August 5, 2022 • 23 mins
Success can open doors, but it can also be confusing, sometimes crippling. This episode, Finneas begins to take us track-by-track through his album Optimist, discussing his influences and the wide variety of experiences he drew on in the writing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Song Stories is the production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to songs Stories, a new I Heart Radio
podcast where we try to figure out how do you
make a hit? To answer this not so simple question,
(00:21):
we're sitting down with some of the biggest names in music.
They're gonna take us through the life cycle of a song,
from studio to stage and everything in between. My name
is Jordan run Tog. Thank you so much for listening
this season. We're talking to Phineas, the singer, songwriter and
producer extraordinaire who, at age four, has helped to find
the sound of contemporary pop. He's worked with the host
(00:44):
of artists, including Justin Bieber, Camilla Cabello, Selena Gomez, Pulsey,
Kid Cutty, and most notably his sister Billie Eilish. As
you may have gathered, he's one of music's greatest collaborators.
The last follow he stepped into the spotlight as a
soul of artists with the release of his debut LP Optimist.
It was, for the most part, a one man show,
(01:05):
with Phineas writing, singing, and producing the effort almost entirely himself,
and even playing most of the instruments to call it
a Diaries, maybe a little too obvious, but it's a
snapshot of a thoughtful artist taking stock after a streak
of phenomenal accomplishments. Grammy's sold out arenas bomb themes I
could go on. Sure, success can open a lot of doors,
(01:27):
but it can also be confusing and sometimes even crippling.
Songs like Happy Now and someone Else's Star find him
struggling to make sense of what he's achieved and his
newfound role as a public figure. And nearly twenties, this
means treading a fine line. You're expected to have an opinion,
but woe to those who hold the wrong opinion. The
(01:47):
track Medieval is a critical thinkers approach to the notion
of cancel culture, and the nineties finds him pining for
a pre digital age, before the echo chamber of social media.
Living in the ties also means being acutely aware of
the climate crisis, racial and sexual inequalities, and of course COVID.
Though he doesn't go full protest anthem on optimist, one
(02:09):
of the themes of the record is rationalizing these global
concerns with more human scale personal fears. On Love Is Pain,
for example, he grapples with the mortality of his parents,
a primal worry if there ever was one. These fears
are there even in moments of triumph and celebration. The
unabashedly sensual track Around My Neck I No Do, his
(02:31):
romantic partnership with digital creator Claudio Suluski, is offset by
the Kids Are All Dying, in which he seems to
be chastising himself with the line how can you sing
about love when all the kids are dying? How can
you sing about sex when the school is on lockdown?
Releasing an album titled Optimist in the midst of this
uniquely troubled time could be interpreted by some as a
(02:52):
curious choice, either hopelessly naive or even sarcastic, but Phineas
says it's neither. It's feeling them a lay days of
this era and making the choice to be happy and positive.
I Phineas has a lot to say about these weighty topics,
As me and my colleague Noel Brown went track by
track through Optimist. He was the first part of that conversation.
We hope you enjoyed. I love that the album opens
(03:25):
with a concert six months from now because for two reasons, one,
I feel like that title post COVID has a totally
different sense of hope imbued in that phrase than it
would have in pre COVID times, because now it's like, Okay,
you know, I hope this concert happened. But I also
I got tickets to a show with my girlfriend early
on in our relationship, which is now ten years on, uh,
(03:48):
for a concert way down the road, thinking okay, geez,
I hope, I hope, I hope this works out. We're
still together. But you talk a little about that song.
I thought it was a really romantic sentiment. Yeah, I
I wrote that so in you know when I never
could have predicted covid um. But yeah, I was just
I was in this relationship that i'd been in for
(04:09):
a little shy of a year, and I it was
a Fleet Fox's Beach House concert and it was I
think maybe eight May, like April April May, and I
bought these tickets for the show in in October, and I,
you know, I bought them because they were going to
sell out, which is that's how popular concerts work, right,
(04:31):
they sell out immediately. So I bought them and I
remember buying them and just thinking like this is this
is ridiculous, Like that you don't you don't know if
you're gonna be together in like five weeks, um and uh.
And indeed we were not together by the time the
concert happened. But yeah, that whole song is about, um,
you know this, this relationship that meant a great deal
(04:54):
to me in my life was this this girl I'd
kind of fallen in love with when I was like thirteen,
and then we'd we've gone our separate ways all through
high school, and we'd reconnected when we were eighteen and
nineteen and you know, fallen in love again and and um,
you know it was a very definitive, um, transformative relationship
in my you know, young adulthood. And you know that
(05:19):
song is that song is really important. And I never
let what's that phrase, I never let the truth get
in the way of a good story or a good
lyric whatever. But but that song is is true And
I love songs like that. I love songs that where
the where the right line is also the true one. Um.
