The Darkness released Motorheart on November 19, 2021, through Cooking Vinyl. Their seventh studio album took shape with the band divided between England and Switzerland, but the musicians were thinking about being back in front of an audience. Guitarist and producer Dan Hawkins told Guitar World that they wanted songs people could enjoy when concerts returned: “So we didn’t want to end up with an album that was maudlin.”
“Jussy’s Girl” put that approach into practice. Justin Hawkins described its unrequited desire as both melancholy and carefree in comments published by Classic Rock. Dan told The Big Takeover that the song arrived toward the end of the sessions, after he had been experimenting with 1980s production techniques. Justin responded enthusiastically to the backing track and sent back a vocal demo that quickly settled the song’s direction. Its official music video appeared in September 2021.
The recording process began with a practical problem: Justin couldn’t travel from Switzerland to the UK. Drummer Rufus Taylor recalled in Modern Drummer that he, Dan and bassist Frankie Poullain made an initial writing trip, after which he and Dan developed arrangements to send to Justin. Dan’s studio occupied part of a working horse stable on his Sussex property. In an interview with Mix, he explained that Rufus could enter the drum booth through a separate door while Dan stayed in the control room. They communicated through headphones and recorded as they worked through the music. Writing, arranging and tracking happened together.
Once those foundations were ready, the rest of the band could weigh in from a distance. Lyrics circulated through WhatsApp, and Dan and Justin used Audiomovers to share audio while trying vocal takes. Dan said the connection could feel close enough that he forgot his brother wasn’t in the vocal booth. Final guitar parts and Frankie’s bass followed, with Dan also handling the mix.
Justin found an unexpected advantage in that separation. Speaking to Pollstar in April 2022, he explained that working apart gave everyone time to develop a contribution before the other members heard it. An idea that might have been dismissed in the room could arrive in a more convincing form. He felt the process took longer, but allowed more of those ideas to survive.
The title track shows how much room they gave themselves. Dan told The Big Takeover that “Motorheart” was the first song he and Rufus tackled, while they were still figuring out how to approach the album. Its many sections became a challenge when he switched from writing and playing to mixing: instruments competed for prominence, and the arrangement kept changing underneath them. Justin supplied a story about a sex robot, giving the elaborate backing track an equally outlandish subject.
There was a pointed side to the humor, too. Justin told Pollstar that the album mocked male vanity through a narrator whose failed relationships exposed his own flaws. The joke was often on the man doing the singing.
Motorheart entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 16 and the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart at No. 1. The return to touring that had helped shape the record became a reality: after a UK run in late 2021, The Darkness launched their North American tour in March 2022.
