Taylor Swift isn't the only songwriter who can turn heartbreak into a catchy chorus or biting bridge. Emerging artist Finn O'Sullivan has the same sensibilities, and for her new EP Best Last Words, this tortured poet took aim at a particular subgenre of ex-boyfriend: the film bro.
"Getting my heart broken by a film bro was an embarrassing and unfortunate experience," O'Sullivan laughs, "but we've healed, we've recovered."
And she now has a new record to show for it.
Like many singer-songwriters of her generation, O'Sullivan grew up pretending to be Taylor Swift. She started by putting on her own concerts in her bedroom, and once she picked up a guitar at age 12, she recalls it in terms of Swift's own lyrics: "Just like clockwork, the dominoes cascaded in a line."
And how they did. A young O'Sullivan won Boulder, Colorado's eTown Handmade Songs contest, which gave her the chance to work with a producer in a studio. Her resulting song, "Stuck in My Head," featured an upbeat ukulele, handclaps, and a perfectly teen-bop chorus.
Then in 2020, at age 19, O'Sullivan not only won the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the Folk category, but she took home the grand prize as well: Song of the Year, for her entry "When the Power Comes Back On."
"Songwriting is a very personal thing for me," O'Sullivan tells Music Times. "It helps me process a lot and think about a lot of things."
And the thing she needed to process for this album? Pretentious film bros.
Best Last Words stems from her experience with a "film bro," i.e. the type of guy who thinks he's a well-rounded cinephile, when in fact he has a fairly shallow understanding of a few high-profile male-driven movies. Stereotypical film bro obsessions? The self-mythologizing Quentin Tarantino; any movie in which Brad Pitt plays a badass and not just a pretty-boy; any classic mob movie; any older film they think you know of but haven't seen (like Jaws or A Clockwork Orange); and the bro-iest fare by Martin Scorsese.
The iconic director and the connective throughline of brotastic movies is first planted with the EP's opening track, "Scorsese." O'Sullivan was inspired by a conversation with a friend about one of the director's films, like The Wolf of Wall Street or The Departed, which she describes as "a film kid's wet dream."
Once she realized that "stuff like that kept popping up" throughout her new music, it confirmed she had a concept for a full release on her hands.
"I feel I do a lot of writing about shitty men," O'Sullivan says, "but I was writing a lot about the same feeling and the same experience, just in slightly different ways. Eventually it felt pretty clear that I should put them all together into one project to put out into the world."
Something O'Sullivan is clearly adept at is not taking herself too seriously. Her lyrics are full of fun turns of phrase, witty jabs, and self-deprecating reflections. And, she's not afraid to curse for optimal impact.
"I like to incorporate humor into my songwriting," she says. "If I take myself one-hundred percent seriously all of the time, it turns into a lot of self-criticism and self-judgment. I've learned to try my best to let that go and instead be like, 'Okay well, maybe this is a little bit silly or a little bit stupid, but why can't I say it if I think it's fun?'"
Her lead single, "Cool Again," showcases both the clever lyrics and hummable melodies that can be heard throughout the EP.
"I like 'Cool Again' because it has moments of being funny while still being like, 'Oh, this situation really sucked and hurt,'" O'Sullivan says. "It has the various film references in it, but it's more upbeat and fun."
Once the EP is released, O'Sullivan hopes that her candid songwriting and general relatability speaks to and connects with listeners. Film bro or not, everyone can find themselves somewhere in the project's universal themes.
"When I listen to my favorite musicians, I always have moments where I'm like, 'Oh, I feel like they wrote this song about my life,'" O'Sullivan says. "So I hope that at least one person out there feels that way about something I wrote."
The five-song EP is available now on streaming services; an additional two songs are available on the vinyl pressing -- O'Sullivan's first-ever physical record. Plus, if you snap up the vinyl, O'Sullivan included a little trick-of-the-trade that she picked up from her original inspiration.
"I took a page out of Taylor Swift's book and left secret messages in the lyrics," she revealed to her Instagram followers, "so you can feel cool and sleuthy while you're de-coding them."
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