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Tag: Bleachers Alma Mater

  • Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    Continuing to act as Jack Antonoff’s muse in multiple ways, Margaret Qualley makes a far more pronounced appearance in the latest Bleachers video than she did in their last one (some wannabe Lynchian fare for “Alma Mater” featuring Lana Del Rey). Indeed, she’s the star of the show. One that is rather limited in production value (on the surface), but nonetheless channels the vibe of Taylor Swift in her far more “blockbuster-y” 2018 video for “Delicate,” directed by Joseph Kahn. This, of course, is a rather meta statement considering Swift borrowed all her swagger for “Delicate” from Spike Jonze’s 2016 ad for Kenzo World starring none other than Qualley. 

    In said ad, not only is Qualley wearing a similar style of frock to Swift’s in “Delicate” (the latter wearing a blue instead of a green tone), but, most important of all, she’s dancing “like no one is watching.” That is to say, like a monkey let loose from the zoo. This is precisely how Swift feels in “Delicate” upon realizing that she’s invisible. A dream come true for someone so incessantly scrutinized. With this newfound freedom from being studied, let alone perceived at all, Swift delves into some very Qualley-esque choreo that eventually leads her out into the pouring rain (pouring rain being Swift’s bread and butter when it comes to accenting dramatic effect).

    Funnily enough, this is one of the few songs in recent years that Swift didn’t tap Jack Antonoff to produce. Instead, Shellback and Max Martin (the latter being all over the Reputation album) did. But even if Antonoff had produced the track, he wouldn’t have said anything to Swift about how “familiar” her video looked. Because, at that time, he still wasn’t dating Qualley. Instead, he was in his breakup year with Lena Dunham (who Qualley probably doesn’t want to think about having shared a penis with). Right after their breakup in early 2018, Antonoff went right for a visual opposite of Dunham in Carlotta Kohl. 

    Similarly to Antonoff’s rebounding propensities, right after her breakup with Shia LaBeouf in 2021, she began dating Antonoff. A man who, instead of being an outright fuckboy (Qualley had already made that mistake with Pete Davidson in 2019, too), just looks like one. Though her romance with LaBeouf only lasted a year, it was still enough time for them to star in a music video for “Love Me Like You Hate Me” by Rainsford (a.k.a. Margaret’s sister, Rainey Qualley). Although this gave her another slight opportunity to showcase her dancing and movement abilities (having been trained heavily in dance and ballet during her teen years before quitting to study acting), it is with Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” video that she gets to truly display her chops in a manner not seen since the Kenzo World ad that Swift so blatantly borrowed from.

    Qualley’s involvement in the conception of the video appears to be so extensive that she even has a co-directing credit with Bleachers go-to Alex Lockett. And, perhaps to honor Antonoff’s hipster roots, the video’s backdrop is the New York skyline (filmed from a vantage point that one presumes is in Williamsburg). 

    Considering the chorus of the song goes, “The tiniest moves you make/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change/Tiniest twist of faith/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change,” having Qualley not only present in it as the focal point, but also showing off her dance moves feels like a no-brainer. For, when speaking of this song in particular, Antonoff noted, “​​I met my now-wife, and it feels like a lot of the mythology and armor that I wore [fell off]. And when you have a big shift like that, which was really meeting my person, it’s brilliant and amazing, but it’s also destabilizing ’cause you have to deal with all of the past, where you lived by this code that was bullshit.” 

    As Qualley dances (once again in a long, flowing frock—this time a white one instead of a green one à la Kenzo World) like she’s being demonically possessed (that’s kind of her thing) against the night sky, the camera eventually turns away from the view of the city to reveal Antonoff himself leaning against the hood of his car while marveling at Qualley from afar. Evidently, she dances long enough for dawn to eventually come (as manifested by the lightening sky color), finally stopping to stare back at Antonoff and approach him. As though she’s made enough “tiny moves” and can finally cease performing them so as to see what kind of ripple effects they’ve invoked.

    Getting closer to “her man” so that she can embrace him (complete with cheesy, circling camerawork to accent the intensity of their connection), Qualley can probably safely say that her tiny moves have had a big impact. Which was already apparent when Swift saw fit to cop them for “Delicate.”

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Bleachers’ “Alma Mater” Video Is Not As Lynchian As It Wants To Be

    Bleachers’ “Alma Mater” Video Is Not As Lynchian As It Wants To Be

    As the incestuously intertwined relationship between Jack Antonoff, Lana Del Rey and the former’s new wife, Margaret Qualley, intensifies, perhaps it’s to be expected that the trio would appear in a music video together. This one being for Bleachers’ latest single, “Alma Mater,” a generic-sounding number that reeks of the early 2010s tones and trends during which Bleachers first came to prominence (as did Antonoff’s other band, fun., for that matter). In fact, Antonoff’s mind has clearly been on that “era” based on the production he offered up for Taylor Swift’s Midnights as well.

