From Seattle, an inside look at the making of keanu.’s third album blush., and why it was almost never released at all.

TO HEAR KEANU. tell it now, blush., the third album from the Seattle-based musician, was almost never released.

Just a few weeks after keanu. finished mixing and mastering the album with collaborators evito and riensu, his laptop crashed, and took all the music files with it. The fact that his music might be entirely gone was devastating for the musician to consider. keanu. had spent over a year recording the album with his executive producer, Javi Wu. The pair held daily songwriting sessions, fine-tuning an R&B soundscape that was reminiscent of early Brockhampton records.

“Not every song is meant to be released,” he told me in our first interview. “We do it because we love the process. Sometimes I’ll go in with a goal, like making a cheesy 2000s pop song, or an R&B track. It’s about experimenting and staying creative.”

And while blush. is keanu.’s third album, it also functions as a reintroduction to the singer-songwriter, one that showcases a confident new artistry that the singer had found while working with Wu. However, before that artistic vision could reach listeners, the music was nearly lost. This interview, which was going to be published last fall, was postponed indefinitely while keanu. worked to get the files back. For a while, he considered scrapping the album entirely and releasing singles instead.

Then, keanu. lucked out. A few weeks ago, he DM’d me: “I BARELY GOT MY FILES RECOVERED.” Rather than relying on someone else, keanu. mixed and mastered the album himself to save time and to release the album as quickly as possible. “But I was still barely able to recover my files,” he added. The files were partially damaged, so opening just one file would take a long time. “But thank goodness I was able to even recover anything," he said.

The important thing was blush. was finally going to be released.

THE STORY OF BLUSH. begins when keanu. met Wu. “Before him, I’d never worked one-on-one with someone to build a sound around me,” he said. “I’d just get sent beats. Working that closely changed everything—it made me addicted to making music every day.”

Wu was committed to building something special with keanu. He saw a vision in the singer’s work and what they could create together, even if it took keanu time to warm to the idea. At first, I was hesitant because I was used to working alone, recording from home. But opening up to that collaboration completely changed how I see music.”

But the pair started to find a rhythm once they created “loverboy”, the album’s lead single and centerpiece. “It felt like an end-credits song,” he said. “It’s melancholy but not sad. That’s when I knew we should build around it.”

For keanu., who is a member of the popular boy band WEST OF EDEN, blush. gave him the opportunity to find his musical sound. Reflecting on this experimentation, he shared, “I bounce around a lot. I’m always debating whether I should hone in on one sound or just let myself explore,” he said. “I still struggle with that because I love so many different things and I want to be ambitious with my sound.”

keanu was still finding his footing when he joined WOE nearly four years ago. “I had just graduated from college, and even though I’d always wanted to sing, I was scared to show anything,” he remembered. keanu.’s main points of reference as a musician were Brockhampton and Bearface. “I used to tell people I sounded like him,” he said, “but I had nothing to prove it.”

Almost on a whim, he made a video titled "How to Bearface" and posted it on YouTube. To his surprise, the video did pretty well. “After that, I started posting a lot of really sad demos because I was in a bad place emotionally,” he said. “I was uploading ballads every week and slowly built a following on YouTube.”

While he learned music from his dad and his brother played around in bands throughout high school, keanu. is the only person in his family to pursue music professionally. By the time he began releasing music on YouTube, the focus was on “releasing pent-up emotions. I needed an outlet,” he explained. “I’d played baseball my whole life, but I stopped enjoying it, and it wasn’t giving me anything anymore. Music became the thing that let me get everything out.”

keanu. liked that he could write whatever he was feeling, put it into a song, and then release it on YouTube; views be damned. “There were no rules,” he added.

But keanu. didn’t release music officially until he met jun.e, slone, and riensu and joined WEST OF EDEN. The group is mammoth in size, covering over 17 members, including a music manager, graphic designers, producers, photographers, and videographers. Since the release of their first single, "butterfly" in 2023, the group has done remarkably well, building a solid fanbase and impressive streaming numbers with every release.

Being a solo artist, keanu. said, is “impossible to do alone.” He pointed to Wu’s influence on the record and the WOE crew as factors in how he’s grown as a musician. “I don’t think I’d be making solo music at all if it weren’t for everyone in the group. They built my confidence a lot. I never would have imagined doing something like this, especially at this scale, on my own.”

The constant movement between WEST OF EDEN and solo music has been positive, too. “I love staying busy,” he said. “I get lost when I have nothing to do.”

All of this makes keanu. proud of his artistic growth when he looks back on the YouTube era. “Honestly, I hear growth. Sometimes I even miss that era because it was so raw emotionally. Now I work really fast and get frustrated if I don’t finish a song in a day. Going back to those demos reminds me to slow down sometimes,” he said. Then laughed, “The only thing I cringe at is the mixing—I had no idea what I was doing.”

KEANU. WROTE FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE when creating blush. The story centers around a significant relationship in his past that fell apart. “That’s why the album starts in a happier place and gradually moves toward something more tragic. That narrative is very true to how I felt at the time,” he explained.

Letting go of the relationship was hard, so keanu. turned to music to express himself again, just like in the YouTube era. Only this time, he wanted the album to sound structured, as if it had an arc to its storytelling. “The album became a way to finally release those feelings—sadness, anger, everything,” he added. “I feel like I was able to say everything I wanted to, in the way I wanted to.”

Choosing the singles was a challenge. The music was too personal for keanu. to decide what to release first. “That’s where everyone else comes in. I didn’t want to choose singles on my own. I feel like listeners should have a say. We had multiple meetings, and the rollout changed every time.”

Eventually, they landed on “loverboy” – but keanu. Laughed, “It was very ‘WEST OF EDEN’ to choose something so last-minute.”

When I asked if this album is close to the first chapter of his time as an artist, he grew reflective. “I think so—though who knows what I’ll write about next. I’m very emotional, so I could feel totally different a year from now,” he said.

“But everything I did before blush. kind of led here. One thing I really lacked before was a clear identity in my music. I was ambitious with my sound and all over the place. I even made a plug-and-B mixtape at one point and thought, ‘What am I doing?’”

keanu. paused as he thought back to the feelings of how lost he once felt.

“Artistically, this feels like maturity. It’s the first time I’m really happy with what I made,” he said after a moment. “It feels like closure for the beginning stages and the start of something new.

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