Interview: Mayday Parade's Jeremy Lenzo on New Album 'Sugar'
It’s crazy to think that Mayday Parade has been a band for over twenty years now. The Florida five-piece made a lasting impression on the scene by going down the line during early dates of the Vans Warped Tour, selling copies of their debut EP Tales Told By Dead Friends. This weekend, they’ll be playing the 2026 edition of the Warped Tour as one of its premier acts. In twenty years, Mayday Parade has risen to elite status within the pop-punk and emo scene, having released a steady output of high-quality music since 2007’s groundbreaking debut A Lesson In Romantics.
On Friday, the band will release Sugar, the conclusion of a three-part album that was preceded by releases Sweet (April 2025) and Sad (October 2025). It features all the trademark aspects of a traditional Mayday Parade release: emotional verses, soaring choruses, and a feeling that captures the essence of youth that only a few bands are still able to bottle up and harness in their music two decades later. Ahead of the album’s release, we sat down with bassist Jeremy Lenzo to talk about the new album and how Sugar brings the trilogy to a fitting close.
Main Photo: Mayday Parade / Jaime Schultz
Sugar brings your ambitious three-part album trilogy to a close, and it really doesn’t feel like you missed a step. Even so, writing and recording twenty-six songs over a period of two years seems daunting. What would you do to keep things fresh when you’re writing and parsing over that much material?
I think one of the great things about our band is that we all write, so even when one person may be tapped on ideas, we have other people who are working on stuff. As far as how we keep it fresh, I don’t think we ever focus on that aspect too much; we just write what comes out naturally. If, at the end, it sounds too close to something else, we can work on it to make it feel more unique to itself, or we may end up just holding off on it and coming back to it on another album.
You’ve been working with Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount on the Sweet, Sad, Sugar trilogy. You’ve branched off over the years on some albums (David Bendeth on Anywhere But Here and Mike Sapone on Black Lines), but you’ve mostly worked with them over the last twenty years. How would you describe your working relationship, and what is it that makes them such a good fit for a band like Mayday Parade?
I think of them as a sixth member to our band; we value their input as much as our own, and I think they bring a lot to the table as far as creativity is concerned. You asked in the previous question about how we keep it fresh, and I think that’s something they’re really good at. They’ve worked on the majority of our albums, so they know all our material, know what we have done and what may feel too close to something we’ve done before. They also know how to steer a song to be its own thing rather than a copy of something we’ve done in the past. I love them both; they really are a part of the Mayday family.
I have to say that one of my favorite songs off of the new album is “Patriotism of First Tiger Called Into Question”. It has that quality to it that feels like it could have fit in on A Lesson In Romantics, yet it feels modern. Can you tell me a little about how that song came about?
That was a song Derek (Sanders, vocalist) brought in. I think we all liked it from the first listen. I honestly can’t speak on it too much since it’s not something I wrote. I love that it’s a little faster in the verses and goes into this nice cut time chorus. This kind of goes back to how we all write individually; everyone is mostly bringing in completed songs, and we just change little things in them that the majority might think could be better, or we just don’t do the song at all if no one is really feeling it. The days of writing together in someone’s garage are long gone; I miss those days, but we all have families now, and this is just what works best for us.
I’m always interested in the songs that bands choose for singles, as it’s the first representation that people will have of the album as a whole. What drove the choice to put out “Blame It On The Youth” and “Weekend Music” as the first singles for Sugar?
I think we chose those because they felt the most upbeat and represented how the album would feel as a whole. You can ask each person in the band, and they would probably give you a different answer about what songs they would want to lead with. We do things as a majority vote in our band, and those songs just got the most votes for the reasons I mentioned above. There are other songs on the album I love more but don’t make for the best introduction into what the album is.
Last question: you’ve got a few shows coming up to round out the year, including performances at Warped Tour, Four Chord Music Festival, and Aftershock here in Northern California. With a festival like Aftershock, where there are nearly 120 bands on the lineup, most of them metal and hard rock, does it ever feel intimidating to go on stage as the pop-rock band in the middle of the day? Or has playing events like Warped Tour primed you for experiences like that?
I don’t think it feels intimidating. We’ve been doing this for twenty years now, and I honestly don’t think twice about it. There were times when we were first touring where I may have been intimidated by the lineup difference. For example, I remember early on we did a small run with Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster where we were opening for them, and I was thinking, “Why are we doing this? Their fans are going to hate us.” And most of them did (laughs), but nowadays I don’t think about it. There will always be some people who don’t care for your music, and they have the option of walking to another stage to see someone else, so it doesn’t really faze me.
Mayday Parade’s new album, Sugar, is out this Friday, July 24th. The band will perform this weekend at the Long Beach date of the Vans Warped Tour. To pre-order/save the album, click here. The band will also perform at Sacramento’s Aftershock this October. For tickets, click here.
