Consistency has always been Ryan Oakes’ greatest superpower.
Starting out in small-town Virginia with little more than his boundless ambition and a $20 microphone, over the last 15 years the genre-blurring vocalist and rapper has released more than 300 songs, amassed over half a billion streams and gradually built a devoted audience all across the globe. Moving freely between hip-hop, pop-punk, alternative rock and everything in between, experimentation has always been embedded within his DNA. For the longest time, though, finding a way to make every side of himself exist naturally within the same world proved considerably trickier.
On ‘Scary Stories After Dark’, Ryan has finally cracked the code. Following 2025’s hip-hop-focused ‘OPUS’, his latest full-length pulls every era of his career into one dark, cinematic universe, pairing booming 808s, razor-sharp hooks and hulking guitars with his lifelong fascination with horror. Delving into childhood trauma, isolation, dissociation, burnout and the pressure that comes from living so much of your life in public, it’s his most autobiographical work to date, and his most vital.
Produced by longtime collaborator Jayden Seeley and featuring appearances from MISSIO, Set It Off’s Cody Carson, Point North’s Jon Lundin and more, Rock Sound caught up with Ryan ahead of the album’s arrival to talk about how it all came together.
ROCK SOUND: You’ve released more than 300 songs throughout your career, but ‘Scary Stories After Dark’ feels like the most cohesive collection yet. What changed in your approach that finally allowed all of these different sides of Ryan Oakes to exist in one place?
RYAN OAKES: “Since COVID, I’ve been trying to figure out how to blend everything I like together. I had a phase where I had really successful pop-punk stuff, and I made a song with State Champs, so it seemed like that was where it was going to go. But I wanted to do the rock stuff too, and we had a rap album drop last year that did insanely good. I know that you can’t really be all over the place to that extent. You kind of have to pick a lane eventually, but you can mix stuff in with that.
“We’ve been trying to nail it for years, and I think it comes down to working with your friends. Jayden Seeley is one of my best friends, and every song we’ve ever worked on together has been great. We clearly know what to do together, so it was time to lock in and make an album. Having the right friend in the room with you is how stuff like this gets made, because they know you on a deep level. They can make you comfortable enough to pull stuff out that you might not do in a new session with a super producer that you want to woo and impress.
“Jayden was also in an extremely popular pop-punk band called With Confidence, and that dude can write the hell out of hooks. He taught me that I don’t have to rap my ass off on every song, we can just make a catchy chorus that people will get stuck with. When you have a rap background, you always want to prove that you’re the best rapper, but that’s not what it’s about now. It’s just about making great songs.”
RS: The world of horror has massively influenced this project, and that almost gives you this whole new language to explore those themes of anxiety, trauma and isolation that you’re often delving into. Was that relationship between horror and those personal subjects intentional at all?
RYAN: “I’ve always loved spooky stuff, and I wanted this music to sound a little spooky in almost a fun Scooby-Doo way. We had all this stuff to blend – pop-punk, rock, rap, spook – and I had the album name before the album even started. I really loved the name ‘Scary Stories After Dark’, so we started with the album title and built from there.
“Subconsciously, I think I did notice that connection taking shape. As we were figuring it out, we realised that it just makes sense. Having all that stuff that had happened in the past to build off, it does feel like it could be the premise for a scary movie. They kind of just worked together.”
RS: After ‘OPUS’ leaned heavily into hip-hop, this record pulls together everything that you’ve explored over the years. Does it feel like you no longer have to choose which version of yourself you’re going to be?
RYAN: “I think we had this eureka moment where it was like, ‘This is what you can expect going forward, like it or not.’ There are songs on the album where I’m rapping my ass off, and the ‘OPUS’ people will like that. Then there’s the rock stuff with Set It Off that all those fans are looking for, too.
“We know how to cater to everybody, and I’ll even go as far as to say we’re almost done with the next album too. I’m a freak, and I don’t stop working on stuff. We’ve already grown this into the next version, and I believe we’ve nailed it even more. I’m glad we finally found it, and this is what you can expect going forward. It took 14 years, but I think we got it.”
RS: Let’s talk about the collaborations on this record, because there’s a whole load of them. It’s an impressive list that includes the likes of Cody Carson, Jon Lundin and MISSIO. How do you go about selecting the best artist for each moment?
RYAN: “Not a lot of people know this about Cody Carson – maybe it’s more evident in the new Set It Off stuff – but he can rap his ass off. On ‘OPUS’, he actually helped me write a lot of the songs that did really well. That dude completely understands what I want to do. Me and Jayden made that song, and we were like, ‘We’ve got to send this to Cody. This is a Cody song.’ That was really easy for us.
“Jon has also been a friend of mine since before COVID, and Point North actually took me on my first tour four or five years ago with Games We Play. I’ve always wanted to do something with Jon, so it was long overdue. When we made that song, we just knew that Jon was going to love it. He did production on it too and absolutely crushed it. He took the song to a whole other level.
“It goes back to working with good people and your friends. Of course, Set It Off is a huge feature for me, but any big artist could have been on that song. I picked a good person who I admire deeply, who is super talented and who I look up to. It all works out when you hang out with people and you don’t ask for anything, then stuff naturally happens years down the road. I would much prefer that than begging someone way bigger than me to get on a song just because it’s them.”
RS: ‘SUPERNATURAL’ feels like a particularly special collaboration because Matthew from MISSIO connected so deeply with what you were writing about. What was it like having somebody step into something that personal and immediately understand it?
