Singer- songwriter Shaun Finn told David Hennessy about his latest single, TV Show.
Dublin rock artist Shaun Finn has just released his latest single, TV Show.
In April 2024, Shaun delivered an electrifying headline gig in The Sound House, Dublin. Performing alongside his accomplished live band, Finn brought his signature energy and passion to the stage, cementing his reputation for unforgettable live shows.
Known for his raw energy and authentic sound, the new track follows the success of his fan-favorite track Love Is A Contact Sport (LIACS).
It also follows earlier offerings Galway, Rise and Times Are Changing.
However TV Show has a personal and tragic inspiration and dives deeper than any of his previous work.
The song is about life being like a TV show with the singer resolving that if that was the case, he would like to be the one writing it.
What inspired the new song, TV Show?
“It is quite an energetic and upbeat song but it kind of has quite sad beginnings in some ways.
“This time last year, I had just been laid off from my job so it was the first time I’d ever been unemployed since I was 15 and because of that, I was looking at the possibility of being homeless within a couple of weeks.
“And then also my mam got diagnosed with cancer.
“I got a little nick on my car.
“I just kept having things every week where all my mates were like, ‘Jesus, Shaun, you couldn’t write this stuff. What did you do to deserve all these? This would be a great TV show’.
“And because I was laid off, I was watching quite a lot of television. I was at home applying for jobs with The Chase on in the background or the news on in the background, or I was watching The Sopranos and re-watching Breaking Bad and all these shows that I love, comfort shows.
“I just said, ‘Well, that’s an interesting angle for a song’.
“And when we were rehearsing for my headline gig last year, I had done the set list before we’d start rehearsing.
“I just we got halfway through rehearsals and I just felt like the set list was missing a song and I didn’t want to do another cover because we were already doing four covers.
“If it’s my name on the ticket, I want it to be mostly my songs.
“So I said, ‘Right, I’m gonna try and write a new song’.
“And so that’s where TV Show kind of came from.
“I took tropes of what’s kind of classic when you think of television and that’s where I kind of drew for the lyrics for the verses especially, and then the chorus kind of takes that whole like, ‘I’m going to write it the way I want’.
“A lot of stuff had happened and I wanted to put on a brave face and be like, ‘No, you know what? If I’m going to do this, I’m going to write the show, you know?’
“That’s the origins of the song.
“It was born to be played live.
“I wrote it to go on our set list and I would say it was probably our best song of the night.
“We’ve been playing it for about a year now and because there’s that repetitive part of the acapella, we have crowds singing it back to us so it’s just become a world of its own.
“That’s the humble beginnings of TV show.”
Is it your best song yet?
“I think it’s my best song so far.
“From how it was written, that song could have been very depressing because of the situation I was in.
“I think it kind of hits that right balance of what’s good for me and also what works in the context of the song, you know?”
You mentioned the serious issue of homelessness there, how desperate did it get?
“It was really tough.
“I had to go and live with my grandparents- and my grandparents are in their 70s- because I couldn’t really turn to my mam because of the situation she was in as well.
“It just kind of got pretty scary, pretty fast but luckily, I had a really great support network around me.
“My girlfriend and her family were happy to listen to me and take me in and let me stay over there at times as well.
“Look, we got settled and it’s worked out for the better in the long run because I got laid off from that job.
“If I was still in the job I was in now, I couldn’t be living in the house I’m in now because the distance would be too far.
“I’ve ended up now in a house with my partner so it worked out in the long run but it was pretty scary for a while.”
Tell me about Love is a Contact Sport, that’s a song that is popular with your audience..
“I was thinking of my live shows, and I just wanted to write a song that people can dance to because a lot of my songs, even the most upbeat rock ones, like Rise and Times are Changing and stuff, they do have very kind of particular stories that are told from my life.
“When I listen to those songs or when I’m performing them even, I’m very much thinking of a very certain period or story in my life whereas I kind of just said, ‘I just want to have something that people can dance to’.
“I was thinking of going to concerts because, as well as playing concerts, I love going to concerts.
“It’s very rare I go three or four weeks without going to a gig.
“I was just like, ‘I want to write a song about going to a concert with my friends and that moment you’re at a gig with your mate and it could be your best mate, it could be our partner, it could be a total stranger but there’s that moment in the gig where you lock eyes with somebody and the band are doing their thing and you kind of go, ‘You know what? Everything’s going to be alright. This is what life’s all about. This is what love is about’.
“So that’s where that idea for the song came from.
“And then I was like, ‘Let’s just write a song about going out dancing with your friends and wanting to go home with your girlfriend and have a bit of contact sport action if you know what I mean’.
“When I say, ‘This next song is called Love is a Contact Sport’, I would say probably every two or three gigs, somebody goes, ‘That’s a f**king great title’.
“I think it’s a good title like that.
“That was a song that was born from the title.
“I was kind of just playing around with melody, and then I just said, ‘Love is a contact sport’.
“And then I said, that’s a good title.
“It goes down really well at gigs as well.”
When did you know it was music for you?
“I think my early days, I was kind of back and forward with it.
“I think I kind of took it more as a hobby.
“When I started playing the guitar, I just wanted to play my favourite songs.
“I wanted to be able to play a couple of Coronas songs.