And then yet you know, it took on this whole
new meaning during COVID and I opened my show with
(05:39):
it on this tour I just did, and it was
like such a blast to do this like song about
going to a show as you're it was very meta.
Um opening the show that way. Um, it was really fun.
It's such a cool song. I mean it's so cinematic,
but also just the message of it. You're right, it's
it's like a leap of faith. Really, it's a way
(06:00):
the leap of faith. Oh my goodness. Well, next up
we got the kids are all dying That there's something
that that you do where you have these really up
melodies with these really devastating lines. I tried saving the world,
but I got bored. I tried picking a pause, but
I got confused. Tell me all about that song. I
(06:21):
almost get a sense of like a trace of guilt
running through the song in a way. Yeah, there's guilt,
and there's kind of irony in frustration, and you know
a lot of cynicism is sort of the main ingredient
of that song. But you know, I think it's like,
I'm how do I put this. I think humans are
held to a kind of a high standard. I think
(06:43):
human being like nobody's gonna do the more complicated thing,
like everybody is going to take like there you'd never
get in your car and look at a map and
choose the long way to get somewhere unless it was
so beautiful and you had all this time at your disposal,
like you're always going to take the fat this road
to get to your location. And I think that. I
(07:03):
think that about like climate change issues, people are not
going to inconvenience themselves, and they're already challenging and stressful
lives to to to accomplish a goal that cannot be
accomplished by one individual in one suburb of one city somewhere,
Like we have to make the solutions to these things,
(07:24):
you know, um ergonomic, we have to make them enjoyable.
Like it's just not an actualizable goal to expect people
to inconvenience themselves on a daily basis to to save
the world when you know, the fossil fuel industry is
just full steam ahead, like it's it's all really stupid.
(07:45):
So you know that kind of like I tried saving
the world and then I got bored, is like a
feeling of kind of helplessness. I guess you know what
I mean. I'm in a place where I can donate
money to causes I care about. I can give a
platform to causes I care about. Those two things make
me feel really useful. Not using a plastic straw doesn't
make me feel that useful. Like it feels like a
(08:05):
pretty small potato issue to worry about to me. And
so I think that song, to me is is kind
of about that of like this kind of you know,
hammering home, of like we all have to do our part.
And I think most people are looking around going like
why do I have to do my part? If you know,
(08:26):
fortune companies are doing the damage here and I'm one individual,
you know, scraping by. It's like it's the whole thing, right,
It's like salads being five dollars and a big mac
being It's like people are going to buy the big mac.
Like it makes sense. It was the part of the
song though, And you sing, and I hope I'm interpreting
(08:46):
it correctly. You know, how can you sing about love
when all the kids are dying? Maybe I'm I'm I'm
an optimist in a night Well there you go, and
uh and and maybe this is a naive thing to say,
but I don't know. I think that love is a
good reminder, especially in these times. Think that has tremendously Yeah,
a lot of what the meaning of that line was
was is that's the kind of that's the kind of
proverbial comments section of my music. It's like, I speak
(09:10):
out about social issues, and then once you do, people
expect you to speak out about everything all the time.
And it's like, hey, I'm still a person with my
own feelings, in my own you know story, and you know,
if I if I expel a hundred percent of my
identity in favor of only speaking about social issues, like,
are you even going to be interested in what I
(09:31):
have to say anymore? Because the whole reason you care
about me talking about social issues because you care about
me in the first place. Like it's, you know, sort
of a never ending cycle, and you know, I resent
the whole kind of like I speak out about this
thing and then the Internet's like, well, you have to
speak out about this thing, and I'm like, no, I don't,
and here's why I'm not educated about that thing. And
I don't want to. I don't want to talk out
(09:52):
of my ass. I don't want to say something that
once I do more research, i'll realize was an you know,
a poorly in full warmed take on something. I don't
want to. I don't want to throw weight at something
that you know, I shouldn't. I shouldn't be on the
side of just because it sounds like the right thing
to do. I don't want to virtue signal. I don't
want to you know, be performative in my ally ship
(10:16):
or my activism. And so it's all been a challenge.
But that's the kind of how can you sing about
love when the kids are all dying? Like the reason
that song comes at the beginning of the album is
I didn't sing about all of it, right, How can
you sing about love when the kids are all dying?
And then I go sing about love on Only Lifetime,
Love is pain, hurt, locker. How can you sing about drugs?
Politicians are lying? I sing about you know, you know
(10:37):
whatever it is, substances and friends and and and um,
you know anything. And then how can you sing about
sex when the school is on lockdown and there's like
around my neck? Like the whole thing to me is
like you still can because it's because it's it's the
human experience, the human condition. You know, it's like almost
crippling when you're expected to have to take on literally
(10:58):
everything and even just like you know, being a podcast
host myself and in Jordan's like, we get comments and
emails saying, oh, you accidentally. They don't say accidentally, but
it is accidentally said this thing that offended me. And
if they knew me, they would know I never in
a million years would have said something intentionally to offend anybody.
