December. By this point, we’d started developing a song I’d brought Matt basically as soon as we started our writing sessions in the studio above the garage at his place - that song, of course, being “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER”. Speaking of that, if you ever see the "©Garage Racket Music" underneath our music on streaming services - that's the reason; we named our "label" after where it all began - with a racket above a garage. Anyway, back to "YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER". 

The song was basically written, with Matt bringing my lyrics to life with music way better than I could’ve ever imagined; we’d also started working on a couple of other songs, including one whose title you may recognize - “BACK TO YOU”, one of my absolute favorite tracks on the album. Although, to be totally fair, this "BACK TO YOU" would be rather difficult to recognize in comparison to the one you can hear now on the record. But more on that later.

Then, there was another song we were working on, which was called “New Plan”. Inspired somewhat by the switch-ups at the start of a variety of iconic pop-punk songs, the song started out with a soft-spoken, intentionally cheesy intro, before dropping into a fast-paced, snappy instrumental. Sound familiar? 

One day, while writing for what was, at the time, an entirely different song, I suddenly got an idea; the chorus of that song became a verse, and, around it, “IN THE MIDDLE” was born. Matt would then proceed to once again make it into a better song than I’d ever even imagined, and that ended up being what we landed on for the second original at our second show. “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER” and “IN THE MIDDLE”, the songs that would go on to become our first two singles, made their live debut. 

Before 2021 could end, though, the eternal flame of ideas in Matt’s head kept whirring, and, among the many songs he and I worked on, an idea popped up in Matt’s head to do a chorus centered around the phrase “get out of my head”. That, of course, is what birthed “GET OUT” on the album.

By the time the third show we did in March rolled around, we had big, big plans for 3 linked EPs, all with different themes and with extremely “graphic design is my passion” cover drafts, and then also another, punkier/heavier EP afterwards. We went from 2 originals to playing a whopping seven tracks of our own in one show, and thirteen tracks in total, which was a big jump, but one I believe we absolutely took in our stride. 

Just a month later, in April, the three EPs had become “SILVERSKIN”, the album - sixteen songs and four skits of a concept album about a clown named after the band, forced to perform in a dystopian circus to numb the senses of the people. If that sounds ridiculous and contrived to you, that’s because it is; but I was 16 and Matt was 17, so we thought it was the coolest thing ever at the time. Not only that, we had a total of probably not far from 30 songs either in concept, development or basically done. By May, we had a roadmap of three albums laid out - and a lot of the songs were written, too, at least lyrically. 

Over the summer, we hung out a lot, and wrote and recorded a whole lot of music - but the more important thing was that, in July, we started recording. We found a recording studio and got to work. Unfortunately, and predictably, the studio told us that the potato recording quality on our instrumentals wouldn’t transition well into a proper track, so it all had to be re-done in the professional environment; because of that, “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER” wasn’t ready until the end of the year. 

By September, when we both started college, we had dropped the concept album idea and cut a few of the tracks, so the debut was now 12 songs; but then, because Matt has so many ideas and had written so many demos, we had a second album with 18 songs, and the groundwork for a third. Most of the songs on these versions of those projects were never recorded or at least never released, and two of those projects are no longer happening at all, at least not how we intended at the time. At one stage or another of conceptualizing or writing, we have scrapped a total of 43 songs, if I’m counting correctly. So these 10 you see before you today have had to get through a lot to get here.

In October 2022, we returned to my school for another show, which went…pretty disastrously, really, because pretty much the only people that actually stayed for our set were Matt’s sister, a friend of mine and a buddy that he brought along. But we didn’t let that slow us down - we had big plans for our debut, self-titled album to release in June of 2023. However, a few things were still destined to change. We finally realized that our band name wasn't the best. So we decided to change it. As fate would have it, the name we initially picked happened to be taken by a fellow Russian band, so we tried again, and again, and again. After a lot of deliberations, we finally landed on the band name you see today. 

