Mayday Parade Celebrates 20 Years with 3-Part Album, Releases New Single

Mayday Parade – vocalist Derek Sanders, drummer/vocalist Jake Bundrick, guitarists Alex Garcia and Brooks Betts and bassist/vocalist Jeremy Lenzo – will be celebrating 20 years together in 2025. As they welcome this career milestone, the Tallahassee, Florida, five-piece is set to release perhaps their most aspirational and ambitious effort yet: a three-part album showcasing their prolific, emotionally resonant songwriting.

The first entry, Sweet, arrives April 18, 2025, and is led by the effervescent bounce of “By The Way,” a pitch-perfect blend of what’s made Mayday Parade a genre mainstay for decades: a tender, piano-led groove ultimately giving way to a crush of stereo guitars, ascendent melodies, and heart-on-sleeve lyricism.

“Being in a band for this long, sometimes you feel like you’re getting it right and sometimes you feel like you’re dancing around what you should be doing. This song feels locked in as a step in the right direction. It’s a song about trying to stay optimistic as the world and everything you know is changing around you. We hope you all enjoy it," says Derek Sanders on “By The Way."

Sweet succinctly showcases just how far Mayday Parade has come in the past two decades featuring the trademark sound that’s transformed them from genre newcomers to torchbearers for a new generation. Recorded with longtime producers, multiplatinum engineers Zack Odom and Kenneth Mount (All Time Low, Jimmy Eat World), the trilogy of releases will serve as Mayday Parade’s eight full-length studio album and first LP since 2021’s What It Means To Fall Apart. The new three-part album is also the band’s first self-released collection since 2006’s Tales Told By Dead Friends EP that Mayday Parade sold in parking lots across the country as they followed that year’s Vans Warped Tour.

“Being a band for 20 years feels big and we wanted to do something big to match that. Our next release will be a large album split up into three different parts. It feels like a challenge and an exciting step forward for the band. Our goal is to take the things we’ve learned and the ways we’ve grown and apply them towards an ambitious release. We’re incredibly thankful for the opportunity to continue to create music and we cannot wait to share Part 1 - titled ‘Sweet’ - with the world," Derek Sanders said on Sweet.

Since first forming in 2005 Mayday Parade has graced the covers of Alternative Press and Rock Sound, been featured in Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Kerrang, twice headlined Sad Summer Festival (a festival they co-founded six years ago), performed as a feature act at 2024’s When We Were Young festival, and are already announced for this year’s event in Las Vegas on October 18th. They’ve also been a featured act at Riot Fest and Slam Dunk, done numerous headline tours as well as support slots and just last year Mayday Parade’s Derek Sanders joined Dashboard Confessional’s “Emo SuperJam” at Bonnaroo Music & Art Festival. 

As one of the most enduring acts to rise from the underground in the mid-aughts, Mayday Parade has soundtracked both adolescence and adulthood for millions of listeners. Their music stands synonymous with the emo and pop-punk genres: 2007’s A Lesson In Romantics, their debut LP is gold certified and has been hailed as one of the best – and most influential – emo albums of all time by Alternative Press. Monsters In The Closet, their 2013 release, debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, and tracks like the platinum-selling “Jamie All Over,” gold-certified “Miserable At Best” and “Oh Well, Oh Well” represent not only widespread commercial acclaim, but the sort of artist-audience relationship that’s fortified them across changing musical landscapes and the ebb and flow of an unforgiving industry. 

Now, with Sweet set to launch and the project’s remaining two releases waiting in the wings later this year and into 2026, it’s undoubtedly a good time to be a Mayday Parade fan. The only thing better? Being in Mayday Parade these days, riding high on a renewed sense of confidence, clarity and creativity that acts rarely feel this far into a career. Fans can hear “By The Way” and “Pretty Good To Feel Something” (released last summer) now and look for tour dates and more new music in the weeks leading up to the April 18th release.

Photo credit: Eli Ritter

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