Artist Spotlight: Meet Tommy Hynes
What was the creative process like for this particular single?
"Why Am I" started as a quiet question I couldn’t shake… one of those 3am whispers that won't let you go. I wrote it with just a voice and a guitar at first, but it quickly asked for more space, more texture. The process was layered: musically simple in some ways, but emotionally complex. It wanted to be both raw and cinematic… intimate but pulsing with tension. A mirror held up in low light.
Were there any challenges or breakthrough moments during the songwriting process for "Why Am I?"
The hardest part was holding my nerve and not over-explaining, not trying to fix the discomfort in the lyric. There’s a temptation to resolve things neatly, but this song lives in the unresolved. The breakthrough came when I let the chorus repeat like a question that never gets answered. That’s when it clicked that it wasn’t about clarity, it was about honesty.
What was your favorite moment in making the music video?
I didn’t really know the “rules” for making a music video, so it was just me, a few cameras, and a lot of misguided instinct. There wasn’t a plan, just this urge to compile imagery that felt like it belonged to the song… fragments, moods, moments that echoed the emotional tone. In the end, it became this loose, instinctive collage. And somehow, the lack of structure gave it space to breathe. That freedom ended up being the most satisfying part.
How did you get started in music, and what inspired you to become a singer-songwriter?
Music always felt like home. I started performing quite young, mostly because I had things I didn’t know how to say any other way. Songwriting became a kind of translation… taking feeling and memory and turning it into something people could hold. I was inspired by artists who weren’t afraid to be raw… who used music like a spell. That’s still the kind of work I want to make.
What’s next for you creatively?
I’m finishing a film score right now, a horror called Ding. Dong. Die! … so there’s plenty of tension and blood and strange joy in that. But I’m also quietly building some new tracks… they feel a bit mythic, messy, and a bit dangerous. Sitting on the edge of the personal and the universal… but there’s this little voice in the back of my head whispering, “Go wilder.” I might listen to her.
