MOD SUN on God Save the Teen: "I make music for the people who are meant to hear it"

MOD SUN says he’s planned since eighth grade to reinvent himself every decade, going from a hardcore drummer to a blog-favorite rapper to a pop-punk leading man. Still, even with sharp foresight, it’s hard to imagine he saw all of this coming. Since releasing 2021’s Internet Killed the Rockstar, the 36-year-old musician born Derek Smith has experienced the most sustained success of his career.

“People don’t just get this long of a career, so I’m up onstage right now, looking at everyone and being super grateful that they’re even there,” Smith says over Zoom from the green room of a Kansas venue. 

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He started 2023 by releasing God Save the Teen, his fifth studio record and second since returning to his emo and alternative roots, but one that revels in a kind of warmth and affirmation that makes it feel meaningfully different. Inspired by his journey to sobriety, his close relationship with his mother, and his engagement to Avril Lavigne, which ended unexpectedly a few days before our conversation, it’s an album that breaks from the bitterness often associated with emo music. It also sees Smith adopting the role as a kind of elder statesman for alternative music, more a steward than a gatekeeper, offering warnings from his own life and the genre’s turbulent history to a new generation of fans. GSTT’s “Courtney Fucked Kurt” encapsulates that hard-driving feeling in which MOD SUN implores fans to “stop romanticizing death.”

“I romanticized the Van Gogh syndrome, ‘You’ve gotta be tortured to be a great artist,’” he says. “So the whole idea of ‘Courtney Fucked Kurt’ is being like, ‘Don’t just sing the words. Learn what the words mean. Look into them and be careful about which side that you really extra focus on: the art side or the chaos.’”

In a video from a recent show shared by TMZ, a grateful MOD SUN told his supporters that they “fucking saved my goddamn life” in the aftermath of his high-profile breakup. That level of earnestness and vulnerability is key to MOD SUN’s appeal, and at a packed concert in New York, the connection he shares with his fans was on full display. He serenaded a single mom in the crowd with his maternal tribute “Single Mothers,” switched the title of GSTT’s “Avril’s Song” to “New York’s Song,” and looked overwhelmed by both heartache and gratitude when he played “Flames,” arguably the biggest record of his solo career, with the crowd belting passionately throughout the dramatic duet.

AltPress chatted with MOD SUN earlier this year about being called corny, his many musical evolutions, and how directing his first feature film seeped into his songwriting.

How’s the tour been? 

I’m not gonna lie, I was a little — worried isn’t the word, stressed isn’t the word — just ultra-focused on the success of this tour because these are the biggest headline rooms that I’ve played. This is my upgrade tour. I’ve been doing this for so damn long, but this is the first time I’ve been upgraded to the bigger rooms. So, there’s an extra responsibility that felt like it came with it. Dude, it’s turned out insane. I’m up onstage with a different attitude right now because I know that I’ve been doing this for 15 years as MOD SUN, five years before that playing drums in bands. People don’t just get this long of a career, so I’m up onstage right now, looking at everyone and being super grateful that they’re even there.

Internet Killed the Rockstar was your first big pivot back to alternative music and pop punk, and even though this is musically similar, it’s pretty different. You can hear in the lyrics that there’s a mentality shift, and it’s more life-affirming. Sometimes in rock and punk spaces, more positive music can be perceived as corny, and I’m curious if you worried about the reception to the album and the reception to the tour because of that?

I think that could have been a concern if this was my second record in music. But I made positive rap music for 10 years. You know how many times I’ve had the word “corny” thrown at me? It doesn’t break the skin for me. I’ve always been a polarizing artist, so I’m grateful for that. I take critiques and compliments in the same manner because I’ve really gone through the ropes of always having an incredible opposing position to what I do. It’s toughened me up. That’s why I’m able to be ultra honest and actually talk about my real life. I’m not in the studio going, “Man, are these people gonna think I’m corny?” I’m really like, “What is my story to tell?” 

