What They’ll Say About Us

“Sharing” is the key word when he comes to most artists. It’s only natural: You’ve made something you’re proud of, and you want as many people as possible to enjoy it. That’s all well and good, until the audience begins to turn their attention away from your art, and onto you. Some people enjoy the attention and thrive. Others, like Finneas, emphatically don’t.

This week, we continue our exploration of Optimist, as Finneas digs deeper into his relationship with fame and the internet — and how those two tend to feed into one another.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome the Song 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 musing.
They're going to take us through the life cycle of
a song, from studio to stage and everything in between.
My name is Jordan run Todd. Thank you so much
for joining us this season. We're talking to Phineas, the singer,
songwriter and producer extraordinaire who's helped to find the sound
of contemporary pop through the work he's done with the

(00:41):
host of artists. But today we're talking about the work
he's done under his own name. Last of all, he
stepped into the spotlight as a solo artist with the
release of his debut ALP Optimist. It was, for the
most part, a one man show, with Phineas writing, singing,
and producing the effort almost entirely himself, and even playing
most of the instruments too. On our previous episode, we

(01:03):
begin going track by track through the album to learn
how his songs have helped them grapple with all that
he's achieved by his mid twenties and also his newfound
role as a public figure. Today, we're going to continue
our expliration of optimists as Phineas digs deeper in his
relationship with fame and the Internet and how those two
tend to feed into one another. The key word when
it comes to most artists is sharing. It's only natural.

(01:26):
You've made something you're proud of, and you want as
many people as possible to enjoy it. That's all well
and good until audiences begin to turn their attention away
from your art and onto you. Some people enjoy the
attention and thrive, Others, like Phineas, emphatically don't. The Internet,
that's same delivery mechanism that allowed him to share his
music with fans around the world, also contains a wealth

(01:49):
of information about his personal life. He tells the story
of fans showing up unannounced on his mother's doorstep, frightening
it to death in the process. We are, as he says,
in a post privacy age. He laments this in his
song The Nineties with the line I hate how easy
they can find me just by looking up my mom's address.
Artists have always struggled to determine exactly how much to

(02:11):
share and how much to hold back for themselves. It's
a skill that comes with age and experience and also
hard learned lessons. But being an artist means looking outward
as well as looking inward. Numerous tracks on Optimists bear
the scars of this unusually tumultuous decade. A particular note
is what they'll say about us inspired by the convergence

(02:31):
of the COVID crisis and the murder of George Floyd
and the resulting Black Lives Matter demonstrations. As I've noted before,
it's a strange time for an album titled Optimist, but
sometimes optimism and hope is the best weapon you've got.
Phineas had a lot to say on these weighty topics
as me and my colleague Noel Brown went track by
track through Optimist. Here's the second and final part of

(02:54):
that conversation. I hope you enjoy. I mean, you're obviously
for many years now, I've been extremely well known through
you know, you're working with Billy and so many other artists.
Now this is you. You are headlining these shows yourself,

(03:15):
this is your album. You are the focal point of
all these profiles, and you know, news pieces and everything
is that freaky for you in any way? I mean,
what what is your relationship like to fame? I guess
is the is the broader questions, so it's challenging. I mean,
I was just reading Dave grohls um book that he

(03:35):
put out. I don't know if you want to call
it a memoir. I just finished it, but um, he
talks about height of nirvana, like basically not being famous.
Like the band was famous. Kurt was the most famous
man in the world, but he was the drummer in
the back with the hair, so like sometimes kids would
come up to him, but he wasn't dogged by paparazzi.

(03:56):
And by and large, throughout the Billy sort of journey,
I've I've been in that role, right, Like I get
to go to the party, but I don't get followed
home by the paparazzi. It's awesome. Yeah, it's so great,
and uh, you know, I I do believe that, like

(04:18):
they're they're you know, the good outweighs the bad in
terms of the opportunities that that much notoriety gives you.
Billy gets to play these arenas or whatever, but it's
her day to day life is more challenging than mine.
And you know, my ability to walk down the street
and go into a grocery store and um, sit at
a coffee shop and whatever, and maybe a kid or
two that day comes up to me and goes, hey,

(04:39):
I love your whatever. You know, but but it's very
it's uninhibited. It's it's it's not it's not a challenge.
And you know I don't. I don't. I really genuinely
don't desire that level of of fame or recognition. If
I could avoid it, I would. The caveat is that
I'm proud of my music. I want to promote it.

