Steven Page made a record alone in Syracuse. That sentence alone could’ve been the press release, but instead he’s gone and built Excelsior—a lush, orchestral, grief-struck, cosmic meditation… mostly on his laptop. “It’s terrifying,” he says. “There’s no one to tell you, ‘No, no, that’s not how you play that.’” So he played it all himself. And made what might be his best solo album yet.
The former Barenaked Ladies frontman didn’t intend to become the poster child for pandemic-era livestreams, but his 94-episode Live From Home series, complete with original theme songs and stock-footage videos, basically turned into a one-man SNL for sad, locked-down adults. “I’d write a one-minute pop song to sum up the week,” he says, “and make a stupid video for it. I’d never edited video before in my life.”
That’s where Excelsior started to stall—under the weight of a thousand small projects and a plague-induced fog. But eventually, Page turned to the 30 unfinished songs lurking in his hard drive and made a decision: finish the damn record. “You’re the band, Steve,” he told himself. “And maybe nobody’s paying attention, which is why you can finally do this.”
The record is divided into three acts—kind of. “Some people think it’s all one narrative, and I love that,” Page says. “I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong.” But behind it all is the arc of grief, isolation, and the creeping feeling that technology might be both the balm and the poison. “Are we using tech to meet human needs, or replacing humans entirely?” he asks. “We’re walling ourselves off, but sometimes you find connection you can’t help. And maybe that’s something to give us hope.”
The songs are full of characters that walk a fine line between melancholy and creepy—his specialty, going all the way back to “The Old Apartment.” When we bring that up, he grins: “Yeah, if that was base-level creepiness, ‘Human Doll’ is the upgrade.”
There’s also a surprising dose of science and cosmology running through the lyrics—references to light-years, stars, and cosmic scale—but don’t expect him to go full Neil deGrasse Tyson. “Nobody cares what you know,” Page says. “They care what you feel.” He says he rewrote more lyrics on this album than ever before, often scrapping clever explanations for something that would simply feel better to sing.
And if all of that weren’t enough, Page is currently working on Vanity Project 2 with his teenage songwriting hero Stephen Duffy. This time, Duffy’s producing, calling the shots, and telling Page to stop overproducing. “So it’ll probably sound a little more like The Lilac Time,” he shrugs.
He’s also still touring—cheaply. Three people in a van. Carrying their own gear. Buying a keyboard in Minneapolis because it was cheaper than renting one. “And then I auctioned it off at the end of the tour,” he says. “It paid for itself.”
He’s joking, mostly. But he’s also serious about how hard it is to make a living as a working musician in 2025. “There are more professional musicians in Canada than hockey players,” he says. “It’s still possible to make a living. Just maybe not on a yacht.”
As for the live-from-home concerts, he’s still doing them. Still writing. Still dreaming up songs that might end up in Deadpool 3—if Ryan Reynolds ever texts him back. “I’d never ask for that,” Page deadpans, staring into the Zoom camera. “Just a sync license. That’s all.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
