Finn Dynasty on his expressively nostalgic RnB hit ‘Tamed’

‘Tamed’ is a song about defiance, confrontation, stubbornness’, whatever they choose to call the act of having a back bone.

It’s an upbeat nostalgic expression of RnB inspired by the Rocky training montages and Bobby Brown’s My Prerogative.

I was always stubborn and defensive as a child. It’s no mystery where I got it from because my whole family are hard heads. Two younger sisters and my mum, everyone of us continuing to defy what is expected of us.

As I grew I learnt that I was a lot more capable of confrontation than others around me which is not the best trait for a 12 year old boy trying to make friends in small town Celbridge.

To ‘fit in’, back when I didn’t know how anything worked, I toned down my personality and I let myself become a wall flower.

Imagine. I knew the great things that were ahead of me and for so long I was too scared to take it.

I let people disrespect me, I let things slide and worst of all, I let myself walk away from the path God lay out for me. For years I let them tame me.

Last year, after dragging myself through life trying to figure out what I was so afraid of, a series of events happening in the space of a few months that led me to the lowest point I’d ever felt in my life.

Here’s the thing. I told you who I was and who I was raised by and if there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s fight.

‘Tamed’ was born from the emotional rush that came when I had my back against the wall and I had to fight against all odds in front of me to pull myself out. My Rocky training montage.

ProdRalph produced the music, which was my first time working with one of his instrumentals.

I chose to freestyle first and find melodies that could express the anger and determination I was feeling. Everything just flowed. I replayed the instrumental and ended up freestyling over it 5 times before I sat down to make sense of everything.

My writing process for this song and the majority of my music is usually 50/50 writing and free styling.

Although at 14 I was already very familiar with afrobeats, it was indie rock and rnb that made me pick up a guitar and pen long before rap or hiphop. After years of listening to melodramatic musicians croon the same lines a million different ways I’ve found that the broad strokes are in the writing, the detail is in the melody.

When I began to write I really wanted everyone who listened to feel what I was feeling regardless of their specific situation.

To me it’s about the moment I decided to stop moving like I was domesticated and let my instincts carry me. To you it can be the soundtrack to your fight, the moment you turn your life around or just the song you get ready to in the morning because it makes you feel like you can take on the day.

Ever since I became “un-tamed”, I’ve gotten to perform at electric picnic, three Ireland city stages, multiple shows in my city and now I’m doing an interview for Void Magazine, all of this was a dream a few years ago.

So if there’s anything you take away from a song about defiance that I wrote and mixed in my bedroom , let it be that anything is possible and the impossible usually tends to happen when it’s the only option left.