RYAN: “It was really cool because we had only just been introduced to each other. We sent them the song, and Matthew went out of his way to send me a super long message about how hard he connected with it. Usually, when you meet someone new, they’re just like, ‘Yeah, I like the song. I’ll give you a verse.’
“He was updating me constantly as he was working on it. There was actually a different chorus on the song originally, but Matthew went in, added production and added a whole new chorus. It made the song 10 times better.
“It’s really cool that all these collaborations seem to be people who were excited about the music instead of just a business transaction. Obviously, you can do that and get far in the music industry, but it’s cool to know that people understand me as a person. It’s like, ‘Dude, I know exactly what you mean on this song, and I’m going to give you that version of me as well.’”
RS: Jayden Seeley is obviously at the centre of all of this, too. Having worked together for years, what is it about that partnership that feels so integral to this project now?
RYAN: “I want him to work on everything moving forward, and he already knows that. We’ve done a bunch of singles together in the past, but we had never done an album until this one. Everything we’ve ever done has crushed, so why hadn’t we worked on a full album together?
“It’s awesome because I throw the weirdest stuff at him when I come to sessions. I’m like, ‘There’s this snippet I found on TikTok that I think we can blend with this Gwen Stefani song from 2000.’ He’s just like, ‘All right, let me figure it out,’ and then he crushes it. He understands who I am, and the neurons in his brain are slowly connecting to what a Ryan Oakes song should sound like. I could not be luckier to have someone like him in my corner.”
RS: You’ve been pretty non-stop over the last few years, and ‘SHIN SPLINTS’ deals with burnout of that. Have you learned to recognise when the relentless mentality you have starts to verge on becoming destructive?
RYAN: “I used to put a lot of pressure on myself. If I didn’t write a hit that day, I was upset, the day sucked, and we wasted everything. It’s just not possible to think that way anymore though. You’re going to have to throw a lot of songs away, and it just is what it is.
“Whenever I make music, I’m like a kid at a candy store, so that doesn’t feel like work to me. I don’t consider it part of my burnout. The biggest burnouts I find are usually touring, for obvious reasons, like lack of sleep and stuff like that. But it’s getting better because we’re not sleeping in vans anymore. We can sleep in a hotel room, and as you level up, it gets a little nicer. The industry side of things is also where I get exhausted, when you’re trying to get through contracts or get those tasks done. That’s what kills me.
“I’m definitely getting better at doing things to a healthier extent. When I was in college, I would sleep for three hours, make a song, go out and then go to class. It worked and helped me get momentum, but I would never do that now. I understand that rest is productive now.”
RS: You’ve spent so much of 2026 on the road, from Europe to Australia and North America. Does seeing other artists operate in their own way give you a different kind of inspiration than you could ever get from sitting in a studio?
RYAN: “I just got off tour with this guy called Diggy Graves. A lot of people on the industry side don’t really know who he is, which is crazy to me because he’s selling 2,000 tickets at some of these shows. He’s a lot like me, where he blends a lot of stuff, and it’s super inspiring to see what he’s built because his girlfriend is his manager. It’s just the two of them running the operation.
“This year, I also did free meet and greets at every show. When I headlined Europe, I was meeting hundreds of people after my set and taking pictures with every one of them. It was super overwhelming, but that’s what inspires me. People will come up to me and either say, ‘Your music saved my life,’ which is my favourite thing to hear, or they’ll say, ‘I had no idea who you were, and you are now my favourite artist.’ That’s how I know that this is working, and that we need to keep doing this.
“The road gives you a certain type of inspiration that sitting in a studio or having a viral video on the internet cannot give you. When TikTok was hot, I was viral all the time. It’s not tangible until you have a fan in front of you in person. That’s one thing I’ve enjoyed about touring constantly for the last three years. It’s like, ‘Okay, I can see I have real fans now. This is a real thing.’”
RS: Those people will often find their own meanings in your songs too, regardless of what they were written about initially. Knowing firsthand how much those songs can mean to somebody, does that affect how you approach the more vulnerable side of your writing?
RYAN: “I definitely am big on that with Jayden. With every album, I’m like, ‘We need three gut-wrenching songs.’ I personally think those are the songs I’m best at writing. Maybe it’s because of the life experiences I’ve had.
“It’s no surprise to me that people come up to the merch booth and say, ‘This song saved my life.’ We definitely want to make sure we cover those bases, but it’s not a pandering thing at all. We are literally saving thousands of lives with every album we put out, based on what people are telling me. Why would we not want to keep doing that? That’s an insane thing to be able to say. It’s not like I feel a duty to do it, but I want to keep being there for people.”
RS: You’re 15 years into your career now, but this album still feels like a major learning curve. What has making ‘Scary Stories After Dark’ solidified for you about what the future of Ryan Oakes needs to look like?
RYAN: “I don’t want to say I’m a slow learner, but I’m the turtle in the rabbit race for sure. I just wait until the right moment, and that right moment is now. There have been so many eras of this project, and the entire time I was conscious that I was jumping between a bunch of styles, trying to figure it out. I was being super patient with myself. Once we started seeing some momentum, Jayden and I figured it out.
“Making this album felt so smooth and natural. Nothing was forced, and it felt like the songs were writing themselves. It felt noticeably different to the times when we were pulling our hair out trying to make a hit song and trying to do what the industry wanted us to do to get on the radio. When you’re in a flow state every day for three months straight, the burnout doesn’t really hit at all. This is the most natural it’s ever felt, so let’s keep doing this and try to grow this even further.”
‘Scary Stories After Dark’ is out now via Nettwerk.
