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Hold Steady Think Positive

November 25, 2008 4:00 PM

Check out a new clip from the Hold Steady, the title track from their awesome '08 disc, Stay Positive.

Back in July, when the record came out, we had a beer with Steady singer Craig Finn at the Pencil Factory in Brooklyn. He explained how "Stay Positive" came to be.

"I'm always surprised when people ask me for my autograph," he said. "But people do. And for the last few years, when I've signed my autograph, I was also writing 'stay positive.'"

Guitarist Tad Kubler came up with the riff last summer, and passed along a tape of it to Finn at a July '07 tour stop in Manchester, England. "It sounded like a hardcore song -- I was really into '80s hardcore," said Finn, who calls out a couple of his favorite bands, Youth of Today and 7 Seconds, in the lyrics. The music invoked the positive ethos that sprung out of the hardcore scene.

"The record ended up being a lot about holding on to youthful ideals in the face of aging, becoming an adult and having more real-life problems," said Finn. "'Stay Positive' is more about me, more personal that most of the songs I've written."