FARCRY: A Coming Of Age At Seventeen

FARCRY follows the character of “the birthday boy”, a teenager navigating the strange and overwhelming world of adolescence. Written and produced throughout the year I was seventeen, the album documents a period of stepping back and analysing the world unfolding around me, eventually becoming a story about what it feels like to experience being a teenager from the inside.

Through the birthday boy, the album moves through the stereotypical experiences of adolescence: first loves, awkward encounters, friendship, loneliness, insecurity, parties, growing pains, and the constant feeling that you’re supposed to know who you are before you’ve even had the chance to figure it out. Ordinary teenage experiences become exaggerated into something much bigger, where a breakup can feel like the end of the world, a crush can feel like destiny, and an awkward moment can feel completely catastrophic.

The birthday boy sees everything through this heightened emotional lens. The album explores that strange period of life where nothing is necessarily happening on a global scale, yet everything feels like it matters more than anything ever has. It captures the humour, confusion, excitement and melancholy of growing up, while sitting in the uncomfortable space between childhood and adulthood.

Rather than looking back on adolescence with hindsight, FARCRY was created while I was still living through it. The birthday boy is a character, but he is also a reflection of who I was at seventeen, allowing the album to blur the line between fiction and autobiography.

Ultimately, FARCRY is a coming of age story about the little things that feel enormous when you’re young, and the feeling of living through a world where every teenage experience somehow feels like the end of the world.

      The Story Of The Birthday Boy

The Birthday Boy is the central character of Farcry.

He is thrown onto a stage with no script, no rehearsal and no idea how long the performance is supposed to last. Around him sits an audience, watching everything he does. They laugh, they judge, they heckle. Sometimes their voices are loud enough to drown out his own.

This is the story of growing up.

At the beginning, the Birthday Boy is still trying to work out who he is. In Castle Keep, he learns to wear a mask, changing himself to fit the expectations of the people around him. He becomes whatever he thinks will make the audience accept him, even when it means hiding the person underneath.

As the performance continues, the audience becomes impossible to ignore.

He watches other people move further ahead of him, their successes projected across the biggest screens. In Death Of A Traveller, he begins to question whether he has achieved enough, whether his life means anything when compared to everyone above him. But somewhere beneath that feeling is the beginning of a realisation: simply being here is something worth celebrating.

At school, he watches the popular groups from the sidelines. He wants desperately to step into their spotlight, to finally be noticed, but Can’t Laugh forces him to confront the parts of himself he wishes he could change. The spotlight he dreams about might not be everything he imagined.

Then comes Crush.

For a moment, the stage changes. The audience disappears. Everything becomes cinematic. He experiences the rush of wanting someone so intensely that the world seems to revolve around them. Love becomes something distant and beautiful, something he can reach for even if he cannot quite hold it.

But the darkness returns.

Never Goes Away is the feeling he cannot escape. During this act of the story, he turns Eighteen. The feeling follows him through the corridors, through the celebrations, through the moments when he is supposed to be happy. He tries to outrun it, but it remains somewhere behind him, waiting.

He grows older and begins to understand that the stage is not only school.

In The Heist, he finds himself underestimated in the working world, surrounded by people who see his age before they see his potential. Once again, he looks towards somewhere beyond the stage he has been given, convinced that he belongs somewhere bigger.

Then the audience turns its attention towards his body.

Up is the sound of every careless comment becoming something permanent. Words that might mean nothing to the person saying them become impossible for him to forget. He begins to see himself through the eyes of the audience, and the stage becomes a place where every insecurity is exposed.

Still, he keeps performing.

And throughout everything, there is one thing he wants more than anything.

His person.

In My Person, he watches everyone around him find the love he has been waiting for. Couples pass him by while he wonders whether there is someone somewhere who will eventually choose him. He feels left behind, but for the first time, he doesn’t feel completely defeated.

Because somewhere along the way, the stage has changed him.

The audience is still there. The heckling has not disappeared. The insecurities, the loneliness, the uncertainty and the darkness have all been real. But so has everything else. The laughter. The excitement. The love. The dreams. The moments where he kept going when he wanted to disappear.

The Birthday Boy finally understands that surviving the stage has made him stronger.

He looks back at the seventeen year old boy who first walked onto it and realises that he has endured more than he ever thought he could.

And maybe the stage was never meant to be forever.

One day, the performance will end.

The audience will go home.

The lights will come down.

And he will step off the stage.

He doesn’t know exactly what waits for him beyond it. But for the first time, he isn’t afraid.

Because if he could survive this part of his life, maybe the world waiting on the other side won’t be so bad.

Maybe growing up was never about becoming someone else.

Maybe it was about finally becoming himself.