But if you let that infect your brain, then it
starts to like just stymy every choice you make in
(11:22):
your communication, and it like makes it impossible to say
or express anything. So you almost have to kind of
not put on blinders. That's not the way to say it,
but just be yourself and not feel like you have
to be everything to everybody. True good point. A lot
(11:51):
of way you were saying about trying to balance being
a private person, a private human being, with being a
public figure where you're expected to have opinions and points
of view on everything and held the standard of having
the right points of view and opinions on everything. It
reminds me a lot of what you were singing about
on the track. Medieval. Yeah, medieval is is um you
(12:13):
know about whatever you wanted to be about. But I
think one of the reasons I wrote it was this
kind of like once you love something and you've enjoyed it,
there is this sort of like, just like anything, just
like you know, just really really anything, there's this kind
of like casting it out once you've enjoyed, or casting
(12:37):
it aside. And I think it's all kind of a
little a little weird. Um. You know, there's this artist
that plays this huge role in your adolescence or or
or a film or a movie star or a book
or whatever it is. Can you consume this, this form
of entertainment, this art. It's very informative and important to you,
And and then a couple of years later, you're like, oh,
(12:59):
I hate that that thing's lame, and it's like it's
not very respectful of your of that thing, of how
meaningful and seminal it was to you a couple of
years ago. And you know, there's also notes in that
of like sort of the the extent of cancel culture
and whatever. You know. I do think we're like I'm
not the first person to say this. I think there's
(13:20):
like plenty of issues and things people are held accountable
for that are you know, um cut and dry black
and white issues right, like forms of sexual abuse, you know,
pretty pretty damn black and white to me, Um, sexual
misconduct whatever, whatever the nomenclature is there, pretty easy to
(13:46):
to sort of like, but I think there's you know,
within the broader spectrum of things, people get canceled for
an uninformed opinion being voiced years prior on Twitter, you know,
like that stuff Like we're not in the business of
rehabilitation yet with cancel culture, and I think it's a
lot a little silly, like like you could literally like
(14:08):
you know, like think about traffic laws, right, Like imagine
imagine if you like rolled through a stop sign and
the cop pulled you over and was like, I'm going
to cancel you, Like they don't. They write you a
ticket and you pay it and you do traffic school.
Like we're just not in a place yet where like
somebody has a bad take on the internet from ten
years ago, like like there need to be tickets and
(14:30):
fines and like like it just needs to us to
be like, yeah, he atoned for that, and then now
he has his career back, you know what I mean.
Like there's we just have this weird kind of like
everyone is good or bad and if they've made one
transgression there, you know, there forever a piece of ship.
And it's like, yeah, no, not no, you know, it's
(14:52):
not murder. It's a bad opinion from years ago. And
and and if people show themselves to not evolve and
not change, then York continue to hold them accountable. But
I feel like most people, like I regret, I regret
like everything I've ever said up until like eighteen months ago,
you know what I mean. And I wasn't. I wasn't
saying essentially like anything wrong. I just had stupid opinions,
(15:15):
Like I did that Pitchfork over under video like two
years ago. I watched it the other day, I was like, Oh,
what an asshole, Like I just disagreed with like every
take of mine. And I think that's like, I don't
know that that's kind of the you know where I
lie on this. I also feel like, I mean, you know,
we are all evolving. I mean, there was a great
(15:38):
idea John Lennon gave to Dick Cabin in the seventies
where he was talking about people coming up to him
with quotes that he said. This was in nineteen seventy one,
you know, pre internet, and he was still being hell
account for things he said five six years ago. And
how you know, it's a new day, It's a new you.
It's were constantly and I mean, you know, even the
way that you kind of and I know was tongue
(15:59):
in cheeked to a certain them. But the way you
describe yourself on unhappy now you know, I mean a
douche back car is I mean, I feel like that's
a bit overcritical to oneself maybe if I may, but yeah,
but I'd rather I'd rather be overly self examined and
(16:21):
self critical than you know, I guess acting like I
could do no wrong. Like I'd rather I'd rather walk
on the far side of like you know, self examination
and maybe being kind of hard on myself than than
inflicting my flaws on other people, you know what I mean.
(16:46):
Like I kind of think that like we're in this,
we're in this sort of like I say this as
a good thing. Like we're in this period where where
self acceptance is really stressed, right, and i'd I think
that's great, Like I think that's gonna that's gonna help society, right,
the more we all, you know, love ourselves and accept ourselves.
(17:08):
But it's not an excuse to treat other people poorly. Right,
It's like that to me is like your treatment of
others is paramount, and you know, be as be as accepted,
like like let me give let me give an example.