“I wanted to play a couple of Foo Fighters songs just to amuse myself.
“Anybody who I knew at the time that was cool could play guitar so I was like, ‘I want to play guitar’.
“That’s where it kind of started but my plan was to be an architect at the time.
“Most people know when you start playing the guitar, you get into more kind of guitar-centric music.
“When you think of the guitar music, you think of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
“When you get into the heavier stuff, you’re thinking of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, I’ve already mentioned my love for Foo Fighters as well, so I kind of just went down that rabbit hole.
“But I didn’t know if I could do music as a career.
“I was in a couple of bands but then after I went to college I said to myself, ‘I’ll give myself a year to experiment’.
“Because I’d done transition year in school which is an optional year.
“I thought it was great because it kind of gave me a bit of clarity, a bit of breathing space to go. ‘What do I want to do? How do I want to do this?’
“That year kind of gave me the chance to be like, ‘Okay, I do actually want to maybe see if I can pursue music’.
“And it’s kind of just rabbit holed from there.
“There was a time when I was like, ‘Oh, I just don’t know if this is for me’.
“I wasn’t really confident in the songs that I was writing.
“But then everything really changed then when I wrote a particular song called Live my Life.
“That song really revitalised my enthusiasm for chasing music, it became this thing that I created, that I loved and I was so proud to showcase.
“I showed it to a bunch of songwriters and I played a couple of gigs and I had a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘That is a fantastic song’.
“The dominoes started to fall then because then I wrote the next song, and then I wrote the next song, and the words of encouragement got better and better.
“So I’ve decided that I do want to chase the music.”
Shaun emerged from the Rock School of Ballyfermot College of Further Education.
“When I finished secondary school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do so I decided I want to do a PLC (Post Leaving Certificate).
“And then I just kind of fell in love with music, the process and the industry as well.
“I decided that I wanted to pursue it a bit more.
“The one place I’d heard about the most was the Rock School of Ballyfermot not just because of the Rock School but because there’s so many media assets around the place as well.
“You really get a lot of bang for your buck because not only do you get the songwriting experience, the musicality stuff but you also get really high quality radio stuff being done by the radio students, you have the television students who are always looking to record something, photography, students who are always looking to take photos, the TV people would want to use some background music so we could give to them and then we would also want shows recorded so we could take from them as well.
“So it was an ecosystem of everybody benefiting from each other.
“It was great to go there.
“Then I ended up doing a degree there after that as well.
“Nothing but good things to say about the college.”
Who are your other inspirations and big influences?
“Green Day would definitely be up there.
“When people are saying, ‘What does he sound like?’ Green Day is usually one of the top five bands I’d say.
“I’m not myself the biggest fan of this band, I do like them, but I wouldn’t be as intense a fan of the band but a lot of people say I sound like Biffy Clyro as well.
“I think that’s mainly because I record all my stuff myself and Biffy are a three piece so they probably have that smaller band vibe.
“I think that’s where that comes from.
“Foo Fighters are a big one as well.
“If you say Foo Fighters, you have to say Nirvana.
“I’d say over the last year especially, my songwriting and production has been really influenced by The Darkness.
“I think The Darkness are a savage band.”
I want to talk about an earlier song and it’s slower than anything else I have heard from you, that’s Galway..
“That song came out three years ago and that got to number one in the charts when it came out as well which was insane because I was not expecting that.
“I just think the song really, really resonated with people and the reason for that is the song quite blatantly, in its lyricism, is about when my friend was moving away and me not wanting them to go because at that point in my life, I was going through a lot of change.
“That was just the one where I was like, ‘I just don’t want you to go, I just want our friendship to stay’.
“I think it’s something that most people can relate to.
“I’m sure there’s plenty of Irish who can empathise with their friends and their family moving to Australia and even now, one of my best mates is after moving off to Switzerland.
“I think that’s why it kind of hit with people.
“As you said, it’s quite different tonally to the other stuff I had done and the reason for that is, at that stage, I was still very much in my singer songwriter era.
“I was still kind of just writing songs about how I was feeling and then, ‘If I like this, I’ll release it. If I don’t, I might not release it’.
“So it got to number one.
“Got a lot of great radio play as well.
“It kind of gave me that sense of, ‘Oh, this can work. I can do these things. I can write these lyrics and stuff that can grip people’.
“And, like you said, it is the time to set where we do slow it down a little bit.”
Shaun often comes to London to see Chelsea play but he has also played one show over here at The Waiting Room in Stoke Newington.
Would you like to play London again? And are there plans for more of and EP or album?
“I’d love to come over.
“Me and the lads in the band would absolutely love to come over and play a show in London.
“So anybody who wants to get in touch about that is more than welcome to slide into my DMs.
“The plan for TV Show is just to make it the best version, I just want to scream and shout about how creative I am in terms of EPs and albums and stuff.
“I do want to do an album one day.
“I write songs all the time.
“I’m writing songs probably every two or three weeks but I’m big fan of concept albums.
“I love albums that tell a story from start to finish, not that my debut album has to be a concept album but I just haven’t landed on the right collection of songs to tell that story.
“There would be another one or two songs probably come out before the end of the year, but in terms of EPs and albums, probably a bit more further down the line.”
TV Show is out now.
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