Jesse Fink

Jesse Fink, born Jesse Finkelstein, is a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist from the Upper West Side of New York City, now based in Los Angeles. He is a co-writer of Artemas's breakout single “i like the way you kiss me” and of Myles Smith's “Stargazing,” and he holds a co-writing credit on John Legend's Grammy Award–winning “Conversations in the Dark.” He performs and is credited professionally as Jesse Fink, though industry databases including Genius list his full name alongside the shorthand. He is not to be confused with the British-Australian journalist of the same name who has written AC/DC biographies; that author has no connection to the music industry, though at least one music-industry aggregator site has mistakenly conflated the two biographies.

Early life and The Heydaze

Fink grew up on Manhattan's Upper West Side and spent seven years, from 2004 to 2010, as a camper and later junior counselor at Camp Skylemar in Maine, where he picked up the nickname “Tasty” (short for “Big and Tasty,” bestowed by a basketball coach) and was remembered by peers as one of the camp's most prolific song and cheer writers, an early indicator of the songwriting instinct that would define his career. No source in the public record gives his exact birth date; his camp attendance years imply he was born in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

His professional music career began in New York in 2013, when he co-founded the indie-pop band The Heydaze with college friends Andrew Spelman, Alexander Glantz and Tyler Matte. The band, whose sound was compared to Tame Impala and Oasis, wrote, recorded and produced its own early singles before catching the attention of Island Records, which signed the group. By 2017 The Heydaze were selling out New York venues including The Studio at Webster Hall and the Gramercy Theatre behind the single “Hurt Like Hell.” In a 2015 interview tied to the band's EP, Fink pushed back against genre snobbery, saying he wanted “to make pop music that's more universal and consumable” rather than “bubblegum music for teenage girls,” and singled out the song “ABC,” which he began writing in his sophomore year of college, as “the most dear to my heart.” His stated ambition for the band at the time was, in his own words, “world domination.” The precise date and circumstances of the band's dissolution are not documented, but Fink's career trajectory shifted from frontman to behind-the-scenes songwriter and producer sometime after the Island Records era.

From frontman to songwriter

After The Heydaze, Fink moved into topline writing and production, building an early client list that included Felix Sandman, Rence, Noah Cyrus, JR Rotem, Christian French, John Legend and AJ Mitchell. His first major outside placement was John Legend's “Conversations in the Dark,” released in January 2020 and co-written with Legend, Gregg Wattenberg, Kellen Pomeranz and Chance Peña. The song became the lead single from Legend's album Bigger Love, which won Best R&B Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in March 2021, giving Fink his sole confirmed Grammy tie, as a co-writer on a Grammy-winning album rather than as a personal nominee or winner in his own songwriting category.

Through the early-to-mid 2020s, working increasingly out of Los Angeles, he built a busy session and topline catalog with artists including renforshort, Justus Bennetts, Mark Ambor, Quinn XCII, Hojean, John K, Austin George, Zinadelphia, Tai Verdes, Bludnymph, Nessa Barrett, Leyla Blue, Dove Cameron and Charlieonnafriday. This period established him as a reliable, in-demand collaborator well before either of his two signature 2024 hits arrived.

2024: two songs, two hits

Fink's turn into mainstream hit-making happened within a single stretch of months in 2024. In February of that year, he was in a Los Angeles studio with producers Kevin White and guitarist/co-producer Toby Daintree for a session with the then-rising British artist Artemas. The three-day writing sprint produced “i like the way you kiss me,” which became a global breakout single for Artemas. Daintree later recalled the session to Music Week: “I Like The Way You Kiss Me came about when we were in LA working with Kevin White and Jesse Finkelstein, which was crazy. Jesse is amazing, he's so nice and makes Artemas feel so at ease.” Fink had written with Artemas before, on “cross my heart” (September 2023) and “ur special to me” (January 2024), and continued the partnership afterward with “dirty little secret” (July 2024), “southbound” (March 2025) and “more than just a little bit” (2026), making him one of Artemas's most consistent co-writers across that run.

Three months later, in May 2024, Fink co-wrote Myles Smith's “Stargazing” during a writing trip to Malibu with Smith and producer Peter Fenn. Music Week's own framing of the session notes that Fink “had no idea” the group was about to “craft a global breakout hit.” In a joint BMI No.1 Party interview, Fink and Fenn admitted to the uncertainty that preceded the song's success: “We left that camp thinking maybe we got something, maybe we didn't.” “Stargazing” went on to be described in Music Week's coverage as the biggest single of 2024 by a British artist. Fink continued writing with Smith afterward on “Nice To Meet You,” “Wait For You” and, in February 2026, “Drive Safe” featuring Niall Horan.

Arriving within months of each other, “i like the way you kiss me” and “Stargazing” moved Fink from working session songwriter to one of pop's most in-demand hitmakers of 2024 and 2025, a shift reflected almost immediately in his publishing and awards trajectory.

Sonic identity

Fink's catalog spans a wide range but clusters into a few recognizable modes. The first is a moody, synth-driven alt-pop sometimes described as “disco-noir,” typified by his work with Artemas; Genius described “i like the way you kiss me” as “an ice-cold disco-noir tune about prioritizing sex over feelings,” part of a dark alt-pop lane that recalls The Weeknd. Toby Daintree's account of the writing session names the direct sonic references: “We had this beat which was a totally different vibe to start with, it was in half time, but we started listening to Eyedress and tracks like Mareux's The Perfect Girl, and we went for the darkwave kind of sound,” placing Fink's contribution inside the same nocturnal, downtempo palette discussed elsewhere on The Ring in coverage of the broader Artemas catalog and its links to the wider darkwave revival.

