Interview with Little Hurt
You may know him as Colin Dieden. You may also know him as ex-singer for the band The Mowgli’s. What you might want to get used to knowing him as, is a terrific singer-songwriter that is in love with the craft of making pop music. He is in the middle of releasing some very well crafted and addictive pop songs from his EP that is scheduled for release in the near future. One of the things that make this talented recording artist so unique is the way he sort of tricks you into bouncing around to generally upbeat – happy music but combines it with deep, sometimes dark underlying lyrical content.
I asked Little Hurt about this marriage of this light side and dark side. Little Hurt tells Sound Vapors, “I’m in love with pop music. I’m in love with the craft of pop music. I’m in love with writing it. I’m in love with listening to it. I think it’s challenging and I think that it’s hard to do well. It’s sort of like.. I could be one of those artists who have the pop sound and the pop lyrics and I’d probably be popping up in every single Jeep commercial. :laughs: But the lyrics are a little bit challenging and I want to take my favorite things about music and take them into one place. Like you said, I love writing great hooks and I became obsessed with studying the greatest songwriters and what made a hook so great. At the same time I’m like, I can set that against what’s happening in my life. It’s sort of like when you’re cooking, you want to balance some sweet with some salty. Instead of it being all sad or just being all happy, maybe I can create something new here.”
We continued on about writing pop music and Little Hurt told me how he actually started down the path of trying to write in that style. He says, “The way that I got into pop music was, a long time ago, when I first moved to L.A., my best friend had signed to this big, mega producer, pop guy and I was kind of still being a punk and talking shit and I was like, this is so easy and it’s so stupid that you’re doing this, I can’t believe you’re doing this pop music thing. He said, okay, it’s so easy? Come in and sit down with me and come in on a session and write a pop song. So I came in and I was like, Oh my God, this is so hard. Ever since that day, I’d become fascinated with it because you can sit around with your stupid acoustic guitar and write these little jangly songs about nothing, all day. But to have a song that can appeal to 40 million people is like.. there’s art to that in itself. There’s an art to being able to appeal to that many people and it’s really hard. And the people that talk shit on it are the people that could never do it.”
Little Hurt’s latest single, Alaska, is a great example of everything we talked about. It’s has hooks for days but it really delivers the need to just get away from it all. When you have a line like – “Well life’s a game, yeah and I need the cheat codes”, a little time away maybe just what the doctor ordered. Along with being super catchy, musically, the theme in the song is something that many people can relate to. I think most people at some point in their lives have felt the urge to leave it all behind, even just for a short time.
Little Hurt explains his process of writing these songs and the build up to the EP. “I’d just left my other band, I was in a band called The Mowglis for about ten years. I’d just left that band and I felt that I’d been doing the same thing for so long that I was just craving anything different. Just craving something to kind of shake my world up. I sat down with some friends and just started writing some songs. I didn’t know what they (the songs) were for and everyone was like, these are your stories and you should be doing your own thing, your own project. I had some friends that said, “It’d be really crazy and probably scary for you but you’re one of the only guys I know that could pull this off. You should leave your band and you should go see how far you can push yourself and don’t settle and take this thing to the fucking top”. I was like, you know what, man? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.”
I expressed to Little Hurt my amazement. Leaving an established, successful touring band is risky and quite frankly requires a hell of a lot of chutzpah but those are the risks that make legends.. and to be fair here – it has also chewed many people up and spit them out. He says, “I decided to do the whole thing all over again. By myself.” :laughs: No matter what happens going forward, you have to admire his will. It really is an interesting story. One that I will be watching from afar with optimism as well as bated breath. Until this next chapter in his life is complete, we have some dynamic pop songs to enjoy.
You can hear my entire conversation with Little Hurt by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or by watching the video version on YouTube.
You can also listen to his new song Alaska here: https://orcd.co/alaska
-Tommy Marz
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