News

Oli Sykes: "We're Becoming So Numb To Sh*t, And It's Making Our Own Emotions Hard To Process…"

Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes opens up about the band's single Teardrops, and how his worries about tech addiction inspired the lyrics.

Oli Sykes: "We're Becoming So Numb To Sh*t, And It's Making Our Own Emotions Hard To Process…"
Words:
Emily Carter

It's been less than a month since Bring Me The Horizon unveiled Teardrops – Oli Sykes' "favourite song" on the band's killer Post Human: Survival Horror EP – and now the frontman has gone into deeper detail about what inspired the track, lyrically.

In a new making-of video shared on Horizon's YouTube, Oli unpacks his worries about the impact that technology will have (and is having) on the younger generation, explaining, "I've got so much sympathy for the younger generation who've grown up to a society where it's normal to have tech addiction, to be addicted to your phones, and for media to be all-encompassing. The fact that nine out of 10 kids probably wake up and the first thing they do is check their phone, and they're just bombarded by like a thousand noisy strangers that are all just talking different loads of shite.

Read this: The 20 greatest Bring Me The Horizon songs – ranked

"Just going on the news and listening to every tragedy that goes around the world, or you go on Instagram and are being bombarded by these fake lives. I don't think we can even begin to understand the psychological impacts it's going to have, and we're going to see those repercussions in years to come.

He continues: "We're almost becoming immune, not sure how we should actually react, so when we hear about tragedies they become statistical. That's scary, because they'll sit and read some terrible crime that's happening somewhere, or some oppression, and it's like, 'What do I do about this? What scale is this on? Should I should about this? Should I make no noise at all? What should I do?' I think we're becoming so numb to shit, and it's making our own emotions hard to process."

Summing up these thoughts and explaining how they fed into Teardrops, Oli concludes that the song is "very much about that feeling that we all feel, that kind of hive-mind of depression that we get from always reading about terrible things, always looking behind our shoulder and worrying about shit."

Check out Bring Me The Horizon's behind-the-scenes look at Teardrops below:

And watch the incredibly powerful Oli-directed video for the single:

Catch Bring Me The Horizon at the following live dates on the Post Human Tour next year:

September 2021

21 Glasgow The SSE Hydro
22 Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
24 Sheffield FlyDSA Arena
25 Birmingham Utilita Arena
26 London The O2 Arena

Read this: Why BMTH’s amo was the best British album of 2019

Check out more:

Now read these

The best of Kerrang! delivered straight to your inbox three times a week. What are you waiting for?