The dichotomy of music is that everyone wants relatability, and they think that to be relatable you have to talk about things that everyone can connect with. It’s the total opposite with music. You find that, when you do it, the more specific you are to your story, somehow, that relates more to the general public. I don’t underestimate my audience. I believe that I make music for the people who are meant to hear it. I felt like it was such a duty of mine to make an album that reflected where my life was at, at that moment, with a love record, with a record about love and growth. 

“Courtney Fucked Kurt” is a really interesting one because it feels like you’re dispelling some of the misconceptions in the rock and alternative worlds. Do you feel responsible, as someone who now has a younger fanbase, to say, “These are the facts of our music’s history, and these are the things about it you should be careful about romanticizing”?

I do and I don’t because I don’t like to play the role of someone trying to be a role model. I like to be the person who is ultra honest with my story. I’m about to hit four years sober. If I was to sit here and say, “Don’t do drugs, drugs are bad. Don’t drink, don’t get fucked up. That is bad” — if I were to do that, that would be counterintuitive to the honesty of my story. I went through all of that. I can’t try to come into this space and say “I’m a role model. I’m telling you this.” 

When it comes to “Courtney Fucked Kurt,” I have the 27 Club tattooed on the top of my arm. I got that tattoo when I was like 18. Jim Morrison was one of my biggest heroes in life. He died being like, “I want to be known as a poet. I don’t want to be known as this chaotic rock star.” But I shifted a lot of my focus to the chaotic rock star aspect of it, so my whole idea is being like, “I ultra-zoomed in on the chaos and romanticized the chaos of it.” I romanticized the Van Gogh syndrome, “You’ve gotta be tortured to be a great artist.” So the whole idea of “Courtney Fucked Kurt” is being like, “Don’t just sing the words. Learn what the words mean. Look into them and be careful about which side that you really extra focus on: the art side or the chaos.” In a lot of ways, I became completely addicted to chaos, and that song is just a warning about that. 

On Internet Killed the Rockstar, you’ve got the song “Smith” as a tribute to your father, and then on this one, you’ve got the “Single Mothers” song. You’ve talked a lot about your parents in the context of these albums, but I’m curious if you see any deeper connection with this record to your experience with your mom and the last record to your experience with your father?

It goes with the honesty of my story. My father passed away pretty much exactly three years ago. I dedicate that song to him after his death. The goal with this one was to make sure that I dedicated a song to my mom before her death. I learned something from that last one. I’ve never heard a song for single mothers.I felt a duty not only to my mom but to all single parents in the world. But my story, specifically, about the strength of a single mother. So, I do feel a lot closer to this one just because my mom is able to text me and call me about it. I hear from her once every two days, “God, this song is so special to me,” and [she’s] crying and all that. My father didn’t get that. He didn’t get to experience it like that.

While you were making this album, you also directed your first feature film, Good Mourning. Did being in a filmmaker mindset color your approach to the album at all?

When I think about films, it’s about how to make something that feels like the last scene of Fight Club. People holding hands as they watch the entire world crumble. That scene, specifically, is something that is what I want my art to feel like. That’s what this album feels like in retrospect: watching the whole world fall apart and holding someone’s hand. This album is exactly a month old, and there’s a proud moment of the honesty that I tell in the album because life changes quick. [Laughs.] This album does feel like the world falling apart in a lot of ways and still holding the hand of the person you love, you know?

There’s a line on the last verse of “Delusional Confidence” where you kind of are rapping again: “We must submit to shallowness before we can be deep.” I thought it tackled the very contemporary issue of mistaking surface-level things for depth, but also that you’ve got to get past this to get to that. I think that is the most densely packed verse [on the album] and harks a little bit back to when you were rapping. There’s a lot of those internal rhymes. I was curious about the writing of that and how it came together?

It would be the very last thing I wrote for this album. When [the song] was made, it was not made to be the outro. It found its way to being the outro of the album. Dropping an album with no singles, first off, was a big turning point in the creation of this album because once I said, “Strip away the four songs that people have heard,” I had to then make four others. I had other songs, but I said, “I can see the album now. Let me really piece this together and make it a story.”

