Finn Wolfhard reflects on youth and Hollywood in debut ‘Happy Birthday’
The actor and singer is divulging old and new feelings in his debut solo album.
Photo: Press
Being in the spotlight from the time he was thirteen, Finn Wolfhard has accumulated a massive following and made his love of movies and rock music well-known for almost ten years. With his debut solo album Happy Birthday, Wolfhard draws on his favourite artists and collaborates with friends to create a sound and experience that is all his own. Wolfhard cites some of his early musical inspirations, and in turn his inspirations for the album, as The Beatles and The Replacements; two influences which make their way into countless aspects of this album. Wolfhard himself describes one of his goals for the album as sounding “raw and handmade,” a goal which he achieved with every chaotic guitar solo and beautifully messy vocal.
The album opens with the title track – a slow-moving melody, like one out of a punk-rock music box. Only a minute and a half long, the track introduces the album as a melancholic reflection on growing up and “wasting precious time”. With a dreamy synth piano and fuzzy vocals, the track slowly draws listeners into the world of the album and Wolfhard’s mind. Asking questions like “What have I done?” and “Did I waste precious time?” are common questions to ask when growing up and looking back at all of the time that’s slipped through your fingers. Am I spending my time well enough? Was that relationship worth ruining? Will any of this be worth it? In the following tracks, Wolfhard explores these questions and, as is typical of most people when coming into their own, struggles to find answers with a solid foundation.
The album immediately changes tempo as it transitions into the first full track: Choose the Latter. The main draw of this track is the pairing of its upbeat ‘90s rock tempo with its slightly darker and questioning lyrics. Continuing from the first track, Wolfhard asks hard-hitting questions like “Why can’t I afford my dream?”. As one of the three singles released from the album, it sets the tone for the sound and feeling of the following seven tracks.
The simply titled Eat pairs the sunshine indie sound of the previous track with some much darker and more eerie vocals and lyrics, which could be about the singer’s relationship with food and eating. Following Eat is the album’s latest single, Objection!, a love song that focuses entirely on thinking about and reflecting on a relationship that ended badly. Here, Wolfhard mixes sombre reflections like “I felt you on the first day of fall” with bitter questioning: “What did I do to make me hate you so much?”.
Wolfhard follows up the single with a simplistic, country-inspired track: Everytown There’s a Darling. Out of all the tracks on the album, this one feels the most like a simple dedication to the music he loves, which serves to both break up and bring a new level of value to the album. Wolfhard’s second single, Trailers After Dark, follows. Beginning with an acoustic guitar solo, the track slowly guides listeners back out of the slightly gloomy rock sound of the album’s later tracks.
The album ramps up again with the dark guitar solo, which opens the track Crown, one of the surprising high points on the album. The song reflects on childhood and all the things we wish we could get back from a time when we thought we were entitled to them. Emotions in the album are at an all-time high when the repeating line “kids still have a crown” comes in, followed by a fading guitar riff that beats all other music on the album in terms of volume and chaos.
From the track’s conception, with memories like “when consuming a pirate-themed kids’ meal at a Vancouver restaurant felt like the pinnacle of existence,” to the last second the guitar fades, this song waves a fond and slightly regretful goodbye to Wolfhard’s very public childhood.
The penultimate track of the album is the yearning love ballad You. A track and title that reflects the centrality of one person in every thought and situation, Wolfhard’s lyrics explain, as many of his other tracks do, the feeling of losing yourself; every line going back to whoever we can conceptualise as “You”: “I can’t believe anyone but you”, “I don’t have anything but you / I don’t have everything but you.” This track also incorporates a violin element, which separates it from the album’s earlier tracks with an air of romanticism. Wolfhard’s sole follow-up to this is the album’s closing track, Wait. A track which begins with the line “I can’t sing anymore,” signalling the farewell of this step in Wolfhard’s creative and expressive career.
Throughout this album, Wolfhard does what so many have struggled to do: he has succeeded in showing his listeners the parts of himself that he wants them to see. This album serves as a look into his mind as he reflects on the joys and regrets of childhood and growing up at a pace that left so much behind, and looking forward to a time of not being led astray or taken advantage of. The music that Wolfhard made in a rundown studio with his friends is a way of claiming his own, whatever it is in the moment and whatever it will be. We hear his voice loud and clear, and we see ourselves in it: the mark of a great album.
Happy Birthday is out June 6th (Friday) via AWAL. Pre-order from Banquet Records here.
Read the album review in our first print issue, out this June, and available to order here.