
SHAED‘s career launched with their hit single “Trampoline,” so it’s fitting that their debut record would also center around a similar metaphor.
The album, titled High Dive, finds the trio — made up of vocalist Chelsea Lee and multi-instrumentalist brothers Spencer and Max Ernst — taking a “leap of faith” into the unknown. As the group tells ABC Audio, they had a full album “completed” before deciding to scrap it and start anew.
“We had this collective realization that none of those songs were really true to who we were and what we wanted to communicate to our fans, and they weren’t true to our story,” Max says. “We had this tough decision that we made to scrap the entire album.”
Thus, the idea of High Dive was born. That “leap of faith” didn’t just apply the daunting task of starting over, but also how vulnerable the SHAED members allowed themselves to be as they wrote the album amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Despite having the world shutting down around us we were able to lean into all those feelings of anxiety and depression we were feeling, that everyone was feeling,” Max says. “[We were able to] write an entire album that really dove into all the emotions that we’ve been feeling, and the emotional roller coaster we’ve all been feeling during this pandemic.”
High Dive is out today. It includes the single “No Other Way” and the Two Feet-featuring “Part Time Psycho,” as well as the ZAYN duet version of “Trampoline.”