It's like, yeah, it's it's a it's very understandable and
(17:30):
and wonderful to be like, hey, you're having a hard day,
Like that's okay, Like you can you can cancel that
thing that you wanted to do because you're you're having
a hard day. Um, you know, take care of yourself,
self care, to take that bath whatever. Like I think
that's fucking great. But it's like that's sort of like
(17:52):
a lot of the time people are reliant on us,
you know what I mean. Like you know, there's somebody
somebody is suffering some emergency and and they were there
for you, and we kind of need to be there
for each other. And you know, it's like, sorry, I
was I was kind of I was feeling, you know,
(18:13):
insecure about something and a little bit disappointed that, um,
I didn't get a job opportunity I wanted. And that's
why I was really mean and dismissive to you and
belittled you. It's like, uh, like it's great to know
these things about yourself and to articulate that, but it's
not an excuse to treat other people poorly, you know,
(18:33):
and or to not be h you know, reliable you know.
There it's it's perfectly acceptable to hit somebody up and go, hey,
I'm not I'm not having a good day, like I
need to I need to take a rain check on that.
That's great, But it's like there are instances where, like
you you promised to help somebody you know move out
of their thing, and it's like it's important to show
(18:54):
up for people, you know, I think more so than
self acceptance, self awareness, just like you know, being tuned
into how you come off and even if you come
off like an asshole, just being you know, thoughtful enough
to realize you came off like an asshole and maybe
you don't do that again. But also don't beat yourself
(19:15):
up over it or act like you have to hold
yourself to some sort of unattainable standard all the time. Yeah,
good point. Could you talk a little more about Happy Now?
(19:37):
I thought there was so many things going in that song,
just lyrically and musically. Uh, so much to unpack. It's
such a to me. It's it's one of the highlights
on the album. Um, I'm really proud of that song. Uh.
You know what's funny about that song, I guess is like,
when I was writing that song, it was a little
(19:58):
bit of a retrospective already because I am happy, and
I was kind of happy when I was writing that song.
But I think it was like, you know, by the
time I was writing that song, I was like, we
just want all the Grammys and stuff, like I'd really
like my dreams had really come true. And I wasn't
talking about that so much. I was. I was kind
of talking about like the eighteen months two years prior
(20:21):
to that, which is like where you're having, you know,
any form of success on a much smaller scale. And
you know, what that song is basically about is like
an identity crisis, because I think as people were not
super prepared for the world caring about us, and you
(20:43):
can lose your identity really quickly in that because maybe
you define yourself by it, or maybe the world's kind
of mean about you, or maybe the world thinks you're
the ship and you're like, that doesn't necessarily align with
my own personal view of myself, but everybody else thinks
I'm amazing and talented, So I guess I am, and
I guess all that stuff is Like then you can
(21:04):
you can really lose a handle on your own identity
and really who you are and you know what is
sort of core to your your person and um, you know, yeah,
this kind of like this is a weird thing to say,
but like I've found I've found such entertainment and joy
(21:24):
in in you know, challenging experiences, if that makes sense.
You know, like that's the kind of line of like
I was supposed to be happy. Now there's nothing left
for me to laugh about. Like you know, when you're
when you're when you face these obstacles of like of
any sort of size, it's like that's that's uh, that's
(21:46):
part of the joy of life. Like we don't we
don't sit around with our friends and talk about the
best moments of our life. Like we sit around and
we talk about mutual frustration and mutual you know, annoyance
with this thing, or whether it's traffic or communication or
you know, you know, working on something tirelessly because you
(22:08):
became obsessed with it, or you know, any number of
things we talked about, you know, t s A at
the airport, just just struggle and chat. That's these are
the things that are funny and interesting and relatable to
talk about. And yeah, you know, there's this kind of
like hollowness to um certain metrics of success. And I
(22:29):
don't mean like playing a show is great. The fact
that people love your album is great, but it's like, yeah,
I don't know, there's like, you know, an article being
written about you saying you're great. It's like, what is
that supposed to mean to somebody? Because it probably shouldn't
mean much to you, because it's like, I'm a big
firm believer in like to believe the good reviews is
(22:51):
to believe the bad, you know, and I certainly don't
want to believe all the negative things that are written
about me, so I can't really believe of the positive
ones either, you know. On the next episode of Songs Stories,
(23:11):
we'll continue our track by track through phineas solo debut
album Optimist. He'll open up about his relationship to fame
and the Internet and how those two tend to feed
into one another, and he'll share the heartbreaking back story
of the album's lead single, what They'll Say about Us.
We hope you'll join us then. Song Stories is a
production of I Heart Radio. The show was hosted and
(23:32):
executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk with
supervising producer Mike John's. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe and leave us a review. For more from
My Heart Radio, please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For now, I'm Jordan run Talk. Thanks so much for listening.
