Haiden Henderson is getting uglier (on purpose)
From Wattpad fan fiction to his therapist telling him to take the leap he’s been avoiding, we met the leather-clad pop-rock upstart ahead of his new single and a tour with 5 Seconds of Summer.
Photo: Press
Haiden Henderson has had quite a year. The California-born singer-songwriter spent his early twenties studying aerospace engineering before ditching it all for music, eventually living out of his truck in LA until things started to click. And click they did — three EPs in, over 100 million streams, and a sold-out headline tour that culminated in a London show so chaotic the encore ended up in a nearby park.
With his dark-edged pop-rock project tension drawing a devoted fanbase around the world, he recently opened for 5 Seconds of Summer at arenas across the UK. We caught up with him the day before he flew out, where he’d spent the night watching TikTok videos of their shows. Needless to say, he was buzzing.
You’re about to go on tour with 5 Seconds of Summer tomorrow. Has it sunk in at all?
It’s definitely not sunk in. We fly out tomorrow, so I think either halfway through the flight or halfway through the first show, it’ll all hit me and I’ll be a complete wreck. But I’m just really so excited! I spent a few hours last night just watching all of the videos I could possibly find on TikTok. And it just looks so fucking fun. Like, if I weren’t playing it, I would want to be in the audience. So I am so geeked.
You’ve talked before about how inspired you are by them — how they’ve kind of projected your career, even. And now you’re actually on the bill! That’s going to be so sick.
It really is. I’m fangirling so hard about this. Like, OG too — I’ve been a fan for a long time. Middle school me is absolutely freaking out. I’ve been inspired by these boys since they were on YouTube.
The O2 Arena is just so iconic that I’m pinching myself. I don’t even know how to feel about it. We also shot some really crazy visuals to go up on the screen — I laid on the edge of a New York skyscraper for one of them, like dangling over the edge. I’m excited to see that on those big screens too.
That’s insane — there is no way I could do that. I’d be crying; the photo would not be sexy at all.
I hope people don’t think it's fake. I’m like, ‘I did that shit for real’ — and they’re going to say [it’s] AI. [laughs]
You’ve just come off your own headline tour. Now you’re back to opening for someone else’s crowd — are you tailoring it or just going in as you?
I actually have more experience playing to other people’s audiences, because I’ve opened more shows than I’ve headlined. Playing headline shows is actually more jarring to me — I’m like, really? You guys know all the words? You’re singing louder than I am right now! [laughs]
I feel pretty comfortable performing for people who don’t know who I am. I really like proving people wrong. When I’m playing for an audience that doesn’t know me, I get the opportunity to show them why they should. Nobody expects anything from the opener — they’re coming for something else. The bar is so low. I love going up there and just blowing people’s expectations out of the water by doing something I would normally do anyway.
lovesucker is one of my favourites — I know it started as a Twilight joke. Have you ever thought about fully committing and just writing fan fiction?
That’s a dope question! [laughs] I haven’t considered writing fan fiction yet — if this whole music thing doesn't work out, maybe I’ve got a future in that. I actually have a lot of fans that write fan fiction with me involved, in some capacity. [laughs] And I think that’s a wonderful thing. I hear a lot about the boy-band Wattpad era, the Tumblr smut from the old days. If I can make anybody feel inspired enough to write that kind of thing, I’m so honoured.
I remember that era so well. I was absolutely unhinged on Wattpad. Have you read any of it?
I’ll ironically read it to my friends as a bit. I’ll flip to a page and start reading it out loud and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, what are you doing, stop!’. [laughs]
I feel like I have to go and find it now.
God, no. [laughs]
Speaking of people interacting with your music in unexpected ways — have you ever looked at what playlists you end up in on Spotify?
I used to look at it more, and now I try not to look at streams or anything at all. I should check on it now just for entertainment’s sake...
[Haiden scrolls]
Okay. This one is Slutty Boy Rock. This one is POV, you’re ovulating.This one is Slutty White Boy Rock — love the specification there. Oh, another Slutty White Boy Rock. This one’s Horn Star Vibes. Dude, there are so many playlists titled ‘Slutty White Boy Rock’. That is so sad. And this one is just called Bedroom Sex.
I had a feeling. I had a feeling there’d be a running theme. [laughs] I’m honoured. I can’t imagine — well, I can. People using my music as a canvas for those life experiences, let’s say. Thank you for reintroducing us.
Across tension, it always feels like you’re in the moment just before something either works out or falls apart. Is that where you like to stay with your writing?
One of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is not being able to write about anything I’m not viscerally feeling. I can try to write about an experience I’m not feeling — I just don’t like it that much, and it’s hard for me to fall in love with songs I don’t feel really affected by.