The first single, and our debut song, “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER”, finally saw the light of day on December 23rd, 2022, under the name HEARTPUNCH, with a cover I “designed” on Photoshop in which, if you look really closely, you can see the temporary band name written in as an Easter egg. Four months later, in March of 2023, “IN THE MIDDLE” followed as the second single. But this is where the first serious issues would arise.

See, teenagers aren’t always the best at planning things. Or timing. So, our lofty plans for the album to come out in summer of 2023 were crushed pretty quickly when we realized that we wouldn’t have all the songs we wanted mixed any earlier than the end of the year. Moreover, another major issue arose in my family emigrating from Russia to Spain, putting our work into long-distance mode for the foreseeable future. However, though I was pretty crushed at the time, in retrospect, I’m honestly really happy that the album we had at the time never saw the light of day. This allowed us to sit down (metaphorically) and do a bit more work on the tracklist. Between May and August, three more songs were removed from the tracklist, and four new ones were written, amongst which three ended up making the final album - the opener, “BURNOUT”, the closer, “SLAM THE DOOR”, and, most importantly, the third single, “CAN’T WIN”.

Now, after a big blow and a slump in our work, we were up and running again; moreover, Matt had finally done what we had already tried about a year previously - expanded the band from being just a duo. That lineup has unfortunately undergone a lot of changes since then, but, at the core, the vast majority of this album is a product of Matt and I’s work, so those changes thankfully didn’t really affect the record. 

“CAN’T WIN” has so far been the only song I recorded here in Spain, before sending over the vocal tracks back to Russia to be mixed. I recorded my tracks in August, Matt did his vocals a couple months later in October. The album, at this point, had been renamed from just “HEARTPUNCH” to “BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW”. By early winter, “CAN’T WIN” was almost ready; the key word here being “almost”. This is where our era of incredible punctuality begins. Trust me, if us postponing “CAN’T WIN” from what was supposed to be January 26th all the way to March 1st, and then postponing the album from June 21st all the way to August 20th, was frustrating to you, you can’t even imagine how it felt to us. I’m so, so happy that all the postponing and all the issues are finally over and the album is out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As production of the album (and some of the recording, too) continued to take a lot longer than we expected, the planned fourth single in “NO IDEA” moved from the initial time frame of late March to early April all the way to its eventual release on May 24th. Thus, funny enough, we ended up with a single released on each of our birthdays - “CAN’T WIN” came out on Matt’s birthday, and “NO IDEA” on mine. With “NO IDEA” out, we thought it was a good time to announce the album. It wasn’t. The album was still significantly further from being done than either of us thought; thus, June 21st was fast approaching, and we did not have the album. So, to our dismay, we had to postpone the record indefinitely. 

Throughout this time, up until now, Matt and the rest of the band had played 4 live shows, so the band was very much alive; however, musically, we really didn’t have much to offer. What we did have was a recording of an acoustic set they played, a couple of songs from which were, on July 9th, released as an EP called “Lost In Transit”, something that we might make into a series for future albums, although definitely with better recording quality. The EP consisted of two songs they performed - “YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER” and a track that will probably see the light of day in a couple of years as a standalone single, titled “Floodgate” - the first HEARTPUNCH song to not involve me in any way, with Matt handling both lyrics and instrumental.

After the album was initially postponed, we changed the cover, because Matt didn’t like the old one anymore, and I honestly agreed. I do greatly prefer the one we have now to the one we initially announced.

That is how we ended up on August 12th. The second mix of “SLAM THE DOOR”, the final song to be completed, which I was contemplating renaming at some point too, but which we ended up keeping as it was, was sent over for us to listen to, and we approved it, therefore, the album was complete. Back in June, we’d settled on naming the album for its penultimate track, “DON’T SAVE ME”. So, our debut album was ready, and, that same day, I finished the video with the track teasers with the newly arrived “SLAM THE DOOR” snippet, and we re-announced the album. For real this time.

