Letdown. is ready to embrace the positive. The Texas-born, Nashville-based rocker, singer, and multi-instrumentalist has tackled a slew of personal demons—many of which turned up on his catharsis-packed debut EP, 2023’s Crying In The Shower—in order to come out on the other side, stronger than ever.
The prolific artist’s latest batch of songs, which he is constantly churning out as a therapeutic way to process daily life, are upbeat, hook-packed anthems that invite audiences to shout along in unison.
“I think I'm at the end of writing about my problems,” Coddington muses. “I've been putting myself through emotional music therapy for three years now, and it's working. I'm finally looking back and laughing for the first time. I consider it the upswing of the depression. I'm about to enter this whole new phase in my life. Everything feels new again for the first time.”
Ever since he first began releasing music in 2020, Letdown. (real name Blake Coddington) has poured his soul into crafting soaring rock anthems that vulnerably chronicle his mental health journey and sonically intersect with punk/emo, metal, electronic, pop, and hip-hop.
Posting a series of unguarded videos to TikTok, Letdown. has seen his following grow to more than 675K, plus nearly 1M monthly listeners on Spotify, and more than 100k on Instagram — and that’s not even counting the 200M total streams Coddington’s songs have earned. As he steps into a new era with his debut album, fans will be swept up into a whirlwind of poppy and propulsive beats, guitar-driven compositions, and impassioned choruses.
“That's the greatest part of this,” Coddington says of his more buoyant direction. “We're all dancing around the studio. It's the most natural writing I've ever done. When I met my producer Carlo, we started working on our first song together, which ended up being ‘Hate Myself.’ We were like, ‘This sounds nothing like any of your other stuff. We don't know if anybody's gonna like this. Let's just see what happens.’ And then we got to the studio and everything happened. I remember looking at him, and I was like, ‘I don't care who doesn't like this. This is the most me I've ever felt.’”
Coddington continues to unpack a dysfunctional romantic dynamic on “Be Ok,” which he wrote near the end of a serious relationship—one he didn’t fully grasp was unhealthy until it was over. “I was so focused on my love for someone else that I didn't realize how much it was actually shooting me in the foot,” he says. “I didn't understand that everything could be better if this was over. At the same time, it immediately says ‘I never thought I'd miss you this way.’ It's something I think about all the time. I left everything negative in my life that has affected me, but I still think about it in a way that is almost like I miss it. It's a weird headspace to live in—to hate something and know it's gone, but still want it somehow. I think it's something that everyone feels, and a lot of people don't talk about that much.”
In other instances, Coddington just gives himself over to the feeling of a magnetic melody and hard-chanting refrain. On the harmonizing “Dead Right,” Coddington looks back at recording a track “we just thought was really bumpy, fun, and catchy. We weren't thinking about one thing in particular. This one happened really fast.”
On the rushing “Crying In The Shower,” which went Top 25 at Alternative radio last year, Coddington illustrates the feeling of chasing a fleeting high in order to drown out the loss of a broken relationship. “I feel overwhelmed and trapped in a cycle of despair. I attempt but fail to wash away the memories and pain of this lost love,” Coddington says. “This song conveys a sense of emptiness as I resorted to unhealthy habits like chasing fleeting highs and taking pills to numb the pain. This relatable story is the promise of a perfect relationship that ultimately leads to heartbreak.”
“‘Crying In The Shower’ was our first song that got some radio play,” he adds. “As we play this song live, we notice some of the audience nodding familiarly in acknowledgement that this is all too common. It seems everyone either has gone through this or knows someone who has.”
Finally, Coddington’s clipped vocals shine on the punchy and anthemic “Go To Hell,” a kiss-off track with the power to get a packed crowd on their feet and pushing toward the stage. “This song captures the complexities of love and pain, illustrating the struggle between knowing you should walk away and being unable to let go of my intense feelings for my abusive partner,” Coddington shares. “This song has always been my most reactive release and a testament to how relatable this situation is… Though I wrote this from personal experience, I also hope that the message can resonate with people as they consider their own choices.”
If anything unites Letdown.’s debut album, it’s mixing audible joy with the darkness that haunts his past. “This latest group of songs is my upswing—I’m literally finding the fun and light in the bad things,” he says. “The music I'm writing currently has been a lot more fun than it ever has been, and a lot less depressing. It's less self-loathing. This is what's been handed to me—now I'm gonna have to make something awesome.”
