Finneas‘ debut solo album, Optimist, was released just a few weeks ago, and the record has already yielded two singles: “What They’ll Say About Us” and “A Concert Six Months From Now.” Instead of performing one of those singles on The Late Late Show yesterday, he chose to promote album cut “Love Is Pain.”
He kept the performance low-key by singing the contemplative ballad while playing it on the piano. The stage design was similarly simple but effective, with light emitted from holes in his piano.
“When I listen to it back now, I was making a really interpersonal introspective album, and I guess that’s what a year of sitting at home and thinking will do to you,” Finneas previously told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of his new album. When I listen to this album, I think to myself, “Oh yeah, this is how I was feeling and how I’ve felt my entire life about certain things,” and for that reason I’m extremely proud of it and at ease with it. When something is finished and stays on a shelf for a long, I imagine you look up at it and think to yourself, “I don’t know how well it is aging.” I believe this album is sincere enough that it doesn’t matter how it aged because I enjoy it.