And that is, up to now, the three-and-a-half year history of HEARTPUNCH. What happens from here? I don’t know, to be honest. Matt and I, along with the rest of the band, of course, are working on more music for the future; I can’t reveal too much, obviously, but there are a few things on the horizon. I can’t promise any concrete timelines, because, well, we’ve not been great with those up to now. All I can say is my favorite song that Matt and I have ever written together is not on this album; it’s still yet to be recorded properly, but trust me, it’ll come eventually, probably on HP2 (no title reveal for you yet because it’s still not unlikely to change). Maybe we’ll even give you a couple of things between “DON’T SAVE ME” and the next album, just to hold you over. But again, no promises.

Part II: 

Behind “DON’T SAVE ME”

In this second part, I’d like to give a little bit of backstory and/or context about the ten songs that, after our thorough vetting and editing process, ended up on “DON’T SAVE ME”. However, I will start with a little rundown about how I personally see the album itself. Of course, all of this is purely from my own perspective, I can only speak for my own view on all of these songs and the album. 

I see two ways to view or interpret “DON’T SAVE ME” - but of course, there’s actually as many ways as there are people. But here’s my vision, at least. The first way to interpret the album is the simplest way - it’s a progression of songs generally about what goes through the mind of a pair of teenagers between 16 and 19. The second way is the way I sort of originally intended this version of the tracklist - as a progressing, looping story of a character, going through (definitely unhealthy) infatuation, relationship issues, problems with moving on, deflecting blame, protest and then eventually acceptance that yeah, maybe I was the bad guy in a lot of this after all. This is my favorite interpretation, and if you just randomly asked me, that’s what I’d tell you. There’s also a partial third interpretation, which is that a lot of these songs are built around stories from my own life, with some teenage maximalism mixed in, of course. Can you guess which ones?

Now for the songs themselves.

“BURNOUT”

I wrote the lyrics of “BURNOUT” based on an idea Matt had for a quick, snappy album opener, going for more of a punk sound and starting things off on a note that’s impossible to miss. It ended up only being a one-verse song, clocking in at under two minutes, but that’s exactly how we intended it - just something to get things going. It was something really different from what I usually write, but I did really enjoy writing it. Also, fun fact: the phrase that Matt screams in the intro was, in the original demo of us conceptualizing the track, was this meme. 

"YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER"

I've already talked about the backstory of this one, but this is the earliest song I ever wrote that ended up being used for HEARTPUNCH, and, if my memory serves me correctly, the third song I ever wrote. For that reason, it's always going to hold a special place in my heart. It feels really impressive to me too how much the song has evolved over time - I recently re-listened to a file called "YSL DONE" from early 2022, months after we first started on the song. Hearing how far from being done it actually was, and how much better the song ended up sounding, makes me really proud of us and how far we've come since we first started work on the song three years ago. I really love the bridge of this song in particular, and the backing vocals on the final chorus - I had a lot of fun recording them, and I think they really gave the song an extra bit of flair and fun.

"NO IDEA"

This song was one of the later songs we wrote for the album, made at the start of last year alongside one other song on the tracklist; it was originally supposed to follow a different song, which we had put through a variety of re-writes and title changes, but could never get quite right; so, it ended up coming after "YOUNG SMITTEN LOSER". In retrospect, I do like this progression of the story in the tracklist significantly better than the way it was when it included the other song. "NO IDEA" is one of my absolute favorites on the record, too - I love the combination of my vocals and Matt's, especially when we trade lines in the outro. It was super fun to record, and I'm glad the song turned out exactly the way we envisioned it, if not better. Also, I love that it came out as a single on my birthday - it makes me feel a more personal, close connection to the song. 

