Singled Out: Nikki Jumper's Apocalypse Love

Keavin Wiggins | 06-06-2020

Nikki Jumper recently released her brand new single "Apocalypse Love" and to celebrate we asked her to tell us about the powerful inspiration behind the track. Here is the story:

'Apocalypse' Love is a vision of a dystopian future. It's humanity fighting A.I. - tangled up in a love story. The big question we asked ourselves was, 'Who'd you wanna be with when the world ends?'

We wrote this song last summer - before this Virus-Apocalypse-Era. Now we see it as something that was a little bit prophetic, a little bit freaky. It definitely hits differently now than it did when we wrote it. Now it feels very real. And my God, the stories we are hearing in the news about A.I. and robots! What's gonna happen in the next 5 years? I'm a futurist - a paranoid futurist!

At the time, 'Apocalypse Love' was influenced by our experiences with violence. My best friend survived a shooting. She heard the gunshots and ran into a chocolate shop, and they brought her into the basement to hide. She called me and Francesco crying and she wasn't sure she was going to make it out alive. That was a really terrifying moment for us.

We slipped into a really dark frame of mind. We went down the rabbit hole of what it would be like to experience the Apocalypse. That was reflected in our writing at the time, for sure. One of the lines in 'Apocalypse Love' is "Machine gun sound, rushing to get underground, take my hand and don't be shy"... and even though we never spoke about it, that experience definitely is echoed in the song!

We wrote 'Apocalypse Love' at my house near Toronto and recorded the vocals in a hotel room in Aruba. I had to shut the blinds and face the wall to get the mood right.. because I couldn't record vocals to this song looking at the shimmering sunset! It was then edited down on the airplane back to Toronto, mixed/produced by Phil Gornel somewhere in the U.S. when he was on tour with 5SOS, and mastered in England by Grant Berry. This song stamps a few passports.

It's so crazy that the themes of the song have materialized into our present reality! It seems everyone is thinking of their mortality and the people they love - who they'd want to be with when the Apocalypse goes down.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here