David Le'aupepe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Singer
- songwriter
- guitarist
- pianist
David Le'aupepe | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Le'aupepe performing with Gang of Youths in 2018 | |
| Born | February 27, 1992 |
| Occupations |
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| Musical career | |
| Genres | |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, piano |
| Labels | Mosy Recordings |
| Member of | Gang of Youths |
David Immanuel Menachem Sasagi Le’aupepe[1] is an Australian singer, songwriter, guitarist and frontman of alternative rock band Gang of Youths, which he founded in 2011. He served as the sole songwriter on the band's first two albums, The Positions (2015) and Go Farther in Lightness (2017), finding lyrical inspiration from personal hardships including loss. Following the death of his father in 2018, the band's most recent album, Angel in Realtime (2022), is a reflection on Le'aupepe's grieving process and family identity.
Le'aupepe was born and raised in the Inner West of Sydney by his Samoan father, and his mother, an Austrian-Jewish social worker.[2][3]
He started playing music at the age of seven, and was proficient at drums, bass guitar and piano, in hopes of becoming a multi-instrumentalist.[2] He was nine when he began performing in a Baptist church.[4] In his youth, he was heavily influenced by rock artists including Bruce Springsteen, and recalled that watching a live recording of "Born to Run" made him intent on pursuing music as a career: "that was when I knew I needed to do this for real".[2][5] Le'aupepe states that he was "raised on classical music", and that in the production of Gang of Youths' second studio album Go Farther in Lightness (2017), it "felt very natural to employ devices that would have normally been used by, say, Vivaldi or Bach".[6]