"FALL"

I went through a lot, and I mean a whole lot of emotional turmoil with this song. This song is the only one on the album which is entirely my product - usually, Matt handles the music; but, with "FALL", I not only wrote the lyrics, but the music too. However, that is the upside. The downside is that, like many songwriters, I will oftentimes be overly critical of things that I have created. And "FALL" became arguably the worst victim of this in my entire time creating in any form. A while after it was recorded, I just stopped liking absolutely anything about the song. I couldn't stand it, the sheer thought of it made me angry. Several times, Matt had to convince me not to completely stop trying to write music, and to not take the song off of the record entirely. I loved it when writing it, and then, once it was recorded and sitting there waiting to be mixed and mastered, I just hated it all of a sudden, more and more the more I thought about it. But everything changed when I heard the mixed version of the song. As soon as I heard the song in its final form, I fell in love with it again. All of a sudden, the song I'd put so much work into way back at the start of the process, meant as much to me as it had then. At this point in time, it's one of my favorites on the album once again.

"IN THE MIDDLE"

I briefly recounted the backstory of "IN THE MIDDLE" in part I, and that backstory is one of my favorite things about the song really. It was just genuinely me getting spontaneously inspired, and letting the writing flow; all this, of course, to complement some of Matt's typically fantastic musical ideas. He'll definitely hate me praising him this much, by the way, but I will not be dissuaded from expressing my undying admiration for his incredible creativity. Anyway, along with this being our follow-up, second single, and also the second song from this album that we performed live, it's also the first song on this album with a solo. I love that it's there, because I feel like it adds such a cool addition to the structure of the track, such a fun, energetic moment; the count-in bit wasn't even initially planned, I just freestyled it in the original, garage studio recording because I was so excited about the solo. Matt actually doesn't like how the song turned out, but I don't care, I love it.

"CAN'T WIN"

As I mentioned, "CAN'T WIN" was the one song I recorded vocals for on "DON'T SAVE ME" since moving to Spain. I once again have to give Matt the credit for the general idea of the song - the "I know things are bad, but I'm not doing anything about it" sentiment. But, having the basic premise, I got really inspired - to be fair, it was made easier by the fact I wasn't particularly far from feeling like the narrator of the song in real life, so a lot of things in the song are pretty close to how I felt last summer when I wrote it. Overall, it ended up being one of my favorite sets of lyrics that I've ever written - it's got a few more cutting lines that it's centered around, and, not to praise myself too much, but I feel like I painted the picture pretty accurately and pretty vividly.

"BACK TO YOU"

I mentioned in part I that "BACK TO YOU" went through some significant metamorphoses between its initial recording and its release on the album. To be more specific, the song has undergone a key change, received a new lead part, and been lengthened from about two and a half minutes to over three. Matt had proven rather reluctant to have any more than the one solo on the album for a long time, despite my continual attempts to push that idea. Therefore, when he wrote to me with the idea to put a solo in this song, I'm sure you can imagine how quickly I said "oh my God yes of course put a solo in the song!" And then, with some help/inspiration from Deni, the other guitarist of the band and a brilliant musician in his own right, Matt ended up recording not one, but two solos for the song, with one after the bridge and the other closing out the song. I was ecstatic, naturally, and the solos are a huge contributing factor in "BACK TO YOU" being my second favorite song on the entire record.

"GET OUT"

One of our earliest ideas for the album and the first joined studio vocal recording session we did together, "GET OUT" was built around the chorus, which is why it's what the song effectively starts with after the beat drops. The one main line that gave the song its title was another idea Matt had, and then I wrote the rest of the lyrics around it. I think that it was a really important stage of the band's development because, as I mentioned, it was the first time Matt actually recorded vocals. I do believe both of us being vocalists in the band makes our music, at least in my view, a lot more interesting and varied than it would have been if I was the only singer. And, because this is the case, I can't help but be grateful to this song for starting off our journey of dual vocals - one which truly culminates, in my view, in a certain song that I already mentioned, which isn't on this album, but which is coming eventually.

