Template:Home/FloppyDisk

From The Floppy Disk

Jupiter Winter

Jupiter Winter
Jupiter Winter in 2021
Background information
Origin	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genres	Pop
Years active	2016-present
Members	Lelia Broussard Royce Whittaker

Jupiter Winter is an American music duo consisting of singer-songwriter Lelia Broussard and producer/multi-instrumentalist Royce Whittaker. They are based out of Los Angeles, California.

Formed in late 2016, Jupiter Winter gained initial exposure by touring alongside Canadian pop-rock band Marianas Trench and released their first single Resistance in February 2017. Five more singles were released throughout 2020 and 2021: Come Back, Lifetime, Atmosphere, Coming Of Age, and Seen. In May 2024, Oh My God was released and is the group's latest single.

Broussard joined The Midnight as a touring member beginning with the Fall 2019 tour, and Whittaker would later join as well in 2020 for The Midnight Online concert special. Jupiter Winter was featured on The Midnight's song Monsters, which Broussard co-wrote and sang vocals on. Broussard and Whittaker also contributed to the writing and production of The Midnight's fifth album Heroes.

Members

Lelia Broussard

Lelia Broussard
Broussard performing live with The Midnight in 2021
Background information
Birth name	Lelia Elizabeth Broussard
Born	(1989-05-24) May 24, 1989 Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S.
Genres	Pop
Occupation(s)	Singer songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals guitar
Years active	2004–present
Member of	Jupiter Winter
Formerly of	Secret Someones
Spouse(s)	Royce Whittaker ​ (m. 2023)​

Lelia Elizabeth Broussard (born May 24, 1989) is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, she and her family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when she was 10 years old. Around this time, Broussard started playing the guitar and began writing songs. To gain exposure, she regularly performed at open-mic events around the city.

Broussard self-released her first album Louisiana Soul in 2004. Her next album, Lil-yah, came in 2005. When she was 17, Broussard moved to New York City and began performing in clubs. She inked a publishing deal and lived in Los Angeles for a few years before returning to New York.

A successful Kickstarter campaign led to the release of Broussard's album Masquerade in 2010. In 2011, she was the runner-up in Rolling Stone magazine's "Choose the Cover" contest and appeared with her band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In 2012, Broussard was a contestant on the third season of The Voice, winning a spot on Team Blake after auditioning with her rendition of We Can Work It Out by The Beatles.

In 2013, Broussard formed the indie rock band Secret Someones with Bess Rogers, Hannah Winkler, and Zach Jones. They released their debut self-titled album in 2015 through the label Cherrytree Records. In early 2016, the band announced an indefinite hiatus. Later in the year, she formed Jupiter Winter with Royce Whittaker.

Broussard began touring with The Midnight as a guitarist and vocalist during the Fall 2019 Tour and has performed live with the band ever since. In addition to collaborating on the song Monsters, she co-wrote the songs Heroes and Heart Worth Breaking from The Midnight's 2022 release, Heroes.

Royce Whittaker

Royce Whittaker
Whittaker performing live with The Midnight in 2023
Background information
Birth name	Royce Alexander Whittaker
Born	(1991-04-03) April 3, 1991 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Genres	Pop Rock
Occupation(s)	Musician record producer sound technician
Instrument(s)	Guitar
Years active	2008–present
Member of	Jupiter Winter
Formerly of	INCURA
Spouse(s)	Lelia Broussard ​ (m. 2023)​

Royce Alexander Whittaker (born April 3, 1991) is a Canadian music producer, guitarist, and sound technician. Hailing from Vancouver, his father was a musician and as such Whittaker was exposed to making music from a young age. At the age of 17, Whittaker began to write music and play guitar in a band, touring across Canada. From 2012-2014, he was a member of the Canadian metal band Incura.

Beginning in 2015, Whittaker worked as a guitar and sound tech for the band Marianas Trench, and toured extensively across the US and Canada with the band. In 2017, he joined the sound engineering company Electronic Creatives and began working as a playback engineer, touring with artists such as Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey and Megan Thee Stallion.

In 2016, Whittaker partnered with Lelia Broussard to form Jupiter Winter. He is the main producer and instrumentalist in the group.

In 2019 Whittaker reunited with Marianas Trench, playing guitar, keys, and singing background vocals for the band as they toured the US, Canada, and Europe. He continues to work as a playback engineer for some of the world's top artists.

