Jehnny Beth has released a video for ‘French Countryside’ – the slow-burning, piano-led cut taken from her debut solo album ‘To Love Is To Live’.
Written alongside frequent collaborator Johnny Hostile and The xx’s Romy Madley Croft, the video was filmed at her French studio.
‘This is the song that caused me the most issues,” Jenny reveals. “Up until the last week of mixing we didn’t have a version I was happy with, but I am very proud of it now. I almost didn’t put it on the record because it is so close to the bone it almost feels too self indulgent, but it was my intention to write a song that felt more vulnerable than anything I had ever written before
“Romy was a huge influence for me to be able to do that,” she continues. It’s a promise song, I wrote the verses on a plane as I was convinced it was going to crash. I was making promises to myself about what I was going to do differently if I survived. Death has been very present in my mind during the process of writing this record. It all started around Bowie’s death.”
Romy adds “She played me the beginning lines and they were so instantly visual and different to anything I’d heard her say before, it was instantly a beautiful place to write from and explore.
“It felt like her guard was dropping for a moment and she was inviting the listener in to get to know her vulnerable side, but with a sense that this invitation wouldn’t last for very long. Hearing the album version made me cry because it felt like it was my friend Camille, as I know her, a window behind the Jehnny Beth that the world sees”
So there we go.
You can check out the video for ‘French Countryside’ below.
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