(05:01):
I want it to be heard by as many people
as possible. And if the if the consequence of that
is that I become more famous, like I'm willing to
take that. But there's I have no desire. I think
a lot of people kind of want to be famous.
I have no desire to be any more famous than
I currently am. It seems like a huge drag. I

(05:22):
feel like you touch on that in in a lot
of detail on the nineties, which I mean now. Is
the nineties shorthand for childhood for you? Or is it
more global than that? Is it a world that is
that feels smaller due to you know, the lack of
internet or is it both? It's the time before me,
Like there's that line. I think about the nineties and

(05:43):
I was not a problem yet it's like all this
sort of yeah, just the period of time before me
and my stress and anxiety existed. And it's about the
sort of last modern analog era, right we sort of
entered the digital age and the two thousands. Um. I
was doing these knows this past month, and I change
lyrics based on circumstance for fun. And there's a line

(06:05):
in the song, hey, how easy they can find me
just by looking at my mom's address? Because I wrote
that alone, and when I sing it live, I've often
sung hey, how easy you can find me? And there's
this like flash of guilt on the faces of some
audience members. Um, not always, but but it's it's a
little confrontational, Hey, how easy you can find me? And

(06:27):
there's like these kids are like, oh, you know, they're
the kind of moment of like realizing maybe that they
knocked on my door of my house in l A.
And you know, whatever it is, it's a I think
that stuff is you know that equates to privacy. I don't.
I don't think. I don't think you could find one
person who wants their privacy taken away, and even even

(06:49):
a kid who who desperately wishes to be famous for
whatever reason. If you said, yeah, do you want somebody
to knock on your door in the middle of the night,
like they would universally say no, you know, and uh,
you know. So I think that's what that song is
kind of about. But we're also living in kind of
like a post privacy world, like with you know, everyone

(07:11):
over sharing all the time on social media, and it's
almost like, yeah, I will give up my privacy for
the privilege of being able to overshare on the internet.
And I'm almost okay with that. So it's an interesting
kind of dichotomy. What do you think like being coming up?
So we were talking before you popped on about how
Jordan and I are kind of in like a privileged

(07:31):
sort of subset of like people where we're like we
we straddle the divide between the area you're talking about
and the digital era, so we sort of remember dial
up modem sounds and like up a web page loading
one line at a time, um, and it's it's neat
because we got to see that evolution, but you also
kind of get to see the erosion of privacy and
the sort of double edged sword of that escalation of technology.

(07:55):
Can you talk a little bit about that and the
way you see it being, you know, sort of a
product of the Internet. Yeah, I mean, you know, look
at this wonderful career I've gotten to have because of
because of that transparency. Like I don't want to dismiss that,
but I also I also have have been a victim
of my own overexposure by choice, and and seeing that

(08:15):
and wishing I could take it back and taking it
back and sort of reclaiming ownership over my own privacy.
Like my girlfriend and I did a podcast for about
I don't know a little over half a year once
a week, did an hour long episode. It was very
free form, and I ultimately came away from that experience

(08:35):
thinking I overshared, Like that was like my main takeaway,
and uh, you know, I'll share everything with my friends
and my loved ones and stuff. But I had this
feeling of like I I have I've pulled the curtain
back too far to to total strangers online. And I

(08:57):
think that was an important lesson for me to learn.
I deleted all the episodes when we stopped doing the podcast,
and you know, it's a it's a real there's a
lot of people who who have a real willingness to
share the good, the bad, and the ugly of their lives,
and I don't. I don't personally feel that way. I
I have I have interest in in the the things

(09:21):
people see and know about me being fairly curated. And
you know that's just a personal choice of mine. But
you know everybody has different levels of comfortability with that.

