Twenty Years of Foiled – And I’m Still Pinching Myself

Twenty years ago today, Foiled came out into the world. April 4, 2006. I don’t even know where to start.

I was living alone in Los Angeles. I was a mess, honestly. But I had a notebook and I had a guitar and I had more feelings than I knew what to do with – and I just started writing. No plan. No direction. Just me in a room, finally saying the things I had been too scared to say out loud my whole life. That’s what Foiled is. It’s a confession. It’s a love letter. It’s a breakdown and a breakthrough all wrapped up in thirteen songs.

And it almost had a completely different name – twice. We were going to call it Beyond the Sadness. Then Living Just to Watch It All Go By, which is a lyric from the hidden track “It’s Just Me.” Neither one stuck. After what felt like endless delays, my dad – Dan Furstenfeld – finally looked at us and basically said, 'You guys have been foiled again.' And that was it. Foiled. He wasn’t wrong. The thing nearly didn’t make it out the door. But it did. And nothing was ever the same after that.

I remember when “Hate Me” started getting played on the radio. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking – are they even allowed to play something like this? It was so personal. So brutally honest. That song came out of one of the darkest periods of my life and somehow it ended up on VH1 and people were singing it back to me at shows. I still don’t fully understand it. I don’t think I ever will. What I do know is that people took these songs and made them their own in ways I never could have imagined when I was sitting alone in that apartment writing them. People have come up to me after shows and told me things that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. That’s not something I take lightly. Not even for a second.

Twenty years later, I look back at this record and I feel something I didn’t feel for a long time – gratitude. Real, deep gratitude. “It’s fucking beauty. It’s gorgeous. It’s timeless.” I mean that with everything I have. Not because I’m proud of myself. Because I’m proud of what we all made together – me, Jeremy, Ryan, Matt – and what it became for so many people. We wore our hearts on our sleeves for that record and the world met us there. That is everything.

So here’s what we’re doing this year. We recently put out our second of four – yes, four – Collected Series box sets. I have to pinch myself every time I think about that. Four box sets. Really? We made a music video for “Congratulations” – a song I wrote twenty years ago that features the incomparable Imogen Heap – and when I watched it back, I genuinely could not believe how alive it still sounds. It doesn’t feel like a song from 2006. It feels like something I wrote last week. We’re partnering with Universal Music Group to put Foiled on vinyl for the very first time as a standalone release, available everywhere, all over the world. And we’re going on tour – Europe this summer, then the United States and Canada this fall – playing this album front to back every single night. Same songs. Same band. A completely different perspective. The tour runs into 2027, and there are still more dates coming.

If this album has meant something to you, put it on for someone who needs it. Add it to a playlist. Save it on whatever platform you use. Twenty years ago, it spread one honest conversation at a time. I’d love to watch that happen all over again.

There is so much more coming this year that I am genuinely struggling to keep to myself. You are going to be surprised in the best possible ways. I promise you that. Foiled brought all of us together twenty years ago, and I want us all to come together and celebrate it for everything it has been and everything it still is. The year of Foiled is here. Let’s make it unforgettable. I love you all.

– Justin