A second, contrasting mode is warm, radio-ready singer-songwriter pop, best represented by “Stargazing,” an acoustic-adjacent, uplifting song written shortly after Myles Smith signed to RCA; it won the PRS for Music Most Performed Work award at the 2025 Ivor Novello Awards. Fink's subsequent Myles Smith cuts continue in this bright, hook-forward mold. A third mode covers confessional, concept-driven pop and alt cuts for younger solo artists, including his work with Nessa Barrett (“gaslight,” “PASSENGER PRINCESS”) and Dove Cameron (“Breakfast”). Across all three modes, publisher and press language consistently credits him with clever concepts and memorable melodies, and he is billed as a multi-instrumentalist who moves between composer, lyricist, additional-producer and background-vocalist credits depending on the session, though no source specifies which instruments he plays.

Publishing and management

Fink's early publishing home was Arcade Songs, where his bio described him as “a Grammy Award-winning songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.” Tom Lee, who later became his manager, held the Head of Publishing and VP A&R role at Arcade Songs from January 2014 to August 2025. Fink's management moved to Artist House, a Tribeca-based independent label, management company, publishing business and songwriter incubator, with Lee serving as his day-to-day manager and A&R contact. He was simultaneously represented by Spirit Music Group, a New York publisher founded in 1995 that continues to host a client bio describing him as having channeled his creativity “into a solo career, focusing on writing and collaborating with a variety of high-profile artists.”

On April 1, 2025, Fink signed a worldwide publishing agreement with Sony Music Publishing, announced alongside fellow SMP-repped act Myles Smith. His statement on the deal read: “I'm so excited to be partnering with SMP for this next chapter of my career. Clark and Katie [Welle] are incredible A&Rs, writer advocates and overall humans. I am beyond grateful for their belief in me.” Sony's Clark Adler added: “Jesse is an exceptional songwriter, and his incredible passion and work ethic elevate everyone around him.” Fink also holds a BMI affiliation for performance-rights purposes. As of mid-2026, his Spotify for Artists songwriter page lists his catalog as jointly managed by Artist House, Sony Music Publishing and Spirit Music Group, an overlap typical of a writer transitioning between representation tiers during a rapid career acceleration. His catalog stood at 194 credited songs as of mid-2026, per Spotify for Artists, while Muso.ai's database separately credits him with 172 compositions under one publisher entity and 445 total collaborators across his career as songwriter, producer, engineer and artist.

Awards and recognition

Fink's awards recognition accelerated sharply in 2025. He was named Spotify's Global Featured Songwriter of the Month in July 2024. In October 2024, Spirit Music Group publicized him as being “in consideration” for Grammy Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical, listing six tracks under review, including “i like the way you kiss me,” “Stargazing,” “PASSENGER PRINCESS,” “cross my heart,” “Wait For You” and “dirty little secret.” That consideration was a publisher-submitted longlist entry rather than a confirmed nomination; the official 2025 Grammy nominees in that category were Jessi Alexander, Amy Allen, Edgar Barrera, Jessie Jo Dillon and RAYE, with Allen winning, and Fink's name does not appear on the final nominee list.

In January 2025, Fink received a double BRIT Award nomination for Song of the Year, with both “Stargazing” and “i like the way you kiss me” recognized. That May, he won the 2025 BMI Pop Awards as Songwriter and Publisher of two of the year's most-performed songs, the same pair of tracks. Days later, on May 22, 2025, “Stargazing” won the PRS for Music Most Performed Work award at the Ivor Novello Awards, and the song earned a repeat Ivor Novello nomination in the same category in March 2026. A BMI No.1 Party was thrown in his and Peter Fenn's honor on May 15, 2025, for “Stargazing.”

Timeline

Selected songwriting and production credits

Frequently asked

Is Jesse Fink the same person as the Jesse Fink who wrote AC/DC biographies?

No. The songwriter and producer covered here, born Jesse Finkelstein, is unrelated to the British-Australian journalist and author of the same name who has written books including The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC and Pure Narco. At least one music-industry blog has mistakenly mixed biographical details between the two.

Did Jesse Fink win a Grammy?

He holds one confirmed Grammy tie: he co-wrote John Legend's “Conversations in the Dark,” the lead single from Legend's album Bigger Love, which won Best R&B Album at the 2021 Grammy Awards. A 2024 publicity claim that he was “in consideration” for Grammy Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical referred to a publisher-submitted longlist entry, not an official nomination; his name did not appear among the 2025 nominees in that category.

What is Jesse Fink's connection to Artemas?

Fink has co-written multiple Artemas songs, beginning with “cross my heart” in 2023 and continuing through “i like the way you kiss me,” “dirty little secret,” “southbound” and “more than just a little bit.” The two writers first worked together in a February 2024 Los Angeles session alongside producers Kevin White and Toby Daintree.

What band was Jesse Fink in before he became a songwriter?

He was the lead singer and one of the primary songwriters of The Heydaze, a New York indie-pop band he co-founded in 2013 with college friends Andrew Spelman, Alexander Glantz and Tyler Matte. The band signed to Island Records and sold out New York venues including The Studio at Webster Hall and the Gramercy Theatre by 2017.

Further reading

Jesse Fink's two signature 2024 songs sit at the center of two separate but overlapping stories on The Ring: the making of “i like the way you kiss me” and its place inside the broader darkwave revival associated with Artemas. Readers interested in Artemas's early career arc can also see coverage of his 2023 pivot and his approach to picking collaborators. Fink's other major placement, with Nessa Barrett, connects to her own Warner signing story.