Emma McIntyre
The music of Meg Remy (U.S. Girls) has always been flavored with a heaping tablespoon of sonic nostalgia, but she’s taken things a step further with her new track and it’s accompanying music video. “Bless This Mess,” out today alongside a visual treatment from the artist Evan Gordon.
The song itself is a wonderfully uplifting ballad about accepting one’s past mistakes and experiences, but it’s nothing earthshaking next to the rest of Remy’s impressive catalog. The video, however, is a remarkable feat best described by the artists themselves.
“Before camera phones, the family camcorder was often the mirror tool used to capture selfie-like performances of teenage daydreams and insecurities,” Remy says in a press release. “Recently I unearthed a VHS tape housing footage of my 1998 self singing on top of my favorite songs of the day, along with my 2000 self publicly performing music for the first time, plus various other blush-worthy self-portraits. I decided to air out this acutely personal footage. My meta music video vision: 1998 self singing a song that 2020 self wrote.”
“I buckled down and painstakingly dragged the eight-minute clip over each word of the song, forwards and then backwards, splitting off any partial or direct match,” Gordon adds. “Beyond my expectations, I was able to find multiple matches for each phrase. From here, I worked on stitching the clips together to make complete phrases, selecting from my list of matches much like making a comp of vocal takes. This video is a realfake. It’s naturally authentic while being transparently fake. Its intent is not to deceive or convince, but rather to induce reflection and remembrance.”
Watch the eerie end product below.
