Sean Nicholas Savage frequently blurs the line between diarist and dramatist, but on his latest tour-de-force, The Knowing, he delivers something dazzling in its simplicity and startling in its daring. The Canadian singer, long a cult figure for his prolific output and theatrical stage presence, returns with a collection steeped in sincerity yet staged with pop’s playful artifice.
With “I Love Everything About You,” Savage drapes his voice across soft synth hues and buoyant rhythms, conjuring a long-lost optimism from mid-to-late ’80s radio without slipping into parody. Echoes of Erasure’s fragile grandeur linger, alongside the earnest lift of a theme song ushering in a Friday night sitcom. The unabashed sweetness of Cyndi Lauper or Nik Kershaw shimmers through, and – dare we say – it even brushes against the exuberance of New Kids on the Block. What makes the song radiant, though, is not the lineage of its references but the Earnest way Savage inhabits them, his vocal delivery both conversational and trembling with feeling.
I Love Everything About You is a study in language itself: a playful riddle of repetitions where every phrase circles back to the word know. It’s wordplay as devotion, turning linguistic excess into intimacy. (Trust me, if this guy loves your lousiest photos just because you’re in them, he’s a keeper!)
This openness extends to the visuals. The tender video by Johnny Dynamite reveals the core of the album: an ode to devotion stripped of irony. Watching him wander the shoreline, enumerating small joys, feels almost radical in its clarity. In a world smothered with suspicion and sarcasm, Savage insists on affection without disguise. The artwork, a collaboration with Lulannie, was improvised en route to a New Year’s Eve party, but the candid shots carry the same tone as the music: spontaneous, intimate, carefully unguarded. It’s a gesture of making beauty from the everyday, transforming the walk to a celebration into part of the record’s mythology.
Savage, despite his name, does not shrink from love songs in their most unabashed form. Instead, he leans into their excess and finds renewal in their transparency. Pop here is neither ironic nor naïve; it is philosophical theater, a way of grasping meaning through melody. Savage delivers a song that reminds us that desire and tenderness are inseparable.
Watch the video for “I Love Everything About You” below:
In the spring of 2024, Sean Nicholas Savage recorded the first version of The Knowing in Edmonton, Canada. He returned to the basement where he once pressed his ear against a silent needle to hear records in secret, the speakers muted so the rest of the house could sleep.
For this new chapter, Savage invited others into his orbit. There’s a tender duet with Marci, a handful of tracks colored by Belgian songwriter David Numwami’s guitar, and a co-written moment with JJ Weihl (better known as Discovery Zone) on Pink Bouquet.
The record also marks a series of departures. For the first time, Savage steps outside the Montreal imprint Arbutus Records, long his home alongside artists like Marci and Das Beat. Instead, The Knowing arrives through a transatlantic partnership between Philadelphia’s Born Losers Records and Berlin’s Mansions & Millions.
This album is Savage’s strongest collection of ballads yet: songs steeped in boyband-era yearning, cinematic in scope, and threaded with a renewed embrace of beats and duets. These are compositions that sound like memories unfolding in real time, both fragile and sweeping.
“What is The Knowing about?” he asks. “I tell you that I don’t know in the song. That’s almost all that I say, is that I don’t know. Do you believe in spells? There’s a lot of tomfoolery going on with that song, a lot of tomfuckery..”
With that mischievous wink, Savage pulls apart certainty itself, leaving listeners with a record that feels like both a question and an answer.
The Knowing is out now via Born Losers Records and Mansions & Millions. Listen to I Love Everything About You below and order the album here. You can also order The Knowing on vinyl here.
With tours lined up across the US and Europe, Savage stands ready to bring this luminous intimacy into rooms full of strangers: inviting them, with a smile, to know. Get tickets here.
Europe:
- 2025-09-18 | Glasgow, UK | Flying Duck
- 2025-09-19 | Manchester, UK | YES Basement
- 2025-09-20 | London, UK | Club Cheek
- 2025-09-21 | Margate, UK | Where Else?
- 2025-09-23 | Copenhagen, DK | Rust
- 2025-09-24 | Stockholm, SE | Hus 7
- 2025-09-26 | Tallinn, ES | Paavli Kulturfabrik
- 2025-09-27 | Riga, LV | Laska V21
- 2025-09-28 | Vilnius, LT | Mello
- 2025-09-30 | Warsaw, PL | Chmury
- 2025-10-01 | Krakow, PL | Klub RE
- 2025-10-02 | Gdansk, PL | KOT
- 2025-10-03 | Berlin, DE | 186 Studio
- 2025-10-04 | Rotterdam, NL | de Doelen
- 2025-10-05 | Hamburg, DE | Nachtasyl
- 2025-10-06 | Leipzig, DE | Moritzbastei
- 2025-10-07 | Cologne, DE | PAFF Bar
- 2025-10-08 | Paris, FR | Badaboum
- 2025-10-09 | Lausanne, CH | La-Breche
North America:
- 2025-10-22 | Minneapolis, MN | Underground Music Venue
- 2025-10-23 | Chicago, IL | Empty Bottle
- 2025-10-24 | Detroit, MI | Marble Bar
- 2025-10-25 | Toronto, ON | Baby G
- 2025-10-26 | Montreal, QC | Toscadura
- 2025-10-29 | Boston, MA | Warehouse XI
- 2025-10-30 | New York, NY | Night Club 101
- 2025-10-31 | Philadelphia, PA | Silk City
- 2025-11-02 | Atlanta, GA | The Masquerade (Altar)
- 2025-11-05 | Los Angeles, CA | El Cid
- 2025-11-06 | San Diego, CA | Soda Bar
- 2025-11-07 | San Marcos, MX | Bloodlust Winebar
- 2025-11-08 | San Francisco, CA | 4 Star Theatre
- 2025-11-13 | Seattle, WA | Hear-After
- 2025-11-15 | Portland, OR| Holocene
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