Interview Finn Wolfhard: New Horizons

And yet he is, in many ways, your average young adult - someone who’s simultaneously overflowing with ambition and earnestly sentimental; who’s confident but endearingly conscious of how they’re perceived; who is, by his own admission, still trying themselves on for size. “I find life very fun and very confusing,” he tells us, speaking to DIY via Zoom. “How crazy is it that, all of a sudden, you’re an actual adult that has to be responsible and do things well all the time? You’re shot out of a cannon, and I just think ‘Are we not gonna talk about this?’” he asks, incredulously.

In the apparent absence of anyone else willing to acknowledge the out-and-out weirdness of being thrust into a world you feel utterly unprepared for - just on the basis that someone, somewhere, once set your current age as an arbitrary marker of readiness - Finn has, with his debut solo album, taken on the mantle himself. His first release under his own name, ‘Happy Birthday’ stands as a lo-fi, unambiguous testament to the minefield of coming of age. All intentionally scrappy, ‘90s-imbued slacker rock, it sonically recalls Pavement or Alex G, while thematically, its nine tracks deal in the painful push and pull between yearning for the past and knowing you’ve outgrown it. The passage of time is even embedded in the title itself - on the LP’s eponymous opener, Finn gives voice to a perennial, seemingly universal anxiety: “It’s your birthday / Stop wasting precious time”.

It’s a stark contrast to his day job, too, where scripts, costumes, and sets allow him to neatly step into someone else’s shoes. Given that acting inherently involves subsuming your own identity into a role, does he sometimes find it hard to delineate the boundaries between where Finn ends, and a character begins? “Actually, I haven’t thought about that in that way before,” he muses, “but I’m sure subconsciously that happens a lot. Especially because I started at such a young age too - where usually, at 12 or 13, you’re going through these more normal developmental stages, I was acting and going through changes in a different way.

“It’s funny, I feel like acting lets you express yourself in a way you wouldn’t in your normal life, and it is quite therapeutic. But at the same time, maybe it’s also delaying something, or kind of covering up something that you need to deal with… I think it does sometimes make things harder,” he decides. “I’m a very anxious person, and also someone that asks a lot of questions. I would say this album is a perfect example of me going: ‘these are the questions I’m asking, and the things I lie awake at night looking up at the ceiling and thinking about’. That, to me, is what the album feels like and captures.”

‘Happy Birthday’’s second single and one of its standout tracks, ‘Trailers after dark’ is a prime case in point. Inspired by the steady stream of movie trailers Finn watched, engrossed, as a kid (those for Cloverfield, Spider Man 3, and The Master being particular favourites), it’s transportively nostalgic, evoking a melancholy-tinged longing for childhood comforts like a modern day Proustian rush. “It’s funny, because I’ve talked to people who think that ‘Trailers after dark’ is a ‘love song’ or something,” he grimaces slightly. “And I actually wrote it from the perspective of a mother who used to be really close with their kid and would watch these trailers with them, and then all of a sudden the son or daughter goes away…”.

It is, we suggest, a similar sentiment to ABBA’s unfailing tear-jerker ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ - not necessarily a group you’d expect to have informed a record so untouched by pop sheen, but who, Finn confirms with a grin, he “truly was listening to a ton when writing this album”. As strange a comparison as it is, then, he’s more than happy to be mentioned in the same breath as the Swedish icons; poles apart in most respects, they nevertheless both recognise that growing up necessitates loss.

“Obviously not everyone is like this, but when you’re young - depending on who you are - your mom is the closest person in your life,” he says. “And then [when] you’re an adult and you move out for the first time and stuff, it becomes completely flipped; you have to have your own life. My mom and I are still very close, but it’s just this different kind of relationship [now]. When you first move out, you’re severing this specific relationship that you had with them…” he shrugs, giving a small smile. “That was just an idea that was really eating at me.”

By that metric, then, maybe he would have always found himself at this reflective, philosophical juncture - even if his childhood had been a more traditional one, or if he’d pursued a different career, perhaps these concepts of self-knowledge and belonging would have still preoccupied his adolescent mind all the same. He grins: “That’s a question I think about ALL the time. I would say I’m a pretty happy person naturally, and have a lot of fun in my life. But sometimes I do look at things coming up in the future in a more negative or anxious light.

“With the opportunities I’ve been given since I was a kid, and just my life in general… I’m so lucky to be in the position I’m in, but that’s not the answer to being happy, or being comfortable in your own skin. You can have great support, and accomplishments in your life, and still have [self-doubt]. So yeah, I think I would still be having… I mean, maybe not these specific issues, but still these kinds of issues.”

He pauses, considering how his various creative outlets have helped him navigate said “issues”. “Through all these mediums, I’m trying to chase a certain feeling - whether that’s feeling like I’ve accomplished something, or that I’ve expressed myself fully. With my acting, or music, or writing, I feel like they’re all similar, but that I’m getting something different from each one of them; it’s just the combination that makes me feel a little more whole.”

Heading to Chicago to record ‘Happy Birthday’ with co-producer and Lifeguard frontman Kai Slater - coincidentally, in the same studio he laid down the first Calpurnia album - Finn found the experience to be exactly as egoless as he’d hoped. He grins, his face lighting up at the mention of his collaborator. “Even though it’s a solo record, I made it with a lot of amazing people. I was excited to work with people that were just excited to be there, in the room, and not think about anything else.” A heady mix of wide-eyed enthusiasm and refreshing unselfconsciousness, that low-stakes studio atmosphere is stamped all over the final product, audible in the feedback screech of ‘Crown’ or the ambient kettle whistle of closer ‘Wait’.

“I just wanted it to feel like I made this with my friends in a living room somewhere,” Finn shrugs. “Sometimes my favourite records are [those] where you can feel the songwriter through the songs - you can feel them through all the flaws, and the sounds of the background noise, or the flub on the bass take, or whatever it is. That was sort of my way of breaking down any mystique around who I’m seen as: less as an actor, and more just as a person.”

This, really, is the crux of ‘Happy Birthday’: navigating the transition from boy to man is tricky at the best of times, let alone when you’re doing so with the world watching. And, as the series that has defined his life thus far finally reaches its conclusion, Finn is more than ready to revise public perception about who he is, and what he can do. “Ending the show that I’ve been on for my entire childhood, and coming out the other side of it with everything in my life still intact, after going through such a crazy rollercoaster ride…,” he trails off, then tries again. “That just really changed the course of my life, and to be really proud of the work we did with Stranger Things and now have what sort of feels like a rebirth….”

Another pause. “When you’re on the same show for years, it just feels like that’s all you’re gonna do for the rest of your life. Because I’ve been on that show for so long, you get complacent with this comfortability; as an actor, you learn so much every time you do it, and there’s still so much I feel I have to prove to people. When you’re just starting out as someone who wants to make stuff - or even just as a person in the world - I feel like it’s necessary to prove that you can do what you want to do. I think in a lot of ways, I did that with the show, but now I’m kind of chasing that with other things - and music is a big part of that.”

Honest and unpretentious, ‘Happy Birthday’ is an insight into Finn Wolfhard the person - not the actor, director, or even performer. “There are times where I totally just wanna disappear from the public eye,” he admits, “and that’s fair for anyone to think. But when I’m making music, it makes me feel anonymous in a lot of ways. Even though I am releasing [this record] under my own name, when I’m actually writing it, I have this personal relationship with music that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being watched or scrutinized.” He laughs, nodding with the experience of someone all too acquainted with the sensation. “That’s for when the actual album comes out!”

‘Happy Birthday’ is out now via AWAL.

Tags: Features, Interviews, Finn Wolfhard, June 2025