In our High 5 column, Exclaim! typically asks artists to rank their five best songs. PUP singer-songwriter Stefan Babcock is so self-effacing, however, that the task becomes a little more complicated than usual.
"Choosing our five 'best' songs is very difficult for me because I rarely say anything good about myself," he admits.
It's both needlessly self-deprecating and entirely in keeping with the artistic persona Babcock has cultivated over the course of four previous albums of towering, holler-along punk as the frontman of Toronto four-piece PUP. And on their fifth full-length, Who Will Look After the Dogs? (due out May 2 through their own Little Dipper Records), he introduces heartbroken vulnerability into the emotional mix while, as always, saving his most scathing disses for himself. "Fuck everyone in this venue / Especially me," he seethes over the band's uncharacteristically waltzing triplets on "Hunger for Death."
But even if we couldn't get Babcock to acknowledge his five songs, we did get this: "If you'll allow me, I'll call this ranking 'our 5 least shitty songs.'" Fair enough!
5. "Scorpion Hill"
Morbid Stuff (2019)
This is our longest song. It's also a songwriter's song. By that I mean it's a bit of a lyrical odyssey, which we don't do very often. There's a real story to this one, that, if you cared enough about, you could probably find elsewhere on the internet. It's an important one for me because writing this was the first time I felt like a real songwriter. The next day, I went right back to feeling like a fraud, but the 12 hours in between were bliss.
The outro was inspired by "The Day We Hit the Coast" by Thrush Hermit. I really wanted to put accordion on that part, but none of us play accordion. Nestor and I had to play it together because neither of us had the coordination. So I was playing the keyboard part and he was doing the squeezing/opening thingy, whatever that's called. I dunno. It took us like two hours to nail that 20-second section. Sometimes you just gotta go down the rabbit hole. I think it was worth it, but there's at least half a band and producer who would disagree.
4. "Familiar Patterns"
The Dream Is Over (2016)
Disregard everything I'm about to say about "the faster the song comes together the better it probably is," because "Familiar Patterns" took us a couple years to crack. This song started as a sick Nestor guitar riff. I knew it was special, and I put a lot of pressure on getting the lyrics right cuz I don't mind fucking up my songs, but I don't like to fuck up Nestor's songs. It needed a chorus and structure, and it went through probably about 20 versions — not joking — before it ended up where it did.
When we finally thought it was finished, we were sitting around the jam space silently glaring at each other, as we do, and Zack said, "It's not finished." He suggested we do an outro that's just a slowed down, super heavy version of the main riff. "Suggested" isn't the right word. He said, "We're doing an outro that's just a slowed-down super heavy version of the main riff." And I was like, "Fuck this guy, the song's done, I'm sick of this, I'm gonna glare at him some more." Anyway, the outro is my favourite moment on that whole record.
3. "Robot Writes a Love Song"
THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND (2022)
This was probably the fastest I've ever written a song, and the fastest we've ever thrown a song together as a band. It was like 15 minutes on my end and a couple hours in the jam space. And, usually, the faster things happen, the more it means we're hitting on something good. Out of all of our songs, I'm probably the proudest of this one. It's weird and tender and stupid and I like it. It's also the kinda song I can show to my parents, which is nice sometimes.
2. "Paranoid"
Who Will Look After the Dogs? (2025)
This one just kinda has all the elements of PUP that I like. It's loud and heavy, has a catchy chorus, angry, but also pretty fun and not too self-serious. I dunno — I think it's everything we wanted this band to be in one three-minute ripper. And, most importantly, there's a disgusting bridge breakdown, where Steve's playing dissonant jazz chords that shouldn't be there but sound good, Zack's going so hard, I'm yelling the saddest shit I can think of, and Nestor is ignoring all of that and just playing the melody to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" over everything. It makes me laugh every time.
1. "PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing for Bankruptcy"
THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND (2022)
This is the least shitty PUP song ever written, I don't care what anyone says. And let me tell you: most of our fans would disagree. When we play it live, it gets a tepid reaction, and I'm okay with that, because, you know what, sometimes you gotta do things for yourself, like play a song you love that everyone else hates.
"Bankruptcy" started as this weird, angular, post-punky riff that Nestor brought in. It's heavy and dark, and so my gut instinct was to immediately counterbalance that seriousness by yelling profound shit on top of it, like, "All of my friends have bidets in their en suites!" Some of my best lyrical work, if you ask me.
What started off as this dark, plodding song became something a lot more fun; it felt like an inside joke. When we recorded the final version, we decided to add a saxophone freakout in the bridge. By "we decided," I mean "my bandmates decided." I fucking hate saxophone. Sounds like a duck quacking to me. But the solo is insane and funny as hell, and the whole song sounds like we were losing our minds, which we were, and also having fun, which we were.