When you name your debut album Teenage Heartbreak, you’re basically declaring yourself king of the Sad Boys. And Chase Hudson, aka LILHUDDY, is more than happy to wear the crown—probably with black nail polish and a vintage Blink-182 tee.
“This was like the biggest milestone so far,” he says, already riding high off a wave of streaming success, Travis Barker co-signs, and a guest spot from All-American Rejects’ Tyson Ritter (more on that chaos later). “I’ve been looking forward to this for a year.”
The 21-year-old social media star-turned-pop-punk revivalist is exactly what you’d expect and also kind of not. He grew up freestyling lyrics in the shower, moved to L.A. to dabble in modeling and acting, and eventually stumbled face-first into the one thing that always hit hardest: music. “I tried everything,” he says, “but music was just so much higher than everything else on the scale.”
So, who raised LILHUDDY musically? “Blink’s style. Green Day too,” he says. “It’s fun, carefree, but with that emotional edge.” Cue The Eulogy of You and Me, a sing-scream breakup anthem that sounds like it was written in eyeliner and lit on fire. “When I wrote that song, it was the first time I felt real stress relief. Like I could scream it and give the middle finger to the sky.”
There’s a whole concept behind Teenage Heartbreak—a series of failed relationships stitched together like a pop-punk Frankenstein. “I’ve never been the one to end a relationship,” he admits. “I just get so soul-tied to people. Like, if you're gonna break my heart, do it. But I won’t be the one to let go.”
That push-and-pull tension is all over the record, from the frenzied chaos of “Party Crasher” to the late-night introspection of “How It Ends.” “You’re in your room at midnight, thinking about every part of the relationship. That’s the arc,” he says. “That’s where it all lands.”
And for a kid who got clowned on in high school for wearing band tees—“I’d just throw on a hoodie and shut it down”—he’s now fully embraced the Hot Topic energy. “Once I moved to L.A. and found my people, I started expressing myself,” he says. “Like, I wasn’t just awkward Chase anymore. I was performing. I was LILHUDDY.”
The stage name, he says, is as much a mask as it is a persona. “There’s this other version of me when I perform. Sometimes I want to dance, sometimes I want to sit on a stool and cry. It’s like method acting for sad kids with guitars.”
That duality extends to his sound too. Blink-182’s Travis Barker provides the genre legitimacy, but then there’s the left-field cameo from Tyson Ritter, who had more or less disappeared into the void. “We didn’t think he’d say yes. But his sister saw me talking about him in an interview and was like, ‘You better do this.’ So shout-out to her.”
As for what’s next, Hudson says he’s already working on new material. “I’m starting to get better at this. Better with my voice, my sound, my writing. There’s more coming.”
And somewhere, some goth girl in a vintage MCR hoodie is waiting to scream every word back to him.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
