How Moody Joody’s ‘OOPS!’ became an anthem for messy ‘going out-out’ nights

Moody Joody’s new single, OOPS!, is the perfect soundtrack to your next wild night out – and next morning hangxiety. Propelled along by its infectious, bad idea right?-esque sing-along hook, ‘No, I won't do that again’, the rising pop trio’s new single is a playful bop that’s powering thousands of blurry Gen-Z TikTok montages about going out-out with friends and letting loose. Blending the gutsy pop girlie energy of Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter, OOPS! is brought to life in its hun-coded Coyote Ugly-esque music video, which sees the Nashville trio’s girls (wearing their finest jeans-and-a-nice-top combos) take over a dreary village hall, and later, scuzzy men’s urinals – featuring overhead lighting that Mariah Carey would find offensive.

Once you get talking to them, you quickly find out that bad lighting is not high on their priority list – they refuse to fit into any neat pop box. Moody Joody are building a world where vulnerability meets dancefloor euphoria. Equal parts swoony, sexy, and unapologetically honest, the trio champion what they call “owning your humanness”, and they’re enjoying every moment that sees them embracing the highs, the breakdowns, and everything in between.

Headliner catches up with the trio and discovers they’re not actually moody, and no one is Joody, but in fact they are vocalist and guitarist Kaitie Forbes, vocalist and keyboardist Kayla Hall, and multi-instrumentalist and producer Andrew Pacheco. They discuss writing OOPS!, what to expect from their forthcoming debut album, alternative band names, and why the new record will shock people from their hometown.

What were the first artists that made a big impact on you, and how do each of your influences shape Moody Joody’s sound?

Kayla: I grew up listening to Shania Twain, and my parents listened to Tom Petty and The Eagles, so I had a really nice palette for music. I moved to Nashville because I wanted to do country music. I also loved Hannah Montana, which was a bit different, but my older sister showed me Jack’s Mannequin and bands like The 1975, so I had that indie influence too. 

When I moved to Nashville, I realised country didn’t fully align with how I felt as an artist. I met Andrew, and we started working together. We loved bands like Bleachers, and that’s really where our sound developed and blossomed. But Shania Twain – she’s my homegirl, my number one. We’re all really inspired by ’80s music too.

Andrew: Mine was Counting Crows from a very young age, and it led me into more alternative, emo-leaning music in high school – Dashboard Confessional, Jack’s Mannequin, Jimmy Eat World – and then I fell in love with pop music in college, before diving into a lot of indie. We're all over the place, and I think that’s why this works.

Kaitie: The first song I heard and really loved was The Sign by Ace of Base. It’s kind of Moody Joody-coded. I grew up listening to all sorts of things. My older siblings’ music tastes were all over the place. Once I started developing my own taste, I got into Jack’s Mannequin and the emo scene in middle school. 

By ninth grade, I was discovering indie bands – Arcade Fire is still my favourite band to this day; I found them when I was 15. I also loved Band of Horses, The National, and The Killers. I was mostly in that indie rock realm, though I had a brief country stint when I moved to Nashville. That didn’t last long because it didn’t feel authentic, so I went back to my indie roots.

Andrew, do you sneak in a bit of your own Counting Crows-style production into Moody Joody’s music?

Andrew: That’s the cool thing about the band; it’s a melting pot of all our influences. We’re not focused on emulating any one artist or vibe. It’s just evolved naturally into what you hear now. Production-wise, that’s me pulling from my own tastes. 

When we started the band, I was really into ’80s and new wave-inspired production, and that’s stuck with us. Our first song, The Heat, came from that world, and that’s what we bonded over. But we don’t overthink it; what you hear just happens naturally when the three of us are in the room. 

My production preferences and style have evolved since we started the band. When we began, I was really into making big, tight, huge-sounding pop records. We’re still a pop band in a lot of ways, but it’s become more live, organic, and raw. Our live show has influenced that, too.

Kaitie: We have such good chemistry now. We’ve been a band for almost six years, and it’s like we have our own language – it just works.

How did you meet and start making music together?

Kaitie: Kayla and I met in a girl group chat when we both first moved to Nashville. We had a mutual friend who suggested we get coffee, thinking we’d hit it off – and we did! We ended up meeting once a week for months, writing music together, and tossing around the idea of starting a girl band for a few years before finally pulling it together in 2020.

Kayla: We had started The Heat and were always like, “Oh, we love this song,” but couldn’t figure out what to do with it. So we brought it to Andrew and gave him a really short deadline: just two weeks. We were like, “The song has to come out in July.”

Andrew: Kayla and I had been working together on her solo project. We met through a mutual friend at a Pale Waves concert. She then brought me in with Kaitie, and that’s how the three of us connected. 

We put out the first song just for fun – there weren’t even plans for a second one – but it started getting attention, and people were really into it. It just became a thing, which was cool, because we were simply having fun.

Where did the name Moody Joody come from?

