Radical Optimism

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• Indonesian Translation
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• Spanish Translation*
• Turkish Translation*

It’s taken a complete turn as I’ve carried on working, and I really feel now that it’s starting to sound cohesive. So I’m going to keep writing in the early months of the new year and see where that takes me. The album is different — it’s still pop but it’s different sonically, and there’s more of a lyrical theme. If I told you the title, everything would make sense — but I think we’ll just have to wait.

—via Variety

“[Releasing the album] feels good. It feels for lack of a better word — radically optimistic. Throughout the whole record, there’s this idea of chaos happening around and me trying to push through it in a way that feels authentic and honest to me.

–via Billboard (March 19, 2024)

I think after spending so much time on the road—and I think so much of my whole career was based on doing so many live shows and touring non-stop—that I always, after an album’s out, I end up falling in love so much more with the live element of the songs and how they develop to the studio version. So my goal for this album as a whole was to really have the music be really organic as much as you have electronic elements to it. There’s a real musicality and a lot of live instruments, and I just wanted to capture the essence of us essentially working as a band.

—via Rolling Stone UK

Apple Music features an animated artwork for this release.

I think my job has given me the opportunity in so many amazing ways to, I guess, grow up before my time, feel things completely differently, experience the world in a different way. And so I feel like emotional maturity has also come from the situations that I’ve been thrown in, so in that sense perspective is kind of gifted to you because you see things from so many different people’s points of view. And by writing songs for a living, I think about emotions and feelings and thoughts so
much. How does this make me feel? How will this make someone else feel when they hear it? What is the energy and the emotion and the thing that I’m like trying to convey at this point in my life? And I think by writing these songs, it’s a form of therapy for me. And I get emotional maturity and perspective from all those things that allow me to grow and move on, which I’m just I’m so grateful for. It’s just such a vulnerable thing to do, write your thoughts down into melody and then have it be consumed by other people.

—via The Zane Lowe Show

When I was writing Future Nostalgia, whatever I wrote that day in the studio then that was it, that was like the end of the song. You know, maybe like a couple lyric tweaks here and there, but it was. That was the demo that I would then go and record and finish, whereas with Radical Optimism every single song that’s on the album I’ve gone back in. And I’ve rewritten it and changed it and my perspective has changed and my story has changed. And the way that I saw different scenarios or different things that had happened in my life shifted.

—via The Zane Lowe Show

We were all here [in the studio] and it all starts with a conversation. It’s like you come into the room, you’re hanging out with your friends and you’re just having a tell all. You know there were absolutely no holdbacks. They knew all my secrets. They knew everything that was happening. Not that they were secrets, they were just things that I was feeling at the time, and it’s that closeness, that freedom, that idea of like “No, there is no judgment”. I think the beautiful thing about the right relationships and friendships is the fact that you can really be yourself. And I could really be myself in front of Tobias, Kevin, Danny and Caroline. And everyone’s so different but the fact that everyone felt free to just be themselves is what I think created such a beautiful energy in the room.

—via The Zane Lowe Show

It always starts with like a cup of tea. We sit, we chat for like an hour, an hour and a half. However, it really depends on the day like how we’re feeling. It starts with the conversation and then Danny or Kevin would start either on the synth or drums or they would start making a track. Me, Caroline and Tobias would start fleshing out the idea and we would write down words. We would mood-board and it would just go into like melody, into words, into writing. Then we’d be like ‘All right, we’re starting to get a story’ and we just go from there.

—via Zach Sang Show