Luke Hemmings Confirms Wife Sierra Deaton Can Be Heard on New EP Track

“I caught the bug,” Luke Hemmings told host Mikey Piff on SiriusXM Hits 1 (Ch. 2) of making his own solo music outside of 5 Seconds of Summer.

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Today (March 7), Luke released “Shakes,” the lead single off his just-announced solo EP, boy, which drops on April 26 — his first since his critically acclaimed debut project, When Facing the Things We Turn Away From (2021). The EP, Luke explained, explores the “desperate, emotional state of being lonely in a hotel room and wanting to go home.”

As both the lead vocalist of 5 Seconds of Summer and a successful solo artist, Luke said he’s able to juggle both careers at the same time because the creative process takes so long. When one slows down, he can work on the other.

“The breaks in between making albums are bigger for us now and longer,” he said of the band. “I think we all just want to be able to be free and do what we want, whether that’s mowing your lawn or making music.”

Luke’s forthcoming boy EP was recorded in New York with GRAMMY-nominated producer Sammy Witte and influenced by acts like LCD Soundsystem, My Bloody Valentine, The Verve, and Cocteau Twins. According to Luke, the new music is “from the heart.” And although When Facing the Things We Turn Away From was created during and inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, boy “still has that lonely, isolated feel to it” as it was “written in pieces on the road.”

Throughout the creation process, Luke told Mikey he was inspired by lost-in-translation-type movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as well as New York City as a whole, where you can still feel alone despite being surrounded by people. He called out the lyric in “Shakes” that goes, “The city tends to move on all the same,” as meaning, “Life’s gonna keep moving with or without you.”

He wrote the chorus for “Shakes” first and then spent the next year on the rest. “By the time I’m writing the verses, you have so much life under your belt, and you’re almost writing from a different perspective than you were … And a lot of the songs are like that, where there’s different pieces from different moments in time,” he said.

Luke, who confirmed earlier this year that he married longtime girlfriend Sierra Deaton, also revealed that the female vocalist that can be heard harmonizing with him on the boy track “Close Enough to Feel You” is in fact his wife.

“She’s in everything,” he said of Sierra’s influence on his music.