Actor Ben Barnes is finally taking the plunge into releasing original music, and his long-time followers couldn’t be more excited. Barnes is known for starring in HBO’s Westworld, Marvel Studios’ The Punisher and Netflix’s Shadow and Bone. This week, he announced that his debut as a singer-songwriter, Songs For You, will be released on Oct. 15.
Songs For You is a five-song EP coming via Label Logic, distributed by Ingrooves, according to a press release published on Monday. The first single, “11:11,” is now available for pre-order and pre-save on most major digital music outlets, and Barnes released a teaser for the EP on his YouTube channel. Overall, Barnes and his publicists struggle to contain the announcement in one genre of music, but his work definitely has a nostalgic soul-pop bent to it.
“I’m fascinated in acting by the duality of people, and that we all have the capacity to feel everything and more than one emotion at a time,” Barnes explained in the press release. “I feel that way too about my songs. Even if they seem to be about one thing, I’m interested in conflicting emotion and transitional feelings… the in-between. ’11:11′ is about real love; the kind of love where you would give up all your wishes for the one you love to feel whole… even if it costs you, even if they can’t ‘be yours.'”
Barnes added that these songs all stem from “poetry written for a loved one or just for myself, a long-forgotten phrase I jotted down in a notebook years ago, inspired by a photograph, a moment, a quotation, or in the case of one song, a story I read about a female pirate!” The EP is produced by John Alagia and Jesse Seibenberg.
For some, the news that Barnes is a musician may come as a surprise, but his social media followers have been encouraging him to release something like this for quite a while now. Barnes has been entertaining fans in live streams from his piano bench throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and hopefully, that audience will turn out for his big streaming debut as well.
Barnes is a British actor known for some major blockbuster roles, going back at least to The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian where he played Caspian. He was also a fan-favorite on Westworld where he played Logan Delos, and on The Punisher where he played Billy Russo. Earlier this year he played the villainous “Darkling” General Kirigan on Shadow and Bone, which is currently in production on a second season.
There is no word on when that show is coming out, but by the time it does Barnes may be a household name for a whole new reason. Songs For You will be available on music streaming services on Oct. 15.