- Hey, I'm Luke Hemmings,
and I'm here with Buzzfeed to talk about my first times.
I've been practicing that all morning. Lock it in.
(light music plays)
The first song I ever wrote. Okay.
For the longest time, when I was like, 12 to 14,
I was like...
Or even earlier than that,
I was trying to write songs,
and I could never quite complete them,
and always being like,
"Oh, I don't know if this is good enough," or whatever.
So the first person I finished a full song with is Calum
from 5SOS.
He was better than me,
and he helped me finish our first song.
I think it might've been Out of My Limit
on the first EP of the band.
First time I was on stage.
Oh geez, would've been in high school.
I would've been very nervous, very sweaty.
Oh geez, I think I played I'm Yours, Jason Mraz.
Remember when that was the biggest song of all time?
I mean, it still is I guess.
First talent show, I think I got third.
I think I probably deserved third.
I definitely didn't deserve first. Maybe not even third.
I shouldn't have got that.
Maybe my mom had a word with them.
First memory on tour with 5SOS.
When we first started as a band,
we were in high school together,
so we would play shows on the weekend,
and then would come back to school.
That was kinda the first memory.
Going to Melbourne and Brisbane,
and then we went to New Zealand for the first time.
That was rad. I was 15, so it was the coolest thing ever.
But it was at a point.
Like, we played big school shows. (laughs)
They weren't big at all.
Just, like, me and an acoustic guitar.
So when we started the band,
and even the first show we played
was to 12 people at the Anadel Hotel,
including our parents, and it was rad.
We were terrible,
but it was the best and worst gig of my life, I guess.
(laughs)
the first song that I wrote for my new album,
When Facing The Things We Turn Away From.
There was a lot that didn't make it on the album,
'cause it took me a long time to figure out
exactly what I wanted it to sound and feel like.
But I remember Place of Me and Mum
being very, very close to the start, especially Mum.
If you listen to it, it sounds pretty crazy and big
and ethereal and quite drama, as I can be. (laughs)
First time I realized I was famous. (laughs)
I don't know.
I don't think I've ever felt like that if I'm honest,
and that sounds like I'm lying,
but we have a lot of fans as a band,
and very lucky to have a lot of people
that support the band.
So in those sort of situations, like,
where people are at shows and singing the songs,
that always feels great.
But I think on a fame level, I don't think it's ever...
I don't know. I just have never felt like that.
I feel like we just have such a great fan base.
First album I ever bought was...
With my own money,
I bought Good Charlotte, The Young and the Hopeless,
which is very pop punk vibes.
That was the second that they ever made,
and the first album I ever bought.
That was the one that slowly kicked it off, I suppose,
and I saw them live, and I thought that they were so rad.
So rad.
I know the boys. It's really weird.
I tell them all the time.
I say "You know, like, I think you were my first album,
and one of the first shows I ever went to,"
and they're like, "Cool."
I texted them the other day. It's so weird for me.
I'm such a big fan, still am a big fan.
The first time I met my fiancee, Sierra.
We met at a gig.
The Night Game is the name of the band that we saw.
We were both really excited that there was a dog there,
and yeah, she was really sweet,
and we just met through friends,
so it happened really naturally,
almost in an old school way.
The first ridiculously untrue rumor
you heard about yourself.
I don't know. There was one that I...
I don't know how I died,
but I died for about an hour on Twitter.
I think that happened...
Maybe that's a dream though. I don't know.
I was obviously alive, so to set the second straight.
(laughs)
You know?
First time I realized I wanted to be a performer.
Me and my dad used to go to...
He was the one that would take me to gigs,
and I saw Good Charlotte,
and I had seen a couple other bands.
I went to this show called Taste of Chaos,
which is a bunch of heavy bands,
and I thought it was really rad.
I just thought the whole thing was really cool
that people could go onstage and have songs
that they'd written be sung back to them,
'cause a lot of bands and artists wouldn't come to Australia
as much as other places, especially where I grew up.
It was quite out of the city,
so it was really difficult to get to shows,
and they were very expensive.
I used to watch a lot of things online.
I used to watch classic AC/DC and INXS and Green Day
and Blink on YouTube.
Honestly, that was a huge part of it.
It was a lot of just being extremely captivated
by just watching a live performance.
As 5SOS came together at such a young age, it just...
I don't know.
It just all clicked, and we were just best mates,
and it seemed to be resonating,
even on the small level that we had,
and I think that was just something that we chased down,
even to this day.
That moment was probably the one that obviously,
has made my life very different.
First instrument I learned to play was actually...
This is strange, because I was gonna say guitar just then,
but I remember.
So I started playing guitar 'cause my oldest brother, Ben,
used to take guitar lessons for, like,
a month or whatever.
Like, he wasn't super into it, I guess,
and he had this run down acoustic guitar at the house,
and there was some songs in a songbook.
Really simple, like, Smoke on the Water
and Blister in the Sun by...
Is it Violet Femmes?
So I remember playing Smoke on the Water on one string
for hours and hours.
It's like everyone's first guitar song. (laughs)
But I liked drums a lot at the start.
I remember because my brother, other brother.
I have two brothers, and he played drums a bunch,
and I remember thinking that was really cool,
and you look up to your older brothers.
So I tried to play that, and I wasn't very good,
so I was like, "All right, I'm gonna play guitar,"
and I was way better at guitar at 14 than I am now.
(laughs)
Thank you Buzzfeed for having me today.
My first ever solo album is out now.
It's called When Facing The Things We Turn Away From,
and I hope you enjoy it.
12 year old Luke. That's a pretty big step.
I would've been pretty smitten with that, for sure.
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