Kayla: It just came to us. We were actually going to be called the YeeHaw Girls, believe it or not. I’m so glad we didn’t go with that; I think it’s hilarious now. At the time, we almost went with Joanie, but then there was another band called Joan, who we actually ended up touring with later, so we realised we couldn’t do that, especially since we were moving into more of an ‘80s-sounding world.

Kaitie: Then we landed on Moody Joody; it just felt right for what we wanted to put out into the world – not just musically, but also how we wanted the band to represent itself. We have two strong women in the band, and we like to write about everything we’ve gone through, showing up confidently and owning all parts of our experience. 

We write songs about seasonal depression or just a whimsical love song. Moody Joody became this overarching persona that captures all of that.

Your debut EP, Dream Girl, earned praise from Rolling Stone and landed on multiple top playlists across Spotify, Apple, and Amazon. How did it feel to get that recognition?

Andrew: I woke up on release day, half asleep, rubbing my eyes and looking at my phone, and two things popped up. One was that we’d been mentioned in Rolling Stone on Twitter, with a link to the article. The second was a tweet from Rob Thomas. I saw it and thought, “Rob Thomas? Is this real?” 

His Song of the Day post was super early in the morning, and it said El Camino High by Moody Joody. I was like, “No way! Where did he even hear this?” He’s awesome. I love Matchbox.

OOPS! is a fun, funk-laced anthem for memorable (or perhaps, not so) nights out and next morning debriefs. Did some real nights out in Nashville inspire this song?

Kayla: There were probably a few of those research ones collectively [laughs], and a few that just crashed out for sure.

Andrew: We wrote this song with Scott Harris, who we work with a lot. Scott started jamming on that main riff, and we just went crazy, having a proper party. All the percussion started coming out, and it got weird! It just felt really different for us. 

It all came together pretty quickly, and most of the production actually happened in that original session too, which isn’t always the case. We tracked nearly all the vocals in the studio when we wrote it, along with the drums and almost everything else. Then, when I took the song back to Nashville, Iadded even more ridiculous sounds and fun bits.

Kaitie: Kayla had the “I won’t do that again” line. It may be our most relatable song. We wrote it pretty quickly. I just remember being really tired – we’d had a super early flight, and it had been a busy month – so we were a bit delirious, and that’s what came out. Paul was on the bongos with Andrew and Scott, and then you’ve got the glockenspiel going… It was a bit chaotic, but fun!

Kayla: It was supposed to be almost a different idea. I said it out loud, and someone took it a different way. That’s the beauty of songwriting – you can bring in a line like, “I won’t do that again.” In my head, it was like, “I’m not going to do these things again.” 

It was meant to be a whole sad song, but then the whole song ends up being like someone rolling their eyes, like, “Yeah, you’re definitely going to do those things again.”

The “I won’t do that again” hook must have inspired a lot of TikTok montages of nights out?

Kaitie: Yeah! We love the bridge of the song. It’s like, “I pinky swear I’m staying in tonight.” We’ve even made some of our own little going-out transition videos with it – so it starts with, “Oh, I’m pinky swear I’m staying in,” and then, obviously, it’s us out [laughs].

What can you reveal about your upcoming debut album at this point?

Kayla: This is the first time we’ve been able to intentionally sit down and think and create a whole album. In the past, things happened very quickly for us: we’d write a song, put it out, write another song, put it out. When we did Dream Girl, we had a bit of that, but everything still had to come together quickly. 

We love albums; we’re all album people. There’s a lot of diversity in terms of sound and themes on this record, which feels really special and new, and sonically, it introduces a lot of fresh elements for us too.

Kaitie: We’ve been talking about this album pretty much since we started the band. We had the title, we had the concept; it’s very much a concept album. We’re really excited to finally have the world know about it after six years of being a band.

Andrew: We got Brody, our live drummer, to play on a lot of the record. There are definitely songs that still feel like classic Moody Joody in many ways, but we’ve never really boxed ourselves in when it comes to sound. 

There’s a lot of new energy on this record that we haven’t explored before, alongside elements that feel like us. It’s a proper blend. We just wanted to make an album, not just a collection of singles. We love deep cuts and album tracks. There are plenty of pop songs on the record, too, but it was great to be able to dive in and get a little weird on some of it.

Kaitie, you were raised in a religious culture. How has it been to share insights into your life now and to rebel against that on the new album?

It’s been a journey. It feels scary but also really freeing. I’m seeing myself get more and more comfortable with owning who I am. One of the best things about being in this band is that it’s given me an outlet to put those feelings out there, process everything, and show people who I am without having to say it directly to their faces. 

I’m sure I’ll still have nerves when the album comes out, because it’s pretty honest, and I don’t know how it’ll be received. Luckily, my family is super supportive and will be my cheerleaders no matter what. Some people back home might be shocked, for sure, but it feels good. It’s very liberating. 

There are some risqué songs on the album, which feels scary to me, but it’s just our truth and who we are as a band. Honestly, more than anything, it feels exciting.