Millie Manders and the Shutup in Conversation

2026 is set to be a huge year for Millie Manders and the Shutup. They’ve just released their cover version of Limp Bizkit’s ‘Break Stuff’ and are heading on a new UK tour in April and May. I sat down with Millie to discuss their plans for the year.

How would you describe your music to anyone who hasn’t heard it before?

It’s in the remit of punk but people would probably associate it with pop-punk or ska-punk depending on the track that they’re listening to. It’s bouncy, it’s vibrant. There’s a lot of singing and screaming, but largely it’s a fairly good party vibe. 

What was the inspiration behind ‘the shutup’? 

I’ve had line-up changes over the years. I started off as a solo musician and when I first got a solid band together, people started saying ‘you’ve got a proper band now so what are the band called?’ I had a drummer who was with us for 8 years before he ended up getting a gig in film and television doing sound. He was an Italian man and when he first got in the band he was very surprised by certain things over here, like Banoffee. It illicit this response like ‘shut up!’ And of course, in a van when you’re touring around and you’ve got this one person doing this to stuff he finds funny because it’s an English-ism you all start mimicking it. And so it just became really easy to be like it’s Millie Manders and the Shutup.

Is there a particular song you think University of Liverpool Students need to hear?

I think it depends cause you can’t really speak to a whole student body. You’re going to have such varying different types of people. Different music tastes, different political opinions going on. So for the lefties in the room you’re probably going to like this like ‘Poor Man’s Show’ and ‘Can I Get Off?’. For the people who just really like a bit of a pop banger, ‘Your Story’, ‘Rebound’. I feel like I describe as sort of a pop-punk, ska-punk kind of outfit but I think depending on who’s listening and what sort of mood they’re in at the time there is pretty much a song for everybody’s musical taste. And that’s what I really love about being in this band. Having the opportunity to write in a really diverse and creative way, whatever we want to do and just do it without fear of repercussion or worry about a label saying ‘you should be writing this stuff’. I can’t really say one song for an entire student body because I love the diversity of the human beings that make up a university. 

Do you have a particular process when writing music?

It can be any way. A bit like I’ve just said about diversifying. When we have writing sessions we all come with ideas. So we have an entire folder of Pete putting drum licks in that Jo will often take in to a logic project and write guitars over. So, he’s building a song from production up. George will bring a baseline in a writing session, or I’ll come up with lyrics and melody which I send out to the guys with some really badly played chords underneath. ‘I know how I want it to sound, this is the structure, go with it!’ So we all have an opportunity to bring ideas to the table and whatever creativity is put on the table we work with it until its done. And that might not come out as a song, it might be a really fun session being like ‘this is great but I don’t think its right for the album’ or ‘oh this was great but maybe it could be a standalone single’. 

My writing processes are never the same. Sometimes I’ll come up with chords and can hear a really cool melody over them. Sometimes I’ve just got lyrics in my head and I’ve got to go to the guys and say ‘I’ve got this. This is the vibe and the inspiration. Can you write something?’ Again, I think if you try and pigeon-hole writing processes you run the risk of locking yourself in. So, whatever happens we run with it. 

I do worry if I’ve gone 6 months without writing a song. I think ‘I’ve lost it. I’ll never write again, what am I going to do?’ And then I might sit down and be like ‘right, just write a poem’ just to try and get the creative bones going. But, if I boxed myself in I would get frustrated. My brain doesn’t allow me to do that. 

Are you excited to be going back onto the road in April?

Oh my god yes! I haven’t had a tour since last April. We were meant to be on tour with Bow Wow Wow and that kind of collapsed. It was our choice to pull out of the tour but it still felt like our world was crumbling in Autumn and Winter. All of us have felt this real weight of not being able to see each other and socialise with each other, hang out with each other. Two of us live in London and two of us like in Norfolk, so we can’t just meet up at a pub. We haven’t had that social interaction, so I can’t wait to see our fans, our ted army. I can’t wait to play some new venues and just rage a bit on stage. Get some of my angsty vibes back out into a crowd.  

Have you played in Liverpool in the past? Do you have any favourite spots in the city?

I’ve actually only played there two or three times. There was a tiny little venue that we hired in 2014 and we had a band called Broken 3 Ways play with us, who are brilliant by the way. And then in 2021 we played at Academy 3 with a support band. We took on an entire tour. And then most recently we played across the water, do you call it the Wirral? I can’t remember the name of the venue but it was such a cool place. The stage is really high, the bar is outside of the room but it’s this really cool space where you can chill out and chat and stuff. A really really lovely venue. So that’s three times we’ve played in Liverpool or in the Wirral. I’m really excited to go to Liverpool. It’s a fantastic city. Obviously it’s got huge amounts of history as well, with the city and with the Beatles.

It’s a fantastic city as it’s just got a vibe about it when you walk around. People are happy to be there. They’re excited that they get to be in Liverpool and that it’s got a good scene you know. I find that quite a lot more about the North than the South. Sorry South! I do love playing there but you don’t have the same excitement. There’s just something about going up North. People are like ‘I’ve never heard of this band. I’m totally gonna go!’ I’m just like ‘this is amazing’. 

Are you grateful to be able to use your platform for activism?

I think it’s a duty. That’s where it comes from more than anything. I am very glad that I have at least a small platform. I don’t have a big platform. Big platforms are in the millions or hundreds of thousands and I’m in the tens of thousands. I have enough of a platform that I know I have reached people because people have talked to me about the fact that I have either changed their minds about something or brought attention to something that they didn’t know about. I think if everybody was doing that and everybody was talking about the things that should be changed for the better then more would be changed for the better. And I do see it as a duty. Whether its socio-economic stuff just in the UK or human rights in the UK, or the wider world I think it’s important that if you care about something you have a chance to make a difference. In whatever capacity that is. You should take the opportunity.

People who don’t speak are afraid of things that have happened to me. I lost our German booking agent. I’ve lost show opportunities. I have been shunned in Germany for two years. I’m going back there in January but it’s been very difficult to go back there because they haven’t wanted me to talk about Palestine. If you go too political you run the risk of becoming just a political band and we’re not. We’re much more multifaceted than that. But equally I feel I have to do everything I can to make other people’s lives better when I have so much privilege. What kind of a human am I? That’s the question that I struggle with every day. I struggle to find a reason that other people don’t struggle with that question. It does come down to white privilege. Sorry readers, whether you like it or not. It does come down to white privilege. You’ve got all of these bands that say that they’re political punk bands and they’re not using their incredibly high privilege to talk about things. My question is where actually is your humanity and how are you not struggling with yourself.

Do you have any particular goals/milestones you’d like to hit?

This is going to sound really tiny, but if I had the opportunity to take my band and sell out Shepards Bush Empire that would be my bucket list. That’s only a 3,000 capacity venue which to me is completely out of reach at the moment, but Shepards Bush Empire I have watched Blondie, Prince, Huey Lewis and the News, and some of the Sex Pistols. The Real Big Fish, Less Than Jake. All of these incredible artists and acts that have shaped me and shaped some of my band as a musician and a music lover. If I could tread those boards and look up in the stands and see if filled with people that are there for us, and see them feel what I felt standing in those crowds looking at my heroes- that’s it. I’m ok. Anything after that is like glorious and will be amazing and I’ll be grateful for every moment, but Shepards Bush Empire. That’s the one venue I would like to fill.

You can check out the band’s latest single here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-nPweqF7I

Tickets for the tour are available here: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/14728263-millie-manders-and-the-shutup

For more music, please click here: https://www.liverpoolguildstudentmedia.co.uk/category/music/