Song Stories is the production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to songs Stories, a new I Heart Radio
podcast where we try to figure out how do you
make a hit? To answer this not so simple question,
(00:21):
we're sitting down with some of the biggest names in music.
They're gonna take us through the life cycle of a song,
from studio to stage and everything in between. My name
is Jordan run Tog. Thank you so much for listening
this season. We're talking to Phineas, the singer, songwriter and
producer extraordinaire who, at age four, has helped to find
the sound of contemporary pop. He's worked with the host
(00:44):
of artists, including Justin Bieber, Camilla Cabello, Selena Gomez, Pulsey,
Kid Cutty, and most notably his sister Billie Eilish. As
you may have gathered, he's one of music's greatest collaborators.
The last follow he stepped into the spotlight as a
soul of artists with the release of his debut LP Optimist.
It was, for the most part, a one man show,
(01:05):
with Phineas writing, singing, and producing the effort almost entirely himself,
and even playing most of the instruments to call it
a Diaries, maybe a little too obvious, but it's a
snapshot of a thoughtful artist taking stock after a streak
of phenomenal accomplishments. Grammy's sold out arenas bomb themes I
could go on. Sure, success can open a lot of doors,
(01:27):
but it can also be confusing and sometimes even crippling.
Songs like Happy Now and someone Else's Star find him
struggling to make sense of what he's achieved and his
newfound role as a public figure. And nearly twenties, this
means treading a fine line. You're expected to have an opinion,
but woe to those who hold the wrong opinion. The
(01:47):
track Medieval is a critical thinkers approach to the notion
of cancel culture, and the nineties finds him pining for
a pre digital age, before the echo chamber of social media.
Living in the ties also means being acutely aware of
the climate crisis, racial and sexual inequalities, and of course COVID.
Though he doesn't go full protest anthem on optimist, one
(02:09):
of the themes of the record is rationalizing these global
concerns with more human scale personal fears. On Love Is Pain,
for example, he grapples with the mortality of his parents,
a primal worry if there ever was one. These fears
are there even in moments of triumph and celebration. The
unabashedly sensual track Around My Neck I No Do, his
(02:31):
romantic partnership with digital creator Claudio Suluski, is offset by
the Kids Are All Dying, in which he seems to
be chastising himself with the line how can you sing
about love when all the kids are dying? How can
you sing about sex when the school is on lockdown?
Releasing an album titled Optimist in the midst of this
uniquely troubled time could be interpreted by some as a
(02:52):
curious choice, either hopelessly naive or even sarcastic, but Phineas
says it's neither. It's feeling them a lay days of
this era and making the choice to be happy and positive.
I Phineas has a lot to say about these weighty topics,
As me and my colleague Noel Brown went track by
track through Optimist. He was the first part of that conversation.
We hope you enjoyed. I love that the album opens
(03:25):
with a concert six months from now because for two reasons, one,
I feel like that title post COVID has a totally
different sense of hope imbued in that phrase than it
would have in pre COVID times, because now it's like, Okay,
you know, I hope this concert happened. But I also
I got tickets to a show with my girlfriend early
on in our relationship, which is now ten years on, uh,
(03:48):
for a concert way down the road, thinking okay, geez,
I hope, I hope, I hope this works out. We're
still together. But you talk a little about that song.
I thought it was a really romantic sentiment. Yeah, I
I wrote that so in you know when I never
could have predicted covid um. But yeah, I was just
I was in this relationship that i'd been in for
(04:09):
a little shy of a year, and I it was
a Fleet Fox's Beach House concert and it was I
think maybe eight May, like April April May, and I
bought these tickets for the show in in October, and I,
you know, I bought them because they were going to
sell out, which is that's how popular concerts work, right,
(04:31):
they sell out immediately. So I bought them and I
remember buying them and just thinking like this is this
is ridiculous, Like that you don't you don't know if
you're gonna be together in like five weeks, um and uh.
And indeed we were not together by the time the
concert happened. But yeah, that whole song is about, um,
you know this, this relationship that meant a great deal
(04:54):
to me in my life was this this girl I'd
kind of fallen in love with when I was like thirteen,
and then we'd we've gone our separate ways all through
high school, and we'd reconnected when we were eighteen and
nineteen and you know, fallen in love again and and um,
you know it was a very definitive, um, transformative relationship
in my you know, young adulthood. And you know that
(05:19):
song is that song is really important. And I never
let what's that phrase, I never let the truth get
in the way of a good story or a good
lyric whatever. But but that song is is true And
I love songs like that. I love songs that where
the where the right line is also the true one. Um.
