Unfinished Business

Album: The Roosevelt Sessions (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • Fun Lovin' Criminals are really into mob movies and often borrow their plot lines for their songs. "Unfinished Business" pulls from the 1997 movie Donnie Brasco, based on the real-life story of an undercover agent who infiltrates the Bonanno crime family. The film stars Johnny Depp and Al Pacino.
  • This is part of a 4-song EP called The Roosevelt Sessions, the first Fun Lovin' Criminals release since their original lead singer, Huey Morgan, left the band. Brian "Fast" Leiser, the multi-instrumentalist who founded the band with Morgan back in 1993, took over on vocals, with Naim Cortazzi joining on guitar (drummer Frank Benbini rounds out the lineup). Much of the song deals with this transition.

    In a Songfacts interview with Leiser, he said: "One of the things we always admired about Huey with his lyric writing was telling these stories, which is harder to do when you don't live in New York anymore. But we have a whole wealth of experience growing up and living in the '80s and '90s in New York, which were two great decades to live in and around New York City.

    'Unfinished Business' was one where it was like, alright, we need to put something out. We can't let people think, what is going on with the band? We want to get music out as soon as possible. We want to go perform it for people everywhere we can. That's a bit easier to do now, with all respect to Huey for quitting the band. Frank and I, we just want to write and record music.

    So that song being the first one on the EP, was asking, what is it we love about our band? It's telling these stories. The first part of it is the story about Donnie Brasco, really. It's about being true to yourself and not taking any cheap shortcuts that will end up screwing someone over. Being genuine is something this band has always done, and 'Unfinished Business' relates to how we've still got a lot to offer the fans of the band."

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