    With “Alma Mater,” he finally decided to spare some of that sound for himself, with the help of Del Rey contributing on vocals. The video, directed by Alex Lockett (who also directed the cringeworthy video for Bleachers’ “Modern Girl”), seems to want to make the song more interesting than it is (much as Taylor Swift’s video for “Look What You Made Me Do” wanted to for the song of the same name). So it is that Antonoff takes a different tack from the visual banality of “Modern Girl,” the first single from Bleachers’ forthcoming self-titled album. Thus, the “Lynchian flair” (or rather, wannabe Lynchian flair) of “Alma Mater,” which has a much slower, downbeat tempo than the plucky, overly exuberant “Modern Girl.” And, since David Lynch movies are, in the end, all about the filth and disgustingness beneath the surface of “squeaky clean” Americana, his “vibe” has often been compared to Del Rey’s, who, in her own way, speaks to the moral decay of American society. Antonoff, not so much. 

    Nonetheless, it is he who is featured driving around the streets of New Jersey in his convertible at night as we see bright signs for Rutgers Business School, Checkers and McDonald’s (Wawa, too, will eventually cameo, what with being name-checked in the song). In the next scene, he encounters two “twin-like” (in that they’re wearing the same suit) men carrying a full glass of red wine each. As Antonoff passes them in his vehicle, they raise their glasses in a surreal moment that smacks less of two drunkards and more of a New Jersey version of the Grady twins in The Shining. Either that, or zombies trying to approach Antonoff so that they can pair their wine with his flesh.

    Less “sinister” (in quotes because none of it is actually sinister at all, only tries to be) scenes show up as Antonoff also encounters a man carrying his dog like a baby and a woman holding a plant at a bus stop as she faintly sways back and forth as though in a trance. That’s what it is to live in the bowels of America, after all. If you don’t impose the mental blackout upon yourself, it will be imposed upon you anyway. For there’s not much in the way of mental stimulation, with the entire structure and design of the United States ostensibly built to mind-numb. In another moment, Antonoff sees a dog sitting alone at the corner of the sidewalk before it runs away, almost in slow-motion, after being bathed in the car’s headlight for too long. 

    Elsewhere, Antonoff’s fellow bandmates appear as construction workers bursting into saxophone solos. We’re then given a brief instant of the car being shot from behind as it barrels through the darkness of an empty highway, also harkening us back to, what else, Lynch’s Lost Highway. And yet, there’s another movie inspiration one might not immediately think of at play throughout “Alma Mater”: Valley Girl. Specifically, that scene where Nicolas Cage as Randy drives through the boulevards of Hollywood with Julie (Deborah Foreman) in tow and sees similar sights/people, many of whom he shouts out to directly in acknowledgement of knowing them…or at least viewing them as a kindred spirit. 

    As for Del Rey, her own appearance is as muted as it is in the song. Though she has plenty of “New Jersey cred” after spending some time living in a trailer park there before her rise to fame at the end of 2011. Even if, in 2012, she told a French interviewer she had never seen a David Lynch movie…something that has since been corrected, but still, it was rather affronting at the time. Antonoff, meanwhile, continues on his surreal drive, now seeing a gray-haired man making out with a red-haired woman in the bright spotlight of a street lamp above them, cutting through the darkness. 

    For Antonoff’s “ultimate” moment of surreality, he sees his wife, Qualley (who Del Rey wrote a song about on Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd), crossing the road at Freedom Drive. Dressed in cream/beige-colored, flowy clothing, she looks more like a Hamptons dweller/pottery glazer than someone you might see roaming the streets of New Jersey at night. But one supposes that only adds to the “bizarreness” intended by the video. 

    Upon seeing this “vision of love,” Antonoff at last parks his car on the side of the road, as though he finally found what he was looking for on this long, gas-wasting, needlessly fossil fuel-emitting journey. And that “thing” was Margaret, who smiles sweetly in the final frame while looking like her face was replicated from Billie Eilish’s. A detail that’s less Lynchian than it is further proof of the “we’re living in a simulation” theory. Not to mention the idea that everything (and everyone) is a copy of a copy of a copy. Including this video that fancies itself much “weirder” than it is. 

