“I just had sex with my ex / and I don’t feel nothin’/ feel nothin,” singer Home Alone belts out at the start of LOOTE‘s song, “Sex With My Ex,” off of their recently released Heart Eyes EP. The track is an emotional roller coaster, one that sees Jackson Foote and bandmate Emma Lov realize that sometimes, it’s best to not answer that text from a number you swore you blocked. “Hang my heart upon the wall / just like a piece of modern art / because it was art / the way you f-cked me up,” sings Emma, a voice full of pain and regret. “Girl you make me never wanna fall in love / Girl, why are we f-cking if you’re not in love? / Girl, I sweat to god there’s something wrong with us.”
“Sex With My Ex” holds universal message within its explicit title. On the one hand, it’s about the regret of sleeping with a former lover and finding out they’re a former lover for a reason. On the other hand, it’s about revisiting a moment in time, only to find out that nostalgia is a bit misleading, and the past is no longer as good as you remember it. To bring this vision to life, Looteteamed up production team Captain Cuts and Travis Barker. When asked how the band met the writing/recording/remix team, Jackson told HollywoodLife that said Loote and Captain Cuts all “just linked up for a typical writing session. No expectations. We had written another song that day that was pretty cool, but this idea popped up at the end of the session when we were all about to leave, everybody was like ‘let’s do this!!!!’ ”
The other major collaborator on “Sex With My Ex” is drummer Travis Barker. Loote told Billboard that they got Travis on the with by a random DM, and it was “literally a dream” to work with him. Travis, who recently played the Dave Grohl part in Post Malone’s Nirvana tribute concert. The former The Aquabats/current Blink-182 drummer left everyone impressed, including Jackson.
“His performance was incredible,” he tells HollywoodLife. “Every time I see him play, it blows me away. I remember when we first got the drums files he played, it was like Christmas, [laughs].” When asked if he were to follow Post’s example and put together his own tribute concert with Travis on the drums, Jackson went in a different direction than grunge. “Oh my gosh — great question! Let me think. I might have to do a tribute the mid 90’s- early 2000’s NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and Britney that I grew up on.” A perfect answer for May 1st, after all.
Before they were having sex with an ex, Loote was thinking about “Somebody Else.” The band released their song at the start of April, a track they told us was “about the one that got away. … It’s about the one you know you had something with, but they didn’t recognize it until it was too late.”