"Starting Line" by Luke Hemmings // Song Review

- January 05, 2026

"Starting Line", Luke Hemmings' debut single released in 2021, perfectly captures just how introspective and emotionally raw the rest of his solo work would go on to become. It serves as such a powerful reintroduction to who Luke is as an artist outside of his work with his band, 5 Seconds of Summer. With this song and the rest of his debut solo album, When Facing The Things We Turn Away From, he stepped into a new space musically that allowed him to explore new influences in a way that is completely unguarded and all his own - often circling themes of feeling paralyzed by the bittersweet passage of time while entering adulthood.

The song starts off as a beautiful ballad, immediately highlighting what an incredible vocalist he is. This may even be one of his top performances ever. "In and out of focus, moments that I keep, something for the pain and something so I sleep, won't you comfort me? Warm the air that I breathe?" he sings in the opening lines. "Visceral in doses, hiding on the seams, standing on the sun and I don't feel a thing. won't you comfort me? Take the fear I don't need?"

In an interview with Apple Music, Luke opened up about what "Starting Line" means to him, calling it "...a reflection on 10 years of your life passing you by in what felt like forever, but also in the blink of an eye." He added, "It's about forgetting pieces of your life - not from vices, but from sheer volume and speed. I've had to figure out how to fill all the gaps for myself in a positive way. I love the way this song builds and the emotion it evokes. It is a perfect first step to the rest of the album."

The story behind this song is about getting swept up in the expectations other people hold for you and then looking back one day and realizing you've been living to fulfill those expectations instead of living for yourself for far too long. It's an especially interesting viewpoint to look at in the context of his life, growing up in the public eye since he was a teenager and everything he's experienced personally. But it also expands into a wider, more universal message too and the importance of living for yourself, unapologetically and its never too late to start over.

"I wake up every morning with the years ticking by, I'm missing all these memories, maybe they were never mine, I feel the walls are closing, I'm running out of time, I think I missed the gun at the starting line" he sings in the chorus. The building intensity of the instrumental and the way it continuously builds through captures the feeling of being frozen in place at a moment you can't quite move on from, even though you desperately want to. So much of the music he writes comes from that deeply personal place, opening up about the past struggles he has gone through in a way that is fully transparent and not sugar-coated at all.

"I'm in constant pursuit of bettering myself in that department. A lot of the songs are about where I'm at today, but some of them are written from the perspective of a 17- year-old kid in the thick of the industry. You're reflecting on your youth and all of the madness and craziness." Luke said in an interview with Spotify.