Head Up High

Thirteen years, four albums, multiplatinum status: Michael Sean "FITZ" Fitzpatrick, best known for his role as the founder and funky frontman of the retro party-pop group Fitz and the Tantrums, has had a storied career by any metric. But with the pandemic kneecapping the music industry and canceling the bulk of his band’s 2020 tour, FITZ decided to look inward: recording a debut solo album in his garage, over Zoom. The result, Head Up High, serves as a reminder that there’s joy to be found in collective moments of misery. “Like anybody else, I struggle at different times, but I'm also a person that's experienced enough living to know that I need to stop what I'm doing, take a deep breath, and make a list in my head of the things that I'm grateful for, and give myself a swift kick in the butt,” FITZ tells Apple Music. “If I can give people some joy and inspiration and a late-night dance party to shake off the cobwebs, I’ve done my job.” Below, FITZ breaks down Head Up High, track by track.

Head Up High
“When I wrote that song, it was a couple months into the pandemic. I was feeling overwhelmed, depressed. I walked into my studio and picked up an acoustic guitar and started angrily strumming these pretty chords. I was like, 'I'm under pressure, underpaid, and working overtime.' I needed to write a song to bring me out of my funk, really.”

Spaceman
“We 100% had to get permission from Steven Tyler [for the ‘Dream On’ sample]. Luckily enough, I reached out to Steven and he was super gracious and loved the song and was into the idea.”

Congratulations
“At the beginning of the pandemic, I got up to perform on Good Morning America to honor all the graduates of 2020. I literally performed on national TV from my backyard. I thought about it, and I wanted to write a song to all of us, basically saying, ‘Hey, congratulations. We all made it through the craziest-ass year of our frigging lives.’”

Still Cool
“So many people just hear the single from a band, but I always try and create a complete album that takes you on a journey. I wanted a song that took you to laying on the beach with the sun shining on you, but with a hint of melancholy wrapped around your sunny day at the beach. The song flowed from there. And I loved this idea of, like, ‘Am I still cool? Are we still cool?’ The answer to that is TBD.”

Jump
“This is actually the first song I wrote in this process before I even knew it was a solo album. I was trying to capture the insanity I thought everyone was feeling. Everything is upside down. I'm performing in my backyard. The number one movie on Netflix is a movie from 2014. What is happening?”

I Need a Dancefloor
“This is another one of those songs that tried to speak to this moment without directly speaking to it. At the beginning [my schedule] was wake up, make the kids food, get into the studio, start writing a song. By the end of the day, it was dance party in the living room, shake off the stress of this moment. And that was really the motivation behind the song. I want people to dance their butts off and lose their minds a little bit.”

The List
“I worked with JP Clark, and I love working with JP. He's such an old soul. To me, this song is: We all have our list of character defects, and as you grow older, you find out more about what they are. They become a list next to you that you can see. It speaks to those moments where I feel like, 'God, here I am, again, making the same mistake, making the same bad choices. Why do I always have the same list?'”

Somebody Sometimes
“During this pandemic, it's been myself and my wife and our three kids. It's 24 hours a day: We're cooking three meals and educating them; it’s Zoom school and trying to stimulate them, nonstop. A couple of our friends hadn't seen another human being in four or five months. They hadn't gotten hugged or touched by anybody. We cannot exist as human beings without connection. I love how the chorus ends—it’s a good sign. There’s hope. There’s magic—your world can be changed instantly. You meet the person who changes your life.”

Slowdown
“This song is one of my favorite songs on the whole entire album. It is all about the realization of your own mortality. I see my kids experiencing things for the first time and I see the passage of time happening. I'm a guy that, up until last year, spent every day of my life on the road. Now I’m at home with them, watching them grow on a daily basis. I feel like I'm watching life speed up around me and my kids grow up so fast and it’s like, 'Holy shit, I just sat down. I need everything to slow down, because it's way too fast.'”

Speed
“I love this song because it's the most aggro song on the album. I wanted this song to make you feel like you were driving in a scene from a movie; I wanted it to capture this exuberant cockiness.”

Piñata
“There absolutely is a trumpet here, and it’s a tie-in because there's a trumpet on 'Head Up High.' I'm obsessed with General Public, The English Beat, all that stuff. This song kind of always reminded me of that. To me, the perfect analogy for when somebody is screwing around with you is that they're beating you up like a piñata. They're just taking swings.”

House Party
“This directly pulls from the experience of being stuck in your home. I know every inch of my house now in a way that I never wanted to. It’s another one of those songs that just makes you want to lose your frigging mind, shake your body uncontrollably, and shake off the stress of what this time has been.”

Little Champion
“There was some inspiration from those classic big '80s drum builds. The song is a rallying cry to all those people in your life that you believe in more than maybe they believe in themselves. For me, it was born out of seeing my oldest son feel challenged and defeated—approaching situations where you push through or give up for the very first time.”

Zig Zag
“This was one of the last songs that I've made for the album. Every day, all I was doing was zigzagging, ducking and weaving from the problems of life. The chorus speaks to the insanity and claustrophobia of this moment. That, and I wanted to write a song that pulled some inspiration from early Beastie Boys records.”