Global star FINNEAS returns with his brand new debut album “Optimist” alongside a new music video for “Love Is Pain“
The thirteen-track collection, written and produced entirely by the artist, includes the recently released tracks, “The 90s” and “A Concert Six Months From Now,” FINNEAS’ poignant and heartbreaking ballad, “What They’ll Say About Us” plus ten previously unheard songs.
The Sam Bennett-directed music video for “Love Is Pain,” a standout track on the album where dreamy keys wrap around his heartfelt delivery of lines such as “wish it wasn’t mandatory dying.” Speaking about the song, FINNEAS reveals, “It’s about how painful and heartbreaking love is. I wanted to write a song about an adult relationship. The more you love someone, the more they have the capacity to cause you heartbreak.”
FINNEAS’ music derives from a place of love. It’s the kind of love embodied by tireless marathon studio sessions playing every instrument, singing, producing, and recording himself at all hours. It’s the kind of love that makes you propose. It’s the kind of love kids are the best at. It’s the kind of love you’ll feel on his full-length debut album.
“As a producer-artist, you never give yourself enough time to work on your own music. Unfortunately, nobody is going to boss me around and tell me to produce my own album except me,” he explains. On the stories he tells through his music and songwriting, FINNEAS explains, “I’ve always been interested in people and their idiosyncrasies,” he admits. “It’s hard for me not to focus on them or notice. At the end of the day, I’m just observant.”
He introduced the album with the single “A Concert Six Months From Now,” that sees acoustic guitar creaking underneath candid recollections of purchasing tickets to a show for an old flame before a gust of distortion hits like a tidal wave.
“In 2017, I had literally bought tickets to take my girlfriend to see The Fleet Foxes at the Hollywood Bowl,” he recalls. “It was six months away, and I was like, ‘It’s really optimistic of me to think we’ll still be together by then’. I happened to be right though. With all of the pessimism and negativity in 2020, I was pretty worried, but I still decided to be positive. Even if things didn’t work out, I would’ve regretted not trying as hard as I could have.”
Other highlights on the album include “The 90s,” FINNEAS’ heartfelt look back at a decade where things seemed simpler, a world without the internet and smartphones, and a desire to return to those times. On “The Kids Are All Dying,” piano and handclaps bleed into a rush of energy as he adopts the tone of the internet on the hook, “How can you sing about love when the kids are all dying?” “Even if we are living through a time of chaos and uncertainty, the human experience is never going to exclude love, sex, fun, leisure, and adventure,” he says. “If you’re in love, you’re going to write a love song. It’s how the brain works.”
