Empire of the Sun Artistfacts

2007-
Luke SteeleVocals, guitar2007-
Nick LittlemoreKeyboards, synthesizers2007-
Empire Of The Sun are an Australian electronic-music duo made up of Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore. When they founded the group in 2007, both of them were members of other bands, with Steele fronting the alt-rock outfit The Sleepy Jacksons and Littlemore leading the electronic-dance act Pnau. Before they launched their own band, they joined musical forces on each other's projects. Littlemore helped write "Tell the Girls That I'm Not Hangin' Out" for The Sleepy Jacksons' 2003 debut album, Lovers, and Steele co-wrote "Freedom" and "With You Forever," adding vocals to the latter, for Pnau's 2007 self-titled album. The following year, they debuted Empire Of The Sun with Walking On A Dream, which attracted listeners worldwide with the singles "Walking On A Dream" and "We Are The People."
Steele and Littlemore first met at a bar in 2000 after an A&R executive at their mutual label, EMI, suggested they collaborate. There was immediate chemistry between the musicians, who decided they were "soulmates coming from opposite directions." Steele explained to Prefix magazine in 2009, "I was coming from the blues and Hendrix and Nick came from that Phoenix, Air funky kind of sound. From the moment I met him, though, I knew that we would eventually collaborate."
There's a 1984 novel by J.G. Ballard titled Empire Of The Sun, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated Steven Spielberg movie in 1987. The band is named after neither. Littlemore claims the moniker was inspired by "the fact that we're traveling around the world going to all the places of empires of the civilization where the sun has been a theme of worship."

Before settling on Empire Of The Sun, they called themselves Steelemore.
When the band's sophomore effort, 2013's Ice On The Dune, failed to match the commercial success of its predecessor, which went triple Platinum (210,000 units) in their native Australia and sold 2 million copies worldwide, the duo blamed their label's lackluster promotion. Steele famously claimed their album was stronger than fellow electronic duo Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, which dropped around the same time.

"They had a great marketing campaign, but we've got better songs," he told NME that year.

Littlemore, however, told Rolling Stone Australia in 2016 that he and Steele fell victim to "second album syndrome" and ran themselves ragged trying to replicate their debut, which weighed heavily on the release. "I felt we were chasing the chart, or we were chasing what was happening in music," he added.
The duo were tasked by the Farrelly brothers to compose the score for their 2014 comedy Dumb and Dumber To. They also wrote two new songs for the soundtrack, "Tonight" and "Wandering Star," which also incorporated their Ice On The Dune single "Alive." Steele said scoring a film was quite different from their usual approach to songwriting because film work necessitates interpreting the moods and actions of a character - in this case two buffoons - instead of mining their own thoughts and opinions.
In 2013, Littlemore bought a Hollywood Craftsman mini-compound in Los Angeles that was once owned by the late Apocalypse Now actor Sam Bottoms. The century-old property features a 2000 square-foot main house and one-bedroom guesthouse with an art studio.
Littlemore is a vivid dreamer and often gets song ideas during his slumber. The idea for the duo's third album, Two Vines (2016), came to him while they were touring Europe to promote their sophomore album. "It was a dream I had," he told Rolling Stone. "The city of the future would be covered in vines."
The bandmates have vastly different views on religion, with Steele being a devout Christian who sees music as his ministry and Littlemore being a lapsed member of the Church of England who takes interest in Eastern spiritual philosophy. Their songs, however, don't adhere to any specific religious doctrine. Their fourth album, Ask That God (2024), is about personal spirituality and reaching your full potential as a human being.

"They say the image of God is man fully alive," Steele told The Music in 2024. "When I envision man fully alive, it's man exhilarated and inspired. It's man full of vision and full of hope. I think we were really inspired by that."
Steele and Littlemore bonded over their love of The Holy Mountain, a 1973 avant-garde surrealist film written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Mexican movie's psychedelic aesthetic and spiritual themes influenced the band's earlier visuals and costuming, which evolved into a vibrant amalgamation of futuristic sci-fi fantasy and ancient tribal symbolism.
Steele's siblings are also musicians: His sister, Katy, fronted the Perth indie-rock band Little Birdy, his brother Jesse was the original drummer for Steele's band The Sleepy Jackson, and his brother Jake performs experimental bass/dark techno music under the name Tobacco Rat. His dad, Rick Steele, who died in 2025, was also a blues guitarist who founded the Perth-based country-rock and blues outfit The Hot Biscuit Band.
Littlemore has dealt with several health issues including an autoimmune disease and arthritis. In 2019, he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that, in his case, paralyzed half his face and caused one eye to stay fixed open for six months. He embarked on a holistic journey to manage the ailment, leaning on alternative therapies like yoga and meditation, but still deals with lingering auditory effects like tinnitus and partial hearing loss.
Outside of Empire Of The Sun, Steele has collaborated with a number of other artists. He co-wrote and co-produced Beyoncé's "Never Die Young" for her 2011 album, 4, guested on Jay-Z's "What We Talkin' About" from The Blueprint 3 in 2009, sang on Usher's "Looking 4 Myself" and co-wrote/co-produced his "Say My Words" in 2012, and featured on Steve Aoki's "Neon Future" in 2014, to name a few.

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