Jake Roche and Charley Bagnall might have been operating under the name Push Baby since early 2019, but it wasn’t until August 2020 that things clicked into one place. Their colourful single ‘Holding On Is Holding You Back’, released that month, distils their story so far, charting their near-decade as musical partners and the impact that the highs and lows of being put through the music industry machine can have on you. “Why are we here? What do I believe?” Roche questions on it. “Why did I hand the power over to a corporation that lost control of my dreams?”

As members of the band Rixton, the duo saw it all – the excitement of touring with megastars like Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran and Demi Lovato and scoring chart hits, the frustrations of having to compromise on their music to appease major labels, the nadir of being dropped and left wondering what their future held.

While the other two members of Rixton decided to call it quits, Roche and Bagnall weren’t ready to give up. Instead, they regrouped in Roche’s mum’s garage, where the singer says they would “stay up late, just talking about music and making music as mates with no label and no intentions but to enjoy the moment”. “Nine times out of 10 we’d wake up and go, ‘What is this!?’” he adds, but the important thing was that they were rekindling their creativity and discovering a reason to continue.

That reason is very simple, yet one that often gets forgotten when you’re in the middle of the industry whirlwind, fame and fortune dangled under your nose. “Music is always the core thing, and fun,” Bagnall says. “That’s all we want to do now – do it with our mates and have fun. If it comes out alright then it’s whatever. And then we move on to another one.”

Thus, with that ethos settled on, Push Baby are rising like a phoenix out of the ashes, ready to spread joy with their surreal, vibrant pop – but also make you think. Although they acknowledge that “no one wants to hear from a straight white cisgender male” on issues, they’re keen to fill their music with messages of importance, while making “the best pop music in the world”.

On the auto-tune heavy, erratic and inventive ‘Cry/Talk About It’, that message is one about mental health and the power of sharing your emotions instead of bottling them up. Such a subject isn’t uncommon in pop music in 2021 – something the band are more than aware of. “We’re not shying away from [talking about] struggling with mental health, but we understand it’s in everything right now – and rightly so,” Roche explains. “But if we do it, we have to scream about it. That’s something we feel really strongly about.” Having full conviction in what they’re singing and not doing things half-heartedly is key to Push Baby’s entire being.

Using their music to say something is part of what Bagnall describes as their “punk mentality”. That mindset also has more strands to it. “It’s also us being like, ‘Oh, you think we’re doing that? We’re doing this now’,” the guitarist says. “We’re just trying to stay ahead, because why not? Why stay with one thing the whole time?”

The last year of Push Baby has marked a period of taking back control and taking ownership of what the duo want to make and do with their music. “[Before ‘Holding On Is Holding You Back’], we were still very much leaning into this ‘It has to be [good for] Top 40 radio’ because there was a full radio team looking over our shoulder going, ‘We need the hit’,” Roche recalls. “That was just a huge reason why it didn’t work.” It taught them an important lesson though – to trust their own instincts and only try and impress themselves.

In their old guise, the pair worked with super-producers with huge hits to their name and got sucked into thinking that they had to emulate those figures’ work to be successful. “We had to unlearn that you don’t need to do any of that to be creative and be an artist,” Bagnall says. If you focus on your own path instead, he adds, “you just have so much more fun and, when you get to the end of the project, it sounds amazing”.

Given a new lease of life by this attitude, music has been flowing thick and fast for Push Baby. They describe their debut album, which is on the way soon, as “a big collaboration with a lot of people” and “experimental”, while they’ve already moved on to what will be their second record. “We’re constantly growing and moving,” Bagnall says.

It’s a fortuitous place to be, given the musicians’ rollercoaster of a time in the industry so far. “For so long, we were so scared to put a foot wrong,” Roche says, but the band have come to terms with their past and are racing towards an even brighter future than before, even if their parameters for success are different now. “Happiness has to be the reason you do anything,” Bagnall explains. “If you’re not happy doing this, just don’t do it.”

Luckily for themselves and the rest of the world, Push Baby have found contentment, confidence and their creative purple patch. Now, they’re ready to prove one of the lyrics in ‘Holding On Is Holding You Back’ right: “When the man with the briefcase says you can’t, you fucking can.” Expect them to make doing so look like an absolute blast.