Whittaker first joined The Midnight as a guitarist during The Midnight Online, and was part of the band during the Fall dates of the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 Tour. He rejoined the band for Change Your Heart Tour and has remained a part of the tour lineup ever since. Whittaker co-wrote the songs Brooklyn. Friday. Love., Heartbeat, Heroes, Heart Worth Breaking, Aerostar, and Souvenir on the The Midnight's 2022 release, Heroes. He additionally contributed to the co-production and vocal production of the album.

Contributions to songs by The Midnight

• Monsters - featured artist, co-writer (Broussard), vocals (Broussard)
• Change Your Heart or Die - guitar (Whittaker)
• Heartbeat - co-writer (Whittaker)
• Brooklyn. Friday. Love. - co-writer (Whittaker)
• Heart Worth Breaking - co-writers
• Aerostar - co-writer (Whittaker)
• Heroes - co-writers
• Souvenir - co-writer (Whittaker)
• Land Locked Heart - co-writer (Whittaker)

References

External links

Jupiter Winter

• Official website
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Bandcamp

Lelia Broussard

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Soundcloud
• Facebook

Royce Whittaker

• Twitter
• Instagram‎

Click the heading above to read more!

Night Skies

"Night Skies"
Song by The Midnight
from the album Monsters
Released	July 10, 2020 (2020-07-10)
Length	3:04
Label	Counter Records
Songwriter(s)	Tim McEwan Tyler Lyle
Producer(s)	Tim McEwan
Monsters track listing
Monsters "1991 (intro)" "America Online" "Dance With Somebody" "Seventeen" "Dream Away" "The Search for Ecco" "Prom Night" "Fire In The Sky" "Monsters" "Helvetica" "Brooklyn" "Deep Blue" "Night Skies" "City Dreams (interlude)" "Last Train"

Night Skies is a song by The Midnight. It is the thirteenth track from their album Monsters.

The song was written by band members Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle and produced by McEwan. It has a running time of three minutes and four seconds and is in the key of A minor.

During an interview with Magnetic Magazine, the band commented on the song's production:

Tim: This is your classic The Midnight “cruising through the rainy streets at night while contemplating lost love” type track. Tyler originally wrote this and sang it as a blues style song and then I threw his voice through a vocoder.

Tyler: I wanted to write a blues song in the Midnight Universe. This was my attempt. Tim and I worked on this one together in Atlanta, and it came together really quickly. “A million horsepower no steering wheel” was the inspiration for the song- someone just so out of control and with so much intensity. It’s the first part of a tragedy we all know.

Lyrics

Your house is on fire won’t you let me in
Your house is on fire won’t you let me in
I’m drowning in desire
Your hair
Your skin
The flames burn hotter the deeper you go in

Your house is on fire won’t you let me in
Your house is on fire won’t you let me in
I’m drowning in desire
Your hair
Your skin
The flame burns hotter the deeper you go in

1000 miles an hour, how does it feel?
A million horsepower, no steering wheel
Running off the shoulder, asleep on the stage
Exploding cold steel, fire beauty and rage

Your ship is sinking let me climb aboard
Your ship is sinking let me climb aboard
The flames burning hotter, oh my lord
Your ship is sinking let me climb aboard

Lyrics source

Official versions

Night Skies

from Monsters

Night Skies (Instrumental)

from Monsters (The Instrumentals)

References

‎

Click the heading above to read more!

Monsters

This template is about the album. For the song, see Monsters (song).

Monsters
Album by The Midnight
Released	July 10, 2020
Genre	Synthwave Electronic World Lo-fi Vaporwave
Length	57:56
Label	Counter Records
Producer	Tim McEwan
The Midnight chronology
The Midnight Remixed 02 (2019) Monsters (2020) Horror Show (2020)
Singles from Monsters
"America Online" Released: May 3, 2019 "Deep Blue" Released: May 6, 2020 "Dance With Somebody" Released: June 10, 2020 "Prom Night" Released: June 24, 2020

Monsters is the fourth album by The Midnight. It was released through the label Counter Records on July 10, 2020.

Monsters was preceded by the release of four singles: America Online, Deep Blue, Dance With Somebody, and Prom Night.

Background and composition

The Midnight's previous album Kids was originally planned to be a larger release with more songs compared to the final product. It was later stated that its production was scaled back so Tyler Lyle would have more time to spend with his newborn child. With the band having a lot of leftover ideas from the making of Kids, they decided to expand upon its themes and began work on a follow-up album as part of a planned trilogy.

Some of the prizes given during the Fall 2020 ARG have revealed details about the development of Monsters. It had a working title of Kids 2 and several early demos of songs that appeared on Monsters were also shared. A snippet of America Online was shared on the band's social media in April 2018, predating the release of Kids. An early instrumental snippet of the song Monsters included in the ARG prizes is named "Monsters (early instrumental demo for KIDS)", indicating that it was also initially planned to be included on Kids.

