Alt-Pop Singer-Songwriter FINN DOHERTY Blends Introspection and Restless Energy in “KMU”
FINN DOHERTY’S “KMU” COMES AS A SEAMLESS BLEND OF INTROSPECTION AND RESTLESS ENERGY, AN ODE TO THE OVERINDULGENCE THAT OFTEN ENSUES FROM LIFE IN THE CITY, FUELLED BY THE DESIRE TO RELIVE THE EUPHORIA OF THE FIRST TRIP, THE FIRST KISS, THE FIRST ENCOUNTER.
Unveil Finn Doherty, the London-based singer-songwriter who’s fearlessly crafting his signature ALT-pop sound in a completely independent manner. Immerse yourself in “KMU,” his latest single and the second glimpse of the forthcoming debut EP, “if you’re bored of this city.”
THE SONG
“If you’re bored of this city’ was a line that kinda came very naturally to me when we made the instrumental for this. Joey Robbins, who’s also my drummer, had come to stay with me in Norfolk for a long weekend of writing in November last year, and we just spent the whole time hanging out and making music. This was one of the last things we did that weekend, and it was at like 3am, we were drunk and kinda bored of whatever else we’d been working on.
“He was messing about on the piano and made a loop with these chords, and I really just love simplicity in songwriting so I was just like ‘yeah, these are great, can you lay a drum loop down?’ He did that and then the structure of the song came together really quickly. We did most of the writing that night, and then just finished up the lyrics and the production over the next few months with a bit of help from Georgia Winter and Ben Wedlake, who both did some amazing work on the outro, and Atkin – who also directed the video.
“I can really remember being told that if you’re bored of London then you’re bored of life sometime last year, and it made me think back to this time in like 2019 and early 2020, living in London away from home for the first time and just becoming this like complete recluse who sat at home smoking weed. And it’s so weird to think back on it cause I had the whole of London on my doorstep and just didn’t go out, so in a weird way I was bored of this city, and bored of my life, and just stuck in this cycle of working and then staying in getting fucked up.
“I guess finding ourselves in a cost of living crisis at the end of last year and finding it really hard to go out and enjoy life in London brought back a lot of that sentiment for me. So writing this song in November I guess I must’ve been thinking about it and it just kinda fell out of me as the opening line.
“There was never another option, that line was there from the beginning. And then the rest of the song is up for interpretation honestly. It’s got a very specific meaning to me about this reclusive period of life and the habits I had, but people have heard and related it to their own life in other ways. It seems like that’s a bit of a customary thing to say as a songwriter now, but it’s true.
“Oh, and people ask why it’s called KMU, and it’s mostly because that was what the original draft of the song was saved on my computer as and it just kinda stuck, but also cause ‘Keeping Me Up’ just looks and sounds like a shitty title – it’s so tacky.”
THE VIDEO
“The video for KMU directly follows on from the Drop My Guard video, but this time it’s a lot more narrative, where that one was pretty abstract. It follows me through this night out where chaos ensues – I nearly get beaten up in the street, I get kicked out of a bar, it’s great.
“I knew with this one that I wanted to have no miming until the second chorus to create this big impact moment, and this also allowed me loads of space to try and add to this story in a different way. It was weird, I found myself acting properly in this video, which was a lot of fun actually. Not many people have noticed that link from the Drop My Guard video, but it’s definitely something to pay attention to.
“We filmed it over two nights in April, and it was a pretty intensive schedule, with the first night being mostly in Soho, and the second all around Maida Vale. We also shot the live performance video in between scenes for this, so the whole thing was kinda mental, but we had loads of fun.
“We were sat in Bar Italia at like 2am drinking coffee, and it was cold as fuck outside. All I had on was this shirt with most of the buttons open, and one of the hardest parts was tryna act like I wasn’t cold on camera. I also smashed a whole bottle of Prosecco all over Frith Street by accident on one of the takes which I don’t think our audience of rickshaw drivers were particularly happy about…
“Big shouts to Atkin for co-directing the video, and to Samuel Robinson, Ray Njoku, Tessa Tide, and Paolo Tuveri. And of course Q4L and Sam Kutten for being magnificent co-stars.”
“…songs that sing about life, often with an unexpected bite to them, showing there’s a bit more to this artist than you might at first think.” – BBC Introducing
