Shine Club Made UGLY Song Seven of Twelve This Year, Then Recut It in the Living Room
Shine Club Made UGLY Song Seven of Twelve This Year, Then Recut It in the Living Room
Connor O’Brien’s Detroit Band Is Releasing One Song a Month Through 2026
UGLY, released on 7 August by the Detroit band Shine Club, is a 2000s-style alt-rock single. Connor O’Brien wrote it and sings it. It is the seventh of twelve songs the band set out to release in 2026, one a month. For anyone meeting the band now, it is the one to start with.
Shine Club’s music is in the playlist below, alongside the alternative and indie rock this desk is following, with every Shine Club feature we have run kept together on the band’s artist profile. UGLY came to MusicDrops.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Give it a listen, then read on for what the band has planned next.
Before UGLY, Shine Club Spent Two Years Building From Grapevine to a Song Every Month
Shine Club is the name O’Brien uses to write and produce songs with friends, starting from a bedroom in Detroit. The first single, Grapevine, came out on 2 February 2024. O’Brien wrote and produced it, and Kris Brown played the electric guitar, a job Brown still does on UGLY.
The band’s first three shows ever came that same year, as support on Daði Freyr‘s 2024 US tour: St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit, then Louisville and St. Louis.
Those friends show up in the credits of what followed. Nic Hughes shared guitar duties with Brown on Still Wait that May, a single O’Brien produced with Noah DeLeon. Brown co-wrote Seasons in November 2024, the first single to credit Brandon Shew with the mix. Shew went on to co-produce Imposter in May 2025.
Then the pace changed. In January 2026 the band opened a year of monthly releases with Helicopter. O’Brien wrote that song years earlier and had played it live in another band before Shine Club existed. SMOTHER, sour, Dissolve, shoelaces (demo) and Silhouette followed through June, one a month. shoelaces was made on a laptop and released as a demo, a tag that has come back since.
That route will be familiar to anyone who followed twenty one pilots in the early years. Tyler Joseph’s project self-released its first two albums in Columbus, Ohio, before signing to Fueled by Ramen in 2012. Shine Club are at that self-release stage in another Midwest city. The monthly schedule is how they keep their music in front of listeners.
UGLY Is Song Seven of Twelve From Shine Club, Released as the Band’s Song to End the Summer
UGLY arrived on 7 August and runs to 3:36. The band put it out as a song to see out the summer. It suits exactly that: 2000s alt-rock for sunset drives and nostalgic, Y2K-style nights with friends. It is a bittersweet kind of summer song, the end of the season rather than the start.
The lyric explains the title. The narrator admits to fear and to a depressed state. What they cannot work out is why a partner who knows the past has stayed. The chorus asks it outright: It might get UGLY, but YOU knew from the start. Why do YOU love me? I think it’s so bizarre.
The credits keep the circle small. O’Brien wrote UGLY, sings it and plays bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar. That puts four of the five performance credits with one person. Brown adds the other electric guitar, and the pair produced the track with Shew, who also mixed it.
A Second UGLY From the Living Room, and the Listeners Both Versions Are Made For
By the band’s own count, UGLY is their best-received song so far. It is also the one song they have released twice. The next monthly song, on 28 August, was an acoustic UGLY recorded in the living room for YouTube.
Listeners who found Djo through End of Beginning know how a song can keep finding people after release day. Joe Keery’s track came out on the 2022 album Decide and reached a far larger audience in 2024. UGLY is on a much smaller version of that path. The living-room version gives new listeners a second way in.
The band aims the single at alt-rock listeners aged 18 to 35 in the US, the UK and Canada. Fans of twenty one pilots and Djo are the first audience. Anyone who still keeps a 2000s alt-rock playlist going should give it a first listen.
What Comes After UGLY for Shine Club, From Over My Shoulder to a Ferndale Stage in November
The monthly series still has songs to come before the year is out. The latest arrived on 9 October: Over My Shoulder (demo). O’Brien mixed and mastered it alone on a laptop, with Brown adding a guitar part. That is a change for a band that usually sends its mixes to Shew. O’Brien has described the demo tag as the mark of a first version. O’Brien sees the song coming back one day, perhaps on an album. The band has not announced one.
The live calendar is filling up as well. Shine Club opened for Pump Action at the Lager House in Detroit on 8 September. On Sunday 29 November they play The Magic Bag in Ferndale in support of Rival Summers. The Detroit duo of Leo Bautista and Sam Ridgell is reuniting for one night. They will play their 2016 album Undeniable front to back for the first time in a decade. Shine Club and McGuire Ellinger open the night.
From the MusicDrops.News curator team: “A new releases desk mostly judges a band on one single. Staying power is the hardest thing to call. Shine Club have handed us a year of evidence instead, and UGLY is where that evidence is strongest.”
Follow Shine Club and Save UGLY on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and YouTube
Stream UGLY on Spotify, Apple Music or Bandcamp, or save it through the smartlink. Then follow Shine Club on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Every other link, including tickets for the Ferndale show, sits on the band’s Linktree.
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