So, my cutting things off, the closure — it’s kind of just because my body stops reacting to it. After a while of writing songs about a certain experience, I don’t get the same high I used to. I’m kind of feeling that now. I don't really write much about the stuff on tension anymore, because I just don’t feel it anymore. But there are new, evolved feelings about that situation. More than that, I’m just writing about other things that are happening in my life. But I really have to be drawn to it, you know what I mean?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but — you enjoy the chase?
And I love being chased too! [laughs] That’s so fun. If you can encapsulate youthful human experience, it’s the chase of dating — and even friendship — just yearning. It’s really just about yearning at the end of the day.
What actually happens when you get the thing? Does it lose something?
Okay, therapist. [laughs]
I’m usually obsessed with the person or thing I’m chasing until... I fuck it up, maybe? I’m a very obsessive person. I consider myself like an addict in a lot of ways, because I exhibit a lot of addict behaviours — despite it not being cigarettes or alcohol, that’s not really my thing. I love the feeling of being obsessed with someone. I’m an attention whore. I think that’s just a core quality of mine.
What I’m working on right now — and what I talk to my therapist a lot about candidly — is that when I’m obsessed with something, and then I get it, there is the potential for it to be a little bit less special. I’m so good at spinning fantasies in my head. When you create a fantasy of somebody, you’re creating an unfair expectation that they will never live up to. Because humans are humans. And we’re all flawed.
What I’m realising is really important for me is to get increasingly ugly with a person. For me, it’s very natural to be buttoned up — I want to be as attractive as I possibly can to you at all times. I’m very performative. Like, I just want to be hot all the time. I want to be a Ken doll. Perfectly hairless. A plastic human. [laughs] And, because of that, I’m afraid that somebody will see me be ugly and just won’t like it.
It’s weird because you’d think being a performer would mean you’re comfortable being seen. But there’s a difference between being seen on a stage — where everything is lit and rehearsed and you’re in control — and actually letting someone see the version of you that’s messy and unresolved. I’m much better at the first one. My therapist is like, ‘You kind of just need to jump off the cliff and get uglier’. Be more honest. More raw. More vulnerable. That is genuinely scary to me in a way that hanging off a New York skyscraper for a photo shoot isn’t. [laughs]
Is that where the new music is going?
tension opened the door where I was willing to be ugly for the first time — to admit things I’m not very proud of on a record. Now I want to take that a little further. I want the music to feel a little uglier and more in your face. Less like anything you’ve ever heard before. More like me. I’m just taking more risks, similar to my personal life. The music is going that way, too.
Have you ever written a lyric, thought ‘this is way too much’, and left it in anyway?
Oh my god, yeah! Like all of tension, honestly. I think sweet tooth is full of that. tension — the song — is full of that. Some of those lyrics are just like — I can’t believe they exist. [laughs]
It’s usually the songs I’m most afraid of writing that people scream the loudest at shows. So I know it’s not just a me thing. Other people relate to them.
You mentioned there’s a new song you were debuting on the 5SOS run. What can you tell me?
It’s also the next thing I’m releasing. This entire song is just... really turning up the dial on the freakiness stuff. I’m a little nervous about it. It’s a risky one for sure.
You have to trust the fans, though — they’ve shown they’re with you.
You’re right. I forget that I need to allow people to make their own decisions and not strip them of their agency just because I’m afraid. Yeah. [laughs] That’s fair.
Last one — what do you never get asked that you wish you did?
Something people surprisingly don’t ask about — and maybe it’s because I haven’t made a big enough deal of it — is the shoes. I wear two different coloured shoes, and my fans do too. Not many people ask about that. I think it’s because in interviews, if someone’s looking at my feet, that must say something about my face. [laughs]
Okay, what’s the story there?
In school, I felt so socially awkward that I didn’t really know how to start conversations. I’m an attention whore, but I was just too nervous to make friends. So I was back-to-school shopping and I found two pairs of shoes that were identical but in different colours — two different pairs of Converse. I wore a different colour on each foot. I didn’t know this was already a whole Tumblr culture thing in the early 2000s — my fans’ parents actually tell me about it now. I started wearing them at school and I didn’t have to start a single conversation for like three years. Everybody would just come up and ask. My own brand of peacocking, in a way.
Does it still work?
When I started making music, I stopped doing it — I thought, ‘That’s lame, nobody does that’. Then I started again. I used to do it out of weakness, out of not being able to talk to people. And now, wearing it as a badge of honour — I think that’s a full circle moment. Then the fans started doing it. We sell these little mismatched copper keychains now that look like we stole them from a nursery. [laughs] It’s just a little culty fan thing. They’re all in it with me.
Haiden Henderson’s latest single freak for you is out now via LAVA/Republic Records, and you can find his music on several hundred Spotify playlists. Titles vary.