In February 2019, it was mentioned on the band's social media that new songs were being recorded in Atlanta (the home of Lyle). On March 20, a no-captioned photo of an America Online startup screen was posted, the first official mention of the song since the April 2018 snippet. On March 25, a new clip of America Online containing vocals was shared. On April 5, a photo showing an America Online branded floppy disk with a caption of "New single dropping soon" was posted. A tiny portion of the single artwork was shared on April 18, followed by another small portion on April 29, with a release date of May 3 being announced. The next day, the single was officially confirmed to be America Online. The full single artwork was revealed on May 2. The artwork showed a computer with an AIM-esque chat interface, along with a desktop showing a file called "Monsters.zip", which would later turn out to be the name of the album. On May 6, the band's Twitter account posted the single artwork and stated that the font used in it was the name of a track from the upcoming album. A June 4 post showed an old System 7 interface with a text editor open and the font Helvetica selected, confirming the aforementioned song's name.

Further sharing of information about the next album was infrequent for the remainder of 2019, largely due to the band's ongoing tour. During the tour, a few songs confirmed by the band to be on the pending album were performed, including Seventeen, Monsters, and Brooklyn. The band shared in October that the next album would have a song "that feels like the spiritual successor to Lost Boy", and also stated in December that the album has "taken a lot of inspiration from world music."

In January 2020, the band said that "there may or may not be an homage to Ecco the Dolphin on our upcoming album." It was mentioned in February that the new album would have pan flute and saxophone, and it was also confirmed for a 2020 release. On April 24, a new snippet of the next single cover was posted on social media. On April 27, the single was confirmed to be Deep Blue with a release date of May 6. A short instrumental clip of the song was included in the post. The full single artwork was revealed on May 3. On May 6, the release of Deep Blue was accompanied by the announcing of Monsters as the next The Midnight album, with a planned release date of July 10. The artwork and tracklist were also revealed.

On May 29, Dance With Somebody was announced as the third single from Monsters alongside a short snippet of the song and a release date of June 3. However, The Midnight announced on June 1 that the single's release would be delayed a week to June 10, with the postponement being done in solidarity with racial justice protests happening at the time in the US. Prom Night was revealed to be the album's fourth and final single on June 18, with a short snippet and a release date of June 24 being shared.

Monsters promotional poster

Monsters was officially released on July 10, 2020. Receiving mostly positive reviews, critics noted that the album moved the band's sound in a different direction and expanded its horizons, breaking the traditional mold of the synthwave genre. The album was also the biggest commercial success to date for The Midnight, charting at number 134 on the Billboard 200, number 12 on the Dance/Electronic Albums chart, and number 18 on the Independent Albums chart.

According to Tyler Lyle, a few that songs were written or sketched during the creation of Kids were held over for Monsters. He also noted that the production of Monsters took longer than previous releases due to the band's tour schedule. Monsters was released with fifteen tracks, the largest number to date on a The Midnight release. The title track is a collaboration with Jupiter Winter, a music duo consisting of Lelia Broussard and Royce Whittaker. Broussard co-wrote the track and sings vocals on the second verse. She had previously joined the band as a guitarist and backup vocalist during the Fall 2019 Tour. Broussard and Whittaker would both join The Midnight for the concert special The Midnight Online. Brooklyn, the album's eleventh track, was originally a solo song by Lyle from his album The Floating Years.

A continuation of Kids, the album explores the trials and tribulations of growing up as a teenager and young adult. McEwan noted that the songs on Monsters "range from calm to sad to aggressive, and reflect[s] some of the internal struggles of adolescence." When asked about the significance of 1991, McEwan opined: "The KIDS have grown up. They're teens now. And 1991 was the year the internet went live. Hence the modem sound and opening the album with America Online." Lyle has described Monsters as "an examination of the half in darkness, half in lightness war of individualization through adolescence." During an interview with Icon Vs. Icon, he said about the album:

We wanted MONSTERS to be about adolescence, where the adult world starts knocking on your door and you have to face questions about intimacy, closeness and alienation. It’s a continuation of KIDS in a lot of ways. We wrote a lot of songs for it and hopefully we have a lot of songs for the next record as well to complete the arc. This collection we really felt spoke to the theme of connection.

