welcome back thanks brother I'm emotional man I wanted I wanted to hear music from you so much but I I knew that you had to get there yourself you had to figure it out you had to figure it out and wow I mean isn't that enough is just what growth what incredible artistic growth I'm hearing um coming out of you and do you know how good it is on the other song just to hear you laugh it'sing great man it's like it's so that's that's my that's my high friend moment hey friend these two songs
let's start really simple Sean what does it mean to you to be putting these two songs out right now we know that we know you for your music that's how we got to know you I've gotten to know you beyond your music so what what is it about putting these two songs out why are we hearing them what does it mean to you when I started writing this album it was really just like can I do this again you know and it was like I felt zero pressure to address anything to write about anything in
particular it was just can I make music and can I feel good about making it again yeah isn't that enough was kind of it was kind of like I was I was up against this wall every day we're in the studio and then all those walls kind of broke and everything stripped back and it was just like me with a guitar singing in a room it was like one mik put in front of me and Mike and Scott and uh Nate and we just played the song top to bottom and that just felt good it
just felt good to to record and write like that again you know and even for me as like a singer I was like oh I forgot how good it feels to just like sing live with nothing in your ears just next to someone who's who's singing from their heart and because it's a chem it's it's chemistry man it's real chemist yeah it's a tangible thing that we can't see or understand but when you feel it when you feel it um you feel yourself right it's just it was just a a process of stripping back and
a process of like getting back to somewhere I felt like I never got was in the first place you know wow just like that feeling of I don't know like beyond beyond myself with music like just being stoked to have a guitar in my hand and sing a song because it felt good and that's such a really that's that's an very very powerful observation from my perspective having spoken to you off the Record but also on the record for hours about your journey and about the gratitude that you've shown for the success that you've achieved
yeah but also you've always been very upfront and very bold and honest about the search for the feeling beyond that metric of value like like hang on I want to I want to get the feeling I want to find the feeling and um I just as soon as I press play um on on um isn't that enough I was like oh like he's he's free like it sounds free yeah yeah actually it's funny you say that like completely out of my mom's vernacular but I remember when I played her the song in the video the
first thing she said was uh oh wow babe you found yourself and it's like not my mom would never say words like that just not something she would say gave me feels when she said it I just got him now yeah when your mom says that it hits a little different you know yeah be because it's what you hope for for your children yeah I guess a feeling of like General ease you know a feeling of general self-acceptance you know yeah which is why the album's called sha it's not lost on anybody you know it's
a it's a very honest photo it's a very honest album title I'm assuming it's the most honest album you've ever made yeah it just feels like the most natural thing I've ever made and and it's great because it's like the most natural thing I've ever made and it also feels like the most natural thing to talk about it feels like the most natural thing to play live and so it's just like giving me all these uh it just kind of feels easier than it ever has in A really lovely way sha MZ we've been looking
forward to talking with you here at Apple music you know we love you you know I love you um this new album is called Shan we get two songs right now uh one that's got some Tempo to it as well which is you know it's why why why is it it's it's got a very it's it's very heavy and light on its feet you know it's got that thing to it but at the same time it's it's it's moving in a different way um tell us a story about making that song and um and and
you know what it means to you because like I said it's there's a room like at the start and and there's a sense of joy and I think if I could tee this up fans would would rightfully have reasons to have felt concerned because the way the picture has been painted in recent years is that the joy has been lacking and so it's so nice to hear the song start with some Joy with a laugh yeah yeah yeah man I think that was also a big part of it even with isn't that enough was just
like I felt like I had a conversation uh with the fans and with the public just to be like you know just how are you just like I needed to address that like hey how have you been and like I needed to say back like I'm good you know everything's good it's going to be good it's all right um and uh yeah like I think y y why kind of like I said I felt no pressure to address anything but it just it was just one of those experiences where there kind of became this joke
while we were making the album was like if I started to experience some pretty heavy anxiety in the studio everyone was like at that point everyone was sure that a great song was going to be coming after it because there was there was some sort of healing crisis some sort of breakthrough That was supposed to happen wow that's a whole other pressure holy sh yeah yeah totally holy there that there's a lot wrapped up in that totally and you know I mean I wasn't always the case but but a lot of the time if if
there was something like in me that was causing me in pain it was something I was trying to kind of Express itself and this one this one was a big one obviously kind of just addresses a lot a lot of stuff and I think for me it just felt like there was I just didn't want to have to make anyone work to hear me I just wanted to say it as it was and you really did look I mean there there are moments in here that feel like the like like the broad Strokes of an
artist painting their own way and then there were very clear defined lines on this canvas um you know I stepped off the stage with nothing left all the lights were with my head I mean that it doesn't get more specific than that I mean you you know you gave yourself the space to go away and heal and figure out what it is you wanted to say before you came back by saying hey I can't I can't do this right now you I love you I respect everybody you know that I'll be back you've you you've
really filled in with some color here I mean the idea of actually the the concept of Lights themselves this pattern with a crowd in front of it that you see breaking in and out of certain colors and strobes black and light black and light right dark and light dark and light causing anxiety yeah being an actual proper trigger for you in that regard that's what I took from the line and it's very succinct I think on the process of like working through your starting to heal there's certainly like these moments of feeling like you're past
something and then there's moments where it all catches up with you and it feels like you're not past a single thing and it's kind of this cyclical nature where you know something I learned in therapy that's helped me so much is just like not every everything has to have like a endline period solution or endline period reason it's just like it is you know it's acknowledging it and like that was kind of what this song was for me was like these were things that we're were Spin and do spin around my head but it was
kind of just like this is also what it's like to be human you know just to have these things and you just got to try to let them come and let them go I mean yeah sometimes I sit on my own and I say out loud what's what I what's what's causing my stomach to just just to myself just just to put it out there get it out of me it's like there's I don't know I don't there's something like ancestral about it there was something anthemic about those words like why why why it almost
felt like a cry like it felt like a I don't know it just felt powerful and beautiful and like that's why I wanted that to go with isn't that enough because I wanted people to feel the spectrum of of the Sonic space you know within moments and why why why and you know we're not going to pull the lyrics apart but I think were there moments when you were singing it when you knew like okay I I have crossed a new threshold into honesty here or at least selfawareness because of what I'm willing to say
in my music versus before where I may have shrouded it in some kind of illusional imagery th% I think I remember especially with the father line sitting there with uh the guys I wrote with and Eddie Benjamin um he's sitting there and he's kind of like something about being a father something about almost being a father something about almost being a father and I remember kind of subconscious ignoring him cuz I'm like I don't want to go there and then when the moment came where I realized like you know I realized there was two options
for me it was literally like I'm going to go down this path of like speaking my my exact truth or I'm going to like dance around it and it felt pointless to dance around it even if the song was never to see the light of day I was like why are we here dancing around it you know so yeah I felt like I crossed a a big threshold and I think it feels just like really liberating even just to like be in a space where where I've done that as a writer now I feel more
free to do that as a human yeah I I can sense it man I you're in a in a clear space and um that's so good to see I'm I'm going to I'm going to pause here I'm just going to celebrate this music with you and just say thanks for coming back and bringing us these two beautiful songs um what is time what is waiting what what what is any of that anyway you know when the music comes back it all evaporates and you just you just leftt with new music that you love you add
it to your life and it becomes part of your journey man so we're going to take these songs and um say thanks Sean and I can't wait to see you in person man I love you Zay thank you man