When that happened, it felt like I stopped chasing something. I stopped chasing this idea that everything needs to be better than the last thing you did, that these numbers really are so critical to how your self-worth is. That turned into this point of really wanting to make that point clear that I was able to free myself from that, and I wanted to tell all of my listeners at the end that this world we’re living in can have really crazy long-term effects because we haven’t seen it yet. We haven’t actually seen the long-term effects, but we’re seeing them in a lot of ways, and kids are feeling like their self-worth is connected to a number next to their name. That’s something that’s been giving us a warning of that since the book 1984. I think we’re seeing it firsthand, and I think right now it goes two ways. We’re either part of the rebuilding or part of the destruction of a lot of things.

It connects to the glamorization of certain negative things. You need someone who has experienced life in a different kind of way to say, “Things don’t need to be this way forever.” Because if you’re 16, it’s very different from people your age where the internet was part of your adolescence, but it wasn’t present as far back as you can remember in the way it is now.

Having used it professionally and personally for fucking 12 years now, I’m at the point where I’m able to see — you know how you see your parents be like, “I don’t need social media,” and we’re like, “You’re crazy. This is everything right now.” But I see that side now, where the importance has really dwindled for me, and that’s a topic that I just share openly, whether or not people are gonna relate to that. Talk about corny, I can guarantee you that 50% of the world would hear that outro on “Delusional Confidence” and be like, “Fucking corny,” but I’m perfectly comfortable with that because I don’t think I’m corny, and that’s what that whole last rant is talking about — how do you feel about yourself?

It’s interesting that you perform a medley of some of your older rap songs midway through your concerts. It’d be easy to just put that stuff in the closet, but embracing it shows a sense of maturity and poise.

Here’s the thing: I’m not wearing a costume. I’m not like, “Hey, look at me. I’m a fucking punk rocker now! I’m alt! I’m pop punk, I’m emo!” I’ve known since I was in eighth grade that I was going to transform myself every 10 years. I was going to reinvent myself as an artist. I have lived by the [rule] that all great artists reinvent themselves every 10 years. That is how you create longevity; that’s how you do this your entire life. I have known that the first 10 years of my music career, I’m going to play drums, the second 10 years of my musical career, I’m rapping, the third 10 years of my musical career, I’m singing with a band and guitars and playing drums on my songs. I know what my next 10 years will be, so I’m proud. Shit, I would be perfectly proud of playing Scary Kids Scaring Kids and Four Letter Lie songs. I’m not embarrassed by anything I’ve done. I’m only proud of it.

I get what you mean when you say “I’m not wearing a costume.” You didn’t make this pivot because you saw the dollar signs that were out there to make this kind of music.

No, bro. Big round of applause to Neck Deep, State Champs, someone like New Found Glory who never stopped, but it would be foolish to say that we weren’t a part of the pivot. I didn’t see some shift happen and be like, “Let me jump in.” We helped usher it back in. It didn’t look like it was gonna happen when I dropped “Karma.” When I released “Karma,” it wasn’t like KROQ [was] playing pop punk. It wasn’t the giant resurgence happening yet. I also owe a lot to someone like John Feldmann who never stopped making this kind of music, producing this kind of music. He didn’t keep doing it for the dollar signs. He kept doing it because it’s what he loves doing. When we met up, that’s what Internet Killed the Rockstar was. 

Is there anything else about having the record out, the tour, that we didn’t touch on that you’d want to mention?

I think the No. 1 really proud move with this album [is] not only the songs and the growth in my sound but especially the fearlessness. For every artist out there, you don’t have to stick to some script. You should be proud to break the rules and release an album that has no singles. That’s taboo in this era. I’m seeing it work completely in my favor that people are falling in love with every song on this album, not just the ones that were pushed as the big ones.

Bob Dylan is my favorite artist. I dunno if he’s ever outsold his first two albums, but he’s dropped gospel albums, country albums. He’s done it all. That’s who I look up to for fearlessness — do this for what you love. You don’t need to do this to try and be in competition with yourself all the time.