"DON'T SAVE ME"

The title track, in my opinion, is the centerpiece of this record, as well as my personal favorite song on it. That's a tough choice to make, because I adore all of these songs dearly, but this one stands above the rest for me. It was probably the most fun I had recording anything for the album, and I'm going to assume this one time on Matt's behalf that the same was the case for him. I really miss our joint studio recording sessions honestly, the few we had were a blast every time. I don't want to sing this track's praises too much because maintaining at least a modicum of modesty about our work is something I'd like to do, but I will say that when we decided we'd name the album after one of the songs, this one was a no-brainer for me instantly; if someone asked me to play them just one song from this record to represent it, this would be the one I chose; it took a few tries to get the mix we ended up going with, because we were so passionate about this track in particular ending up just the way we wanted it to be. And that's exactly what happened. I love this song, and I really hope you do to.

"SLAM THE DOOR"

This song was another one of the songs that we added to the album last summer, and which concludes the album and its story. This song is more of a different perspective than what comes before it, switching to more of a perspective of self-reflection and shouldering the blame. Pretty far along in the process, we made a decision to change a significant thing about the song - add a bridge that wasn't previously present, and add a second perspective. Thankfully, we had someone in the band who would fit the role perfectly - our vocalist Alisa, who had been doing a brilliant job doing my parts live on stage and who has since unfortunately left the band. Her bridge adds an extra bit of variety and nuance to the song, and the album really. I think it was a very good song to end off on. Also, fun fact, the guitar feedback at the end of "SLAM THE DOOR" is purposely meant to mirror the feedback that "BURNOUT" kicks the album off with.

Now, time for the most emotional, personal part of all of this.

Part III: 

A letter to HEARTPUNCH

(yes, this is finally it)

Now that "DON'T SAVE ME" is finally out - something I still have trouble grasping the reality of - I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how we got here. When Matt approached me about co-founding a "pop-punk side project" back in March 2021, I never could've predicted how much this would end up meaning to me. HEARTPUNCH has been arguably the most important part of my life - a life that has been full of an incredible amount of turbulence and emotional ups and downs throughout these three years. Back in 2021, I had no idea how tough it would get, but also had no idea how comforting having this outlet for my thoughts and ideas, as well as this amazing group of people, would be. Now it's time to thank people.

I'd like to, first of all, thank my family for supporting me in many, many ways throughout this process. I'm not even slightly exaggerating when I say that without them, this album would not have made it out of that studio above a garage. I'd also like to thank my friends, from different countries and walks of life, for being so supportive and impossibly kind to me, the band and our music. They are a big part of the reason I love doing what we do as much as I do - our music making any amount of people happy fills my soul with joy that it's needed pretty desperately over the past year or so. 

I'd like to thank the band, of course, members past and present, for bringing our music to life, for inspiring me creatively, and just for being lovely people. Whatever the circumstances, I love them all. I'd also like to thank our producer Danil for turning the visions that we had for these songs into reality as well as he has done, and also George and the Mediacluster 11/11 studio as a whole. 

But most of all, I'd like to thank Matt. When I agreed to join him in what was a second band, I hoped we'd strike up a good creative partnership. But what actually ended up happening was so far beyond that. He's been my best friend for these few years, but it feels like we've known each other for much longer. It always feels like there's an unspoken understanding between us, both in life and creatively - we don't always agree on things, but we mostly do, and even when we don't, we still understand the other perspective better than it feels like anyone else ever could. And even outside of music completely, he's been there for me through thick and thin over these years, even when thousands of kilometers have separated us. He's genuinely the best friend and collaborator that I could've ever asked for. It has been the biggest honor of my life to work with him on this album, and it is and even bigger honor to continue working with him and calling him my best friend; on the day he sent me that text, I not only gained the band I love, but also a true brother in everything but blood, who I love even more. Here's to lots more work together, and here's to the reunion not being too far in the future. HEARTPUNCH for life.

Tim Strong