(09:50):
It's funny too, because obviously the Internet brings very specific challenges,
especially the privacy. But I mean, growing up in the
in the nineties myself, I dream do oh man, I
wish I lived in like the fifties and the sixties.
Things were much simpler than everything in the nineties now
is just crazy. So I do wonder how much there's
that movie Midnight in Paris where, yeah, I mean, were

(10:13):
no matter where you go, the people in that era.
I think that the prior, prior era was simpler and better.
So it's it's because it was because it was already written.
Where I feel I feel very like I try to
put it some way last night in the car that
I was I was like, Oh, that makes sense. I
was like, we're really we're really living in present tense

(10:35):
right now. And I guess it's always felt that way,
but I I was like, it really feels that way now,
Like we do not know what next year looks like
every year now and it's interesting. And I guess it
must always have felt that way, but it feels more
that way than it's ever felt in my life of
this like WHOA like it is we're in the present,

(10:55):
like we do not know anything about the future anymore. Um,
And you're right, it's like it's because we look at
the past as this written thing that we could go
back and there'd be foregone conclusions in this kind of
sense of certainty, and we crave that. We all we
all want a little bit more control than we have.
Well to to ground this conversation a little more, I'd

(11:17):
like to ask you about the inspiration of Peaches Dead too. Yeah.
I I sat around for the year of COVID trying
to get better at piano, and the way that I've
always gotten better at instruments is writing things that are
a little bit too hard for me to play and
that's actually the definition of an a tude, and a tude,
by definition, is a short composition primarily played on one instrument,

(11:41):
designed to make the person playing it better at playing
the instrument. And that's exactly what that is. It's just
a sort of a little practice piece that I wrote
and peaches my dog's name, and so I just I
just named it after the dog because she would sit
there on the couch while I played at a million
times while my girlfriend fled. My girlfriend would be like,
a dude, you've this song six thousand times today, but

(12:02):
pieces pieces a dumb little dogs. He just just sits
there and listens to it. Um, it was great. What
kind She's a pit bull? She's an American bully, the
red nose. She's very beautiful. I I she's very heavily
documented on my my Instagram for anybody listening to this episode.

(12:23):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, for some reason during during COVID,
I became a dog person, which I've never been my
entire life. So I love that. It's like, yeah, I
don't know what it brought out of me, but hopefully
a totally unrelated note, uh, love is pain quite a
quite a sentiment on an album call Optimist. Yeah, well
that's part of the reason I wanted to call the

(12:44):
album Optimist was this kind of juxtaposition of all this
like you know, pessimism on the record. But I mean
it's definitely something we can all relate to as well. Totally. Yeah,
it's like you know, I mean, this is maybe cliche
and even saying, but love, you're when you're taking the plunge.
You're entering into a contract that you know ultimately could
absolutely fail. But by putting yourself out there and being

(13:08):
part of it and submitting yourself to it, you're kind
of going on in a limb and saying, well, it's
worth it. I mean, is that sort of what you
mean by that sentiment? Yeah. I would categorize the opposite
of love not as hate, but as indifference. I think
that hate and love both include a lot of passion, right,
you include a lot of attention and like to truly,

(13:30):
when you truly hate something like it, it's a it
lives in you, you know, and love is like that.
I think the real opposite is indifference is not caring
about something at all. And I think that if you
love something like that's just the price you pay. Is
that you're you're gonna you're gonna be emotionally invested and

(13:51):
sometimes governed by it, you know. Um and uh, I
think about that in all respects, and I tried to
articulate different examples of that on this song of like,
you know, there's this instance with friendship, in this instance
with parents, in this instance with the relationship where it's
it's all just sort of like different vignettes of like
look at how much love can control how you feel?

(14:14):
And um, yeah, I mean when when you truly don't
care about something, it's kind of blissful. It doesn't it
doesn't govern your life at all, you know what I mean,
And it's a kind of miraculous. I I I don't
envy sociopaths because I think that love can be so
profound that it's it's worth it. But I I do. Uh.