And then yet you know, it took on this whole
new meaning during COVID and I opened my show with
(05:39):
it on this tour I just did, and it was
like such a blast to do this like song about
going to a show as you're it was very meta.
Um opening the show that way. Um, it was really fun.
It's such a cool song. I mean it's so cinematic,
but also just the message of it. You're right, it's
it's like a leap of faith. Really, it's a way
(06:00):
the leap of faith. Oh my goodness. Well, next up
we got the kids are all dying That there's something
that that you do where you have these really up
melodies with these really devastating lines. I tried saving the world,
but I got bored. I tried picking a pause, but
I got confused. Tell me all about that song. I
(06:21):
almost get a sense of like a trace of guilt
running through the song in a way. Yeah, there's guilt,
and there's kind of irony in frustration, and you know
a lot of cynicism is sort of the main ingredient
of that song. But you know, I think it's like,
I'm how do I put this. I think humans are
held to a kind of a high standard. I think
(06:43):
human being like nobody's gonna do the more complicated thing,
like everybody is going to take like there you'd never
get in your car and look at a map and
choose the long way to get somewhere unless it was
so beautiful and you had all this time at your disposal,
like you're always going to take the fat this road
to get to your location. And I think that. I
(07:03):
think that about like climate change issues, people are not
going to inconvenience themselves, and they're already challenging and stressful
lives to to to accomplish a goal that cannot be
accomplished by one individual in one suburb of one city somewhere,
Like we have to make the solutions to these things,
(07:24):
you know, um ergonomic, we have to make them enjoyable.
Like it's just not an actualizable goal to expect people
to inconvenience themselves on a daily basis to to save
the world when you know, the fossil fuel industry is
just full steam ahead, like it's it's all really stupid.
(07:45):
So you know that kind of like I tried saving
the world and then I got bored, is like a
feeling of kind of helplessness. I guess you know what
I mean. I'm in a place where I can donate
money to causes I care about. I can give a
platform to causes I care about. Those two things make
me feel really useful. Not using a plastic straw doesn't
make me feel that useful. Like it feels like a
(08:05):
pretty small potato issue to worry about to me. And
so I think that song, to me is is kind
of about that of like this kind of you know,
hammering home, of like we all have to do our part.
And I think most people are looking around going like
why do I have to do my part? If you know,
(08:26):
fortune companies are doing the damage here and I'm one individual,
you know, scraping by. It's like it's the whole thing, right,
It's like salads being five dollars and a big mac
being It's like people are going to buy the big mac.
Like it makes sense. It was the part of the
song though, And you sing, and I hope I'm interpreting
(08:46):
it correctly. You know, how can you sing about love
when all the kids are dying? Maybe I'm I'm I'm
an optimist in a night Well there you go, and
uh and and maybe this is a naive thing to say,
but I don't know. I think that love is a
good reminder, especially in these times. Think that has tremendously Yeah,
a lot of what the meaning of that line was
was is that's the kind of that's the kind of
proverbial comments section of my music. It's like, I speak
(09:10):
out about social issues, and then once you do, people
expect you to speak out about everything all the time.
And it's like, hey, I'm still a person with my
own feelings, in my own you know story, and you know,
if I if I expel a hundred percent of my
identity in favor of only speaking about social issues, like,
are you even going to be interested in what I
(09:31):
have to say anymore? Because the whole reason you care
about me talking about social issues because you care about
me in the first place. Like it's, you know, sort
of a never ending cycle, and you know, I resent
the whole kind of like I speak out about this
thing and then the Internet's like, well, you have to
speak out about this thing, and I'm like, no, I don't,
and here's why I'm not educated about that thing. And
I don't want to. I don't want to talk out
(09:52):
of my ass. I don't want to say something that
once I do more research, i'll realize was an you know,
a poorly in full warmed take on something. I don't
want to. I don't want to throw weight at something
that you know, I shouldn't. I shouldn't be on the
side of just because it sounds like the right thing
to do. I don't want to virtue signal. I don't
want to you know, be performative in my ally ship
(10:16):
or my activism. And so it's all been a challenge.
But that's the kind of how can you sing about
love when the kids are all dying? Like the reason
that song comes at the beginning of the album is
I didn't sing about all of it, right, How can
you sing about love when the kids are all dying?
And then I go sing about love on Only Lifetime,
Love is pain, hurt, locker. How can you sing about drugs?
Politicians are lying? I sing about you know, you know
(10:37):
whatever it is, substances and friends and and and um,
you know anything. And then how can you sing about
sex when the school is on lockdown and there's like
around my neck? Like the whole thing to me is
like you still can because it's because it's it's the
human experience, the human condition. You know, it's like almost
crippling when you're expected to have to take on literally
(10:58):
everything and even just like you know, being a podcast
host myself and in Jordan's like, we get comments and
emails saying, oh, you accidentally. They don't say accidentally, but
it is accidentally said this thing that offended me. And
if they knew me, they would know I never in
a million years would have said something intentionally to offend anybody.
