Interview: Fitz and the Tantrums

“Man On The Moon,” the current release from Fitz and the Tantrums brings more of the brisk pop bangers and singalong anthems that have become standard -- almost expected -- fare for the soul-pop five-piece.

Outsized expectations -- from fans, from music biz insiders and radio DJs, from within the band itself -- can cause drama, creating headaches and worries about artistic integrity -- something frontman Michael “Fitz” Fitzpatrick knows about first hand. 

Yet, nearly two decades into his music run with his bandmates, Noelle Scaggs, saxophonist James King, keyboard player Jeremy Ruzumna and bassist Joseph Karnes, Fitzpatrick said “Man On The Moon” (which has now been re-released in a deluxe “Galaxy Edition”) is simply about the band members staying true to themselves.

“It feels like we’ve been on so many journeys with so many different albums, and [‘Man On The Moon’] feels like a full circle moment, coming back to a lot of our early roots mixed in with a lot of our other influences,” Fitzpatrick shared in a recent interview. 

“I don’t think any artist fully realizes the freedom in that first record they’re making because when you’re making it, you have nothing,” he continued. “Nobody’s heard your music. Nobody gives a s***. There’s this beautiful freedom in that. And then you realize quickly once you put out music and you’re lucky enough to have some success with it, then all of a sudden you have the record industry [and] record executives giving you their opinion, your manager’s giving you their opinion and even the fans.”

The latter was a contingent that Fitz and company definitely heard from in 2013 when their second record and major-label debut, “More Than Just a Dream,” delivered several of their biggest multi-platinum songs to date. While 2010’s “Pickin’ Up the Pieces” established the group with a (mostly) guitar-less, soulful Motown sound -- a huge inspiration for the band -- Fitzpatrick said they leaned into other “equally important influences” on “More Than Just a Dream,” most notably 1980s new wave music. 

“That’s really the music that was of my generation,” Fitzpatrick said. “And as soon as we made that switch, then we had a whole group of fans that were mad at us that we didn’t make the same record again, you know?” 

“P.S. Who wants to make the same thing over and over?” he added. “That’s boring for an artist.” 

At the end of the day, “More Than Just a Dream” contained some big radio songs, which brought even more success and fans to shows. But that kind of exposure is when “the real pressure from the outside came, because then there’s the bar. Anything less than that is considered a failure in the business,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s all these expectations around it. You put it on yourself. The label does, and everybody wants to hear a song that they feel is a hit, a radio hit. We were a victim of that sort of expectations from outside sources and from within ourselves.”

Before “Man On The Moon” was even a twinkle in Fitz and The Tantrums’ eye (or sky), Fitzpatrick addressed the noise that comes with being a hit-making act. He sat down with principal producer Jonas Jeberg, and “we just listened to our entire catalog and had lots of conversations about what we wanted this record to be. The takeaway was nobody knows what’s a hit,” he said. “So I’m certainly not going to try and write a hit anymore. I’m just going to truly write songs that inspire me, that give off a kind of vibe that I want to catch, and hopefully people will respond to that.”

“Man On The Moon” has sonic flashes that reflect the past. Singles like the title track and “Ruin The Night” are instant earworms that show Fitz and The Tantrums can still write pop songs -- like third-album-stadium favorite “HandClap” -- that’ll stand the test of time. The initial rhythmic piano staccato of “Umbrella” harkens back to first album classics “Moneygrabber” and “Don’t Gotta Work It Out.” Today’s keys are quicker and amplified with a driving drum beat, making those 2010 breakout songs feel languid in comparison. At the midway point of “Man On The Moon” comes Scaggs’ standout moment on “Young Days,” a powerful ’80s anthem where she takes lead vocals.

The entire album flies by like a perfect summer day, gone too soon. This breezy brevity lies in the fact that most songs don’t crack the three-minute mark. Fitz and The Tantrums have previously released “Sped Up” and “Slowed Down” versions of the mega-hit “Out of My League,” and many of these album tracks feel like the band could have fun with the tempos when playing them live.

Each song on the record developed in its own natural way, Fitzpatrick explained, “but also with this idea that we weren’t putting any expectations on the song. It was just purely does this song feel good? Do I feel something?” 

“At every turn, it was always just trying to push it forward and challenge ourselves and not take the easy road,” he said, “to dig deeper into better imagery and say something more.” 

The record provides a brief escape for listeners, and Fitzpatrick himself. On the title track, he talks “about these crazy times we live in and this need to get away” with the opening lyrics:

I wanna stay out of touch 

These days I feel too much 

No I don’t want to stay

Yet the zippier pace might belie an underlying issue everyone faces. From being inundated with “a terabyte worth of information a day, compared to like 10 megabytes of information 20 years ago,” Fitz said, we doomscroll through excessive amounts of “extreme ideas and news and information now, and we’re all being sucked into them, myself included.

“What keeps us all glued to our phones?” he observed. “Is it good news? F***no. It’s divisive politics. It’s scary global geopolitical news. It’s disaster porn.”

But that’s where Fitz and The Tantrums come in: They provide the opposite, a real-world experience that’s exuberant, inclusive and filled with joy.

“We love to put on a show,” Fitzpatrick said. “We quickly found out that the more energy we gave on stage, the more we got back from the audience. And it became like this infinity loop, pressure cooker kind of situation, and we feed on that.” 

It also didn’t take long for Fitzpatrick to “see the power that putting a positive message out into the world could have,” he said. “A lot of our songs deal with an uplifting message or dealing with a struggle but somehow rising above it or overcoming it.” 

Fitz hopes today’s music landscape puts more power in the hands of the listeners rather than corporate radio conglomerates or MTV VJs. This democratization makes real people -- true fans -- the gatekeepers, voting with their streams and views, thus spreading Fitz and The Tantrums’ shimmying, sweaty dance jams even further.

Looking out at crowds each night and seeing a sea of smiles, Fitzpatrick said he knows, “Oh, this is real, and this has an impact. And who knows how many people’s day we just changed today.”