A Chat with Seb Adams (28.05.25)
Independent singer-songwriter Seb Adams crafts music that speaks to the heart, resonating with anyone who has experienced life’s highs and lows. Blending alternative rock, pop-punk, and elements of internet culture, his sound is both nostalgic and fresh. Adams’ latest album, Bittersweet Nostalgia, is a deeply personal journey through memory, growth, and the pursuit of happiness, fusing ’90s pop-punk influences with a modern alternative-rock edge.
OSR: After your debut, you described feeling stuck creatively. What lessons did you learn during that period?
Adams: After releasing my first album, I got in my own head too much. Instead of following my creativity, I tried to follow trends and statistics. I’ve learned to follow my heart a lot more, write songs that I care deeply about, and care less about what other people think.
OSR: How has your relationship with music changed from your first album to Bittersweet Nostalgia?
Adams: When I was working on my first album, I saw the sound of my heroes (Guns n’ Roses, Green Day) as something sacred, something I could never touch because it wouldn’t come close to the original. With Bittersweet Nostalgia, I think we got very close to the sound that inspired me, while still having a very modern-sounding production. I got a lot more confident in turning up the distortion on my guitars and having the energy pump through the speakers, especially on a track like ‘Man In The Mirror’. I’m very proud of how the whole record turned out.
OSR: As an independent artist who self-produces, what does artistic control mean to you?
Adams: I’m very picky when it comes to sounds, and I’ve learned to take a different approach on each song, which happens more when you have complete artistic control. Rather than going into a studio with a specific set of instruments and recording all tracks on those instruments, we looked at every song separately and what it needed. Some songs only have a couple of instruments, like ‘Exceptionally Ordinary’, while other songs have full synth stacks, multiple guitar sounds and even a string ensemble, like ‘Man In The Mirror’.
OSR: How does your personal growth and self-discovery influence the themes of your songwriting?
Adams: When I’m struggling with stuff, sometimes it’s easier to write a song about it than to talk about it with other people. A lot of the songs on this album came from self-discovery, like ‘Guitar Hero III’. I missed my old friends, I was struggling with growing up and being an adult, and I just put it into words. That song poured out of me in about 30 minutes, start to finish. It’s really just a form of journaling to me, and I think that’s the reason why it resonates with so many people. I never write a song just for the sake of it.
OSR: What’s your favourite instrument to play or experiment with in the studio, and why?
Adams: I absolutely love using ukuleles. They look cute, but they’re surprisingly versatile. For ‘Exceptionally Ordinary’, I recorded the whole track with both a microphone in front of the uke and through my Kemper Profiler (guitar amp) simultaneously. On the verses, you hear mostly the microphone, but in the choruses, I use a distorted guitar amp. The ukulele took it a lot better than I expected, and I loved that discovery. At the end of the song, when it’s just vocals and a single ukulele without the guitar amp, it sounds super close and personal again.
OSR: Can you describe the moment you realised you wanted to return to the passion that fueled Bittersweet Nostalgia?
Adams: When I wrote ‘Long Gone’ on an acoustic guitar, I wasn’t quite sure about what sound or genre it had to be. I thought about a pop-punk approach, but I wasn’t sure if I was able to pull it off. After playing around with my guitar sound, I got pretty close to the sounds that inspired me, like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Slash of Guns n’ Roses. That moment felt like I was a little kid again. I lost myself for hours in that guitar tone, in a good way. I really fell in love with the instrument again, which eventually gave me the confidence to write and produce a rock ballad like Won’t You Please Come Back Home.
OSR: How do you handle the pressure of following up a successful debut album?
Adams: I felt a lot of pressure to make an album that would do well in the current musical landscape, and fortunately, I let go of that pressure. I made an album I believe in, a thirty-minute bittersweet trip down memory lane. If a song resonates with even just one person, it’s already a success to me.
OSR: What kind of atmosphere or vibe do you want to create when people listen to this album?
Adams: My first album was meant to be listened to at 2 AM when you couldn’t sleep. Bittersweet Nostalgia is more of a road trip album. Blasting it at full volume, screaming along to the lyrics, letting all the feels out.
OSR: How important is connecting with your fanbase on an emotional level through your music?
Adams: When I was younger and I first listened to bands like Green Day and Twenty One Pilots, I felt like they understood me, even when there was nobody else who did. I hope my music can be there for other people, just like my favourite artist where there for me.
OSR: What are your hopes and goals for the future of your music career?
Adams: I’ve reached quite an online audience around the world, but we’ve only played shows in my own country so far. I’d love to travel the world and meet the wonderful people who have been listening to my songs for all these years. We’re working on it, though.
Many thanks to Seb Adams for speaking with us. Find out more about Seb Adams on his Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Spotify.