But if you let that infect your brain, then it
starts to like just stymy every choice you make in
(11:22):
your communication, and it like makes it impossible to say
or express anything. So you almost have to kind of
not put on blinders. That's not the way to say it,
but just be yourself and not feel like you have
to be everything to everybody. True good point. A lot
(11:51):
of way you were saying about trying to balance being
a private person, a private human being, with being a
public figure where you're expected to have opinions and points
of view on everything and held the standard of having
the right points of view and opinions on everything. It
reminds me a lot of what you were singing about
on the track. Medieval. Yeah, medieval is is um you
(12:13):
know about whatever you wanted to be about. But I
think one of the reasons I wrote it was this
kind of like once you love something and you've enjoyed it,
there is this sort of like, just like anything, just
like you know, just really really anything, there's this kind
of like casting it out once you've enjoyed, or casting
(12:37):
it aside. And I think it's all kind of a
little a little weird. Um. You know, there's this artist
that plays this huge role in your adolescence or or
or a film or a movie star or a book
or whatever it is. Can you consume this, this form
of entertainment, this art. It's very informative and important to you,
And and then a couple of years later, you're like, oh,
(12:59):
I hate that that thing's lame, and it's like it's
not very respectful of your of that thing, of how
meaningful and seminal it was to you a couple of
years ago. And you know, there's also notes in that
of like sort of the the extent of cancel culture
and whatever. You know. I do think we're like I'm
not the first person to say this. I think there's
(13:20):
like plenty of issues and things people are held accountable
for that are you know, um cut and dry black
and white issues right, like forms of sexual abuse, you know,
pretty pretty damn black and white to me, Um, sexual
misconduct whatever, whatever the nomenclature is there, pretty easy to
(13:46):
to sort of like, but I think there's you know,
within the broader spectrum of things, people get canceled for
an uninformed opinion being voiced years prior on Twitter, you know,
like that stuff Like we're not in the business of
rehabilitation yet with cancel culture, and I think it's a
lot a little silly, like like you could literally like
(14:08):
you know, like think about traffic laws, right, Like imagine
imagine if you like rolled through a stop sign and
the cop pulled you over and was like, I'm going
to cancel you, Like they don't. They write you a
ticket and you pay it and you do traffic school.
Like we're just not in a place yet where like
somebody has a bad take on the internet from ten
years ago, like like there need to be tickets and
(14:30):
fines and like like it just needs to us to
be like, yeah, he atoned for that, and then now
he has his career back, you know what I mean.
Like there's we just have this weird kind of like
everyone is good or bad and if they've made one
transgression there, you know, there forever a piece of ship.
And it's like, yeah, no, not no, you know, it's
(14:52):
not murder. It's a bad opinion from years ago. And
and and if people show themselves to not evolve and
not change, then York continue to hold them accountable. But
I feel like most people, like I regret, I regret
like everything I've ever said up until like eighteen months ago,
you know what I mean. And I wasn't. I wasn't
saying essentially like anything wrong. I just had stupid opinions,
(15:15):
Like I did that Pitchfork over under video like two
years ago. I watched it the other day, I was like, Oh,
what an asshole, Like I just disagreed with like every
take of mine. And I think that's like, I don't
know that that's kind of the you know where I
lie on this. I also feel like, I mean, you know,
we are all evolving. I mean, there was a great
(15:38):
idea John Lennon gave to Dick Cabin in the seventies
where he was talking about people coming up to him
with quotes that he said. This was in nineteen seventy one,
you know, pre internet, and he was still being hell
account for things he said five six years ago. And
how you know, it's a new day, It's a new you.
It's were constantly and I mean, you know, even the
way that you kind of and I know was tongue
(15:59):
in cheeked to a certain them. But the way you
describe yourself on unhappy now you know, I mean a
douche back car is I mean, I feel like that's
a bit overcritical to oneself maybe if I may, but yeah,
but I'd rather I'd rather be overly self examined and
(16:21):
self critical than you know, I guess acting like I
could do no wrong. Like I'd rather I'd rather walk
on the far side of like you know, self examination
and maybe being kind of hard on myself than than
inflicting my flaws on other people, you know what I mean.
(16:46):
Like I kind of think that like we're in this,
we're in this sort of like I say this as
a good thing. Like we're in this period where where
self acceptance is really stressed, right, and i'd I think
that's great, Like I think that's gonna that's gonna help society, right,
the more we all, you know, love ourselves and accept ourselves.
(17:08):
But it's not an excuse to treat other people poorly. Right,
It's like that to me is like your treatment of
others is paramount, and you know, be as be as accepted,
like like let me give let me give an example.