Monsters has been noted for having a new and different overall sound compared to previous releases by The Midnight. Tim McEwan said a goal with Monsters was to "broaden the palette a bit and sonically evolve the sound of not just us but what is allowed in synthwave and question what is synthwave" and also to not be "encumbered by rules of a genre." McEwan elaborated further stating "I think there's a tendency with all genres to be bubbled into this chamber of one specific genre, and I felt it was important for us to move forward and to have the ability to move freely." Tyler Lyle said with regards to Monsters that McEwan "is evolving the sound a little bit more" and that "We’re opening the palette a little bit more — in some ways becoming a little bit more acoustic and in other ways becoming more dance-focused in different areas.” During a fan question-and-answer session on Twitter prior to the release of Monsters, he mentioned that he "wrote about 250 songs between 2016-2019" and "20 something of those songs got properly demoed/ realistically considered for Monsters."

McEwan stated that he took inspiration from various genres including soft rock, lo-fi, hip-hop, and trance. Influences of vaporwave can also be heard on tracks like America Online and City Dreams (interlude). The song Dream Away is mentioned by McEwan as being a "homage to the 90s wave of world influenced electronic music like Deep Forest and Engima." Lyle said that his work on Monsters was inspired by a string of Bruce Springsteen albums from the late 1970s to early 1980s, with the song Prom Night regarded as "an openhearted nod to Springsteen's gift as a dark and complicated writer who could also write a full throated pop song without those two words seeming to contradict." Lyle's vocals are supplemented with vocoder effects on the songs Monsters, Fire In The Sky, America Online, Deep Blue, and Night Skies, with the effect heard on Fire In The Sky actually being McEwan's voice.

Singles

America Online
May 13, 2019

Deep Blue
May 6, 2020

Dance With Somebody
June 10, 2020

Prom Night
June 24, 2020

Track listing

All tracks are written by Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle except where noted.

Monsters

No.	Title	Length
1.	"1991 (intro)"	0:27
2.	"America Online"	5:49
3.	"Dance With Somebody"	4:17
4.	"Seventeen"	4:02
5.	"Dream Away"	3:39
6.	"The Search for Ecco"	4:04
7.	"Prom Night"	5:02
8.	"Fire In The Sky" (Lyle, McEwan and Collin McLoughlin)	4:09
9.	"Monsters (feat. Jupiter Winter)" (Lyle, McEwan and Leila Broussard)	3:17
10.	"Helvetica"	5:16
11.	"Brooklyn"	4:14
12.	"Deep Blue"	3:57
13.	"Night Skies"	3:04
14.	"City Dreams (interlude)"	2:17
15.	"Last Train"	4:22
Total length:		57:56

Additional instrumentation was provided by Thomas Edinger (saxophone on Dance With Somebody), Oliver McEwan (synth bass on Dance With Somebody, Bass & fretless bass on Brooklyn), Daniel Heløy Davidsen (Lead guitar solo on Seventeen), Izzy Fontaine (additional guitar and guitar solo on Brooklyn, guitar on Prom Night & Last Train), and Jesse Molloy (saxophone on Deep Blue). The album was mixed by Tim McEwan and mastered by Emily Lazar and Chris Allgood at The Lodge in New York, NY. Songs were recorded in Los Angeles, CA, Atlanta, GA, and the back of a tour bus all over the world.

Artwork and layout by Aaron Campbell.

Release history and variants

Digital release history for Monsters

Date	Edition
July 10, 2020	Standard
-
October 8, 2020	Instrumentals
Unlike previous instrumental releases, songs that were already instrumental on the original album are included as well.
April 2, 2021	Stems
Contains the 15 songs from the album denoted with BPMs plus 278 stem parts comprising all songs except for 1991 (intro) and Helvetica. The stems are not royalty free but projects and remixes made with them are allowed to be used on non-monetized platforms. First The Midnight EP/album to get a full stems release, which was done for The Midnight Remix Radio Vol. 2 remix contest.

Physical release history for Monsters

Year	Format	Color/Design
2020	Cassette	Translucent Purple
First tape variant.
2020	CD	-
-
2020	LP	Purple Swirl
First vinyl variant. First pressing was plagued with issues, with some listeners experiencing warbly playback, skipping, and various other problems, which misaligned holes on the vinyl might have caused. Those who ordered the first pressing were sent an email offering a no-cost replacement. This variant received another pressing in August 2024 in the US.
2021	Cassette	Transparent Purple/Transparent Orange
Second tape variant. First double cassette release of a The Midnight EP/album, with the second tape containing the instrumentals.
2021	LP	Purple Splatter
Second vinyl variant. This variant received another pressing in August 2024 in the UK.

References

‎

Click the heading above to read more!