(14:38):
I am sometimes, at my at my most heartbroken, jealous
of sociopaths, like jealous of the ability to really not be,
you know, devastated by somebody else. I guess if that
makes sense, um, because it can be very painful. I

(15:09):
feel like probably one of the most empathetic songs just
to you know, the global situation the human condition whenever
you want to put it is is what they'll say
about us, which I know it sounds like came about
during you know, the very charged atmosphere of the summer.
Because you talk a little more about about that song. Yeah,
that song is the most sort of COVID tied in

(15:30):
of anything because it's it's about a person who died
of COVID. It's about um the actor songwriter singer Nick
Cordero Um, who was one of the first sort of
like instances I was aware of of of of people
really um or or maybe most publicized examples of like

(15:54):
somebody really getting sort of destroyed by COVID that that
didn't fall into any of the the things that the
especially the far right media likes to dismiss of, like
pre existing conditions or older. Nick was like forty one
years old. You had no pre existing conditions. He was
in really good shape and he got COVID in it

(16:14):
just destroyed him. It just it just decimated him. He
had his leg amputated and his lungs were full of holes,
and he was he was in a coma for weeks
and weeks and weeks and weeks, and he finally you know,
died in a sort of like there there was there's
basically nothing that could be done where it was he was.
He was too weak and and his his body was

(16:37):
in such bad shape that any any form of lung transplant,
you know, operations where he would have died during. So
it was just this like devastating thing. And I through
all this, I've never met Nick Cordero, but I started
following his wife, Amanda, who was chronicling his hopefully his
journey to recovery. So she's just making these Instagram videos

(16:59):
every day and and just like the way that that
Instagram at its best does, it's like, you know, you're
seeing this transparent look into Amanda's life, her son, Elvis's life,
Nick's life. You're learning all about this person you never met,
and I just became invested as if i'd known them
for years. And I started writing this song when he
was still alive, and then um, you know, was sort

(17:21):
of like maybe it's done. And then after he died,
I thought, oh, well, then, I you know, it's a
disservice to this song to not have it actually you know,
follow the journey of him, um dying. You know, it's
a disservice to sort of have it be only this,
like it's gonna be cool. And this was all happening

(17:42):
in June and July during all the George Floyd protests,
and I just was thinking, like, you know, the collective
conversation had been only COVID until George Floyd, and then
it was this, like, you know, we were all completely
distracted from COVID. We were we weren't thinking about COVID

(18:03):
at all for the first time since COVID started, and uh,
and I was thinking about how like the only reason
I wasn't thinking about COVID was I didn't have a
loved one dying in a hospital. And I was like,
if I had had, if I had had a husband
or you know, a parent in the hospital dying, like
I'd never stopped thinking about that, and I was I

(18:23):
was just imagining what it must be like to sit
at somebody's bedside and look out the window there's like
tanks rolling down the street and there tear gassing protesters,
and then to look to your right and you have
you're you're the person you love most in a hospital bed.
So that was I was trying to articulate all of
that from the sort of perspective of a person. Bedside

(18:44):
is a beautiful song. It's something you mentioned there, you know,
about feeling as though you had known Nick Cordero for
for years and years, although it was just through through
social media. I mean, in a way that feels like
the flip side of everything you we were talking about
earlier about the do I mean, you do have four
these connections with people. I mean, you know, you obviously
know that through your your your music career and how

(19:05):
it began, but totally and that's that's also Amanda's willingness
to share the most horrible period of her life, which
like again I'm talking about wanting to curate my you know,
social media more. It's like, I applaud that and I
am grateful to her for doing that because it allowed
strangers like me to to send love to this family

(19:29):
that you know what I mean, If she if she
had done what what my instinct would have been, which
was like, you know, not wanting to talk about it
at all. You know that all these people like me
who who fell in love with with Nick Cordero, who
never even got to meet him, would have been sort
of deprived of that. She really gave everybody a gift

(19:50):
in being willing to be transparent and being willing to
share all of this, you know, horrible ship that was
happening to her, so I was. I'm very, uh, very
grateful to her for being willing to do something that
I don't know if I would have the strength to do.

(20:12):
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. The
show was hosted and executive produced by Noel Brown and
Jordan round Tug, with supervising producer Mike John's. If you
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