It's like, yeah, it's it's a it's very understandable and
(17:30):
and wonderful to be like, hey, you're having a hard day,
Like that's okay, Like you can you can cancel that
thing that you wanted to do because you're you're having
a hard day. Um, you know, take care of yourself,
self care, to take that bath whatever. Like I think
that's fucking great. But it's like that's sort of like
(17:52):
a lot of the time people are reliant on us,
you know what I mean. Like you know, there's somebody
somebody is suffering some emergency and and they were there
for you, and we kind of need to be there
for each other. And you know, it's like, sorry, I
was I was kind of I was feeling, you know,
(18:13):
insecure about something and a little bit disappointed that, um,
I didn't get a job opportunity I wanted. And that's
why I was really mean and dismissive to you and
belittled you. It's like, uh, like it's great to know
these things about yourself and to articulate that, but it's
not an excuse to treat other people poorly, you know,
(18:33):
and or to not be h you know, reliable you know.
There it's it's perfectly acceptable to hit somebody up and go, hey,
I'm not I'm not having a good day, like I
need to I need to take a rain check on that.
That's great, But it's like there are instances where, like
you you promised to help somebody you know move out
of their thing, and it's like it's important to show
(18:54):
up for people, you know, I think more so than
self acceptance, self awareness, just like you know, being tuned
into how you come off and even if you come
off like an asshole, just being you know, thoughtful enough
to realize you came off like an asshole and maybe
you don't do that again. But also don't beat yourself
(19:15):
up over it or act like you have to hold
yourself to some sort of unattainable standard all the time. Yeah,
good point. Could you talk a little more about Happy Now?
(19:37):
I thought there was so many things going in that song,
just lyrically and musically. Uh, so much to unpack. It's
such a to me. It's it's one of the highlights
on the album. Um, I'm really proud of that song. Uh.
You know what's funny about that song, I guess is like,
when I was writing that song, it was a little
(19:58):
bit of a retrospective already because I am happy, and
I was kind of happy when I was writing that song.
But I think it was like, you know, by the
time I was writing that song, I was like, we
just want all the Grammys and stuff, like I'd really
like my dreams had really come true. And I wasn't
talking about that so much. I was. I was kind
of talking about like the eighteen months two years prior
(20:21):
to that, which is like where you're having, you know,
any form of success on a much smaller scale. And
you know, what that song is basically about is like
an identity crisis, because I think as people were not
super prepared for the world caring about us, and you
(20:43):
can lose your identity really quickly in that because maybe
you define yourself by it, or maybe the world's kind
of mean about you, or maybe the world thinks you're
the ship and you're like, that doesn't necessarily align with
my own personal view of myself, but everybody else thinks
I'm amazing and talented, So I guess I am, and
I guess all that stuff is Like then you can
(21:04):
you can really lose a handle on your own identity
and really who you are and you know what is
sort of core to your your person and um, you know, yeah,
this kind of like this is a weird thing to say,
but like I've found I've found such entertainment and joy
(21:24):
in in you know, challenging experiences, if that makes sense.
You know, like that's the kind of line of like
I was supposed to be happy. Now there's nothing left
for me to laugh about. Like you know, when you're
when you're when you face these obstacles of like of
any sort of size, it's like that's that's uh, that's
(21:46):
part of the joy of life. Like we don't we
don't sit around with our friends and talk about the
best moments of our life. Like we sit around and
we talk about mutual frustration and mutual you know, annoyance
with this thing, or whether it's traffic or communication or
you know, you know, working on something tirelessly because you
(22:08):
became obsessed with it, or you know, any number of
things we talked about, you know, t s A at
the airport, just just struggle and chat. That's these are
the things that are funny and interesting and relatable to
talk about. And yeah, you know, there's this kind of
like hollowness to um certain metrics of success. And I
(22:29):
don't mean like playing a show is great. The fact
that people love your album is great, but it's like, yeah,
I don't know, there's like, you know, an article being
written about you saying you're great. It's like, what is
that supposed to mean to somebody? Because it probably shouldn't
mean much to you, because it's like, I'm a big
firm believer in like to believe the good reviews is
(22:51):
to believe the bad, you know, and I certainly don't
want to believe all the negative things that are written
about me, so I can't really believe of the positive
ones either, you know. On the next episode of Songs Stories,
(23:11):
we'll continue our track by track through phineas solo debut
album Optimist. He'll open up about his relationship to fame
and the Internet and how those two tend to feed
into one another, and he'll share the heartbreaking back story
of the album's lead single, what They'll Say about Us.
We hope you'll join us then. Song Stories is a
production of I Heart Radio. The show was hosted and
(23:32):
executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk with
supervising producer Mike John's. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe and leave us a review. For more from
My Heart Radio, please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
For now, I'm Jordan run Talk. Thanks so much for listening.
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