Exclusive Premiere: FINMAR Shares Inspiration Behind Music Video For Heartfelt Love Song, ‘If It Weren’t For You’

When the world shut down in 2020, several individuals took a step back to wait out the storm. Meanwhile, Thomas Finchum and Alex Marshall found the silver lining within the global shutdown and channeled their inner creativity into branding themselves as FINMAR. 

After Finchum concluded his Olympic career as a USA diver, he packed his bags and headed straight to Nashville to pursue his career in music – this was when he joined forces with the founding member of The CAB, Alex Marshall.

“I moved to Nashville about four years ago, and Thomas has been here for almost ten years. My first two weeks in town, I got to put together to write with Thomas, and now we ended up writing a ton of songs together over the past three years,” says Finchum in an exclusive Country Now interview. “We would be hanging out at night, get inspired, and would start writing. The songs just kept coming out that didn’t sound like anything else in the country music space…we knew it was something special. Then COVID happened, and we kind of formed FINMAR, and that’s when it all started,” he adds.

The breakthrough duo keeps the positive momentum up, as they often turn to their unique upbringing to pull inspiration to carefully create their beat and lyric-driven anthems. At a very young age, Marshall’s DJ father introduced the Las Vegas native to funk music.  

Now, to intertwine the melodic pop tenancies into his own music, he listens to Prince, Justin Timberlake, and the legendary band Earth, Wind & Fire. However, Finchum brings the honky-tonk flair into the group, as he admires the well-respect songwriters that consume music city and appreciate the old-world storytelling of nineties country.

“Over this pandemic, we have been able to build this brand. We have been able to put songs out. We have been able to put videos out. We kind of been able to engage in a very unique way,” Marshall told Country Now reporter Tiffany Goldstein about their rise to fame. “Now that we have all of that, it’s taking it out there and getting to see real-time reactions and getting out there to interact with people. It’s just kind of what we have been putting in the work for.”

Once the world gave the budding musicians the green light, they put their strategic plan into action and flew in couples across the United States and Canada to partake in their most raw music video to date for the latest love ballad, “If It Weren’t For You.”

To capture a genuine and real reaction, FINMAR gave the eager couples little to no information before they rolled the tapes. “This was a project that we had a clear vision. We flew seven couples from all over the United States and Canada. We were like, ‘we’re not going to tell you what the video is, we don’t want to talk about it…but you just have to trust us,” they shared.

The seven couples did precisely that and arrived on set expecting the unexpected. “We wanted to capture that raw, real emotion of these couples,” says FINMAR about the couples listening to the song for the very first time. “I think that the way we did it is so evident when you watch the video. I cried ten times during the shoot because it was so real, these couples, my parents were in the video and just seeing them talk about my family and me…it was just crazy,” revealed Finchum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The rising music group opened up about the songwriting process for “If It Weren’t For You” and shared that they found it interesting how their fans found themselves in their lyrics in several different ways. “It’s interesting when you write a song because you see it from your perspective of how you wrote it, but seeing how these couples at all different stages in their lives and relationships. So, to see that unfold on camera was so moving.” 

FINMAR hopes that their fans understand that the love that was captured in their highly anticipated video is as authentic as it gets and that they wrote the recently released hit from a real place. In fact, when they were shooting the clip ­– they decided to remove themselves and their significant others because they thought the unconditional love that beams through the screen told the story. 

“When you watch the video, you get a sense of awkwardness, but in the awkwardness, these people found common ground in this intimacy, and it was really special. Everybody disappeared on this set,” they shared about the monumental moment. 

While FINMAR continues to share the strangers turned friend’s love stories, they are busy at work writing and producing new content. Marshall recently revealed that a record is in the pipeline and is set to drop by the end of the year. In the meantime, their loyal fan should keep a close eye on their social media, as a collaboration with a female artist is just around the corner, and they are looking to pencil in dates for live performances.