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Lana Del Rey Song Posing As a Bleachers One, Or: The Antonoff-Del Rey Partnership Persists on “Alma Mater”

    A Lana Del Rey Song Posing As a Bleachers One, Or: The Antonoff-Del Rey Partnership Persists on “Alma Mater”

    For those hoping that being a “superstar” producer had left Jack Antonoff no time to remember his own musical “project,” Bleachers, the media regrets to inform you that he has not forgotten at all. And after promising there would be new Bleachers music in 2022, he’s decided to deliver on that vow in late 2023…because time flies when you’re producing Midnights and Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. And, speaking of the latter, it is Lana Del Rey who joins Bleachers for their latest single, “Alma Mater.” A song title that, in fact, could swing both ways in terms of being either a Del Rey or Swift track. After all, both women still speak as though they’re fresh from their collegiate years. But Del Rey is the more suitable choice for a title like this, what with her schoolgirl fetish and actual college degree (unlike Swift, who merely has an “honorary” one from NYU). 

    Although her vocal contribution is minimal—in fact, little more noticeable than what she brought to Swift’s original version of “Snow on the Beach” before they re-recorded it for Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition)—Del Rey’s influence is all over the track. And that includes the fact that she co-produced it along with Antonoff and Patrik Berger. But beyond that, her lyrical stylings and habits pepper “Alma Mater” in ways that include referencing the titles of other musicians’ work (in this case, Tom Waits’ Heartattack and Vine) and painting the picture of “trashball Americana” (from the white perspective, mind you). This is patent in the lines, “Threw her t-shirt down the pike (alma mater)/Screamin’, ‘Fuck Balenciaga’/Right past the Wawa.” The part where Antonoff mentions how the girl in question screamed “fuck Balenciaga” also echoes Del Rey on “This Is What Makes Us Girls” when she sings, “Runnin’ from the cops in our black bikini tops/Screamin’, ‘Get us while we’re hot, get us while we’re hot.’” Clearly, Antonoff has been listening to (and unwittingly studying) Del Rey’s work over the years so that it has managed to affect his own. 

    This includes Del Rey’s obsession with talking about summer and stating the obvious about its hot temperature. A trope that also shows up in “Alma Mater,” when Antonoff sings, “Well summer’s gettin’ hotter/(Alma mater).” Similar non sequitur/“no shit Sherlock” remarks about the summer season also show up in Del Rey songs like “Without You,” when she announces, “Summertime is nice and hot.” In “Heroin,” she takes it one step further by shouting, “It’s fuckin’ hot, hot.” So perhaps for Antonoff, who sounds more like The National’s Matt Berninger than himself on this track, working with Del Rey requires mentioning the summer at least once. And, of course, anyone who wants to collab with Del Rey should be adept at metaphors. So it is that Antonoff’s gift for this literary device shines through when he says, “She’s my alma mater,” a simultaneously romantic and sexual phrase that refers to how this person is someone he’s known intimately. And presumably, “graduated from.” Which might mean that, as he talks about this woman now, he’s either reminiscing about her or speaking of her from the “friend zone” perspective they’ve now transitioned to. Antonoff certainly has experience with that…unfortunately, with Lena Dunham. 

    But now that he’s moved onward and upward to another nepo baby, Margaret Qualley, it appears as though it was destined to be all along. If for no other reason than it gave Del Rey inspiration to write “Margaret” and collaborate vocally with Antonoff on it. Not only in the studio, but onstage, with Antonoff joining her to perform the track during the All Things Go Festival in Columbia, Maryland (as well as “Venice Bitch”). He also showed up to play the piano on “For Free” (LDR’s preferred Joni Mitchell cover) and “Mariners Apartment Complex” when Del Rey appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. So yes, theirs has been a rich and productive musical partnership both in and out of the studio, with Antonoff doing most of the giving. Which is why Del Rey probably thought she should do him a solid by appearing on “Alma Mater.” A song during which she promises, “I’ll make it darker”—this being an overt nod to Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker.” Not to mention Del Rey’s own 2021 song, “Dark But Just A Game,” itself inspired by a phrase Antonoff said to her about fame. 

    ​​Elsewhere, Antonoff channels Del Rey’s “How To Disappear” (also produced by Antonoff) when he sings, “Point the headlights, flickеr dear/Drive by the old housе, go for a beer.” It’s all very “you just crack another beer/And pretend that you’re still here.” Or even, “Back, back in the garden/We’re getting high now because we’re older.” Indeed, the overall tone of “Alma Mater” is one of millennial ennui…and the resignation to getting “old” as one performs the folly-laden things they once did in their youth with less, let’s say, joie de vivre. Incidentally, on “Margaret,” Del Rey has the audacity to say, “‘When you’re old, you’re old/Like Hollywood and me.” Perhaps Gen Z ageism has infected the millennial mind if Del Rey believes she’s “aged” at thirty-seven (this being how old she was when she wrote the song). At another point, Antonoff’s “secondary” great muse, Taylor Swift, has her lyrical influence flicker in when Antonoff notes, “2003, sad all the time”—a line that channels Swift on Midnights’ “Paris” when she says, “2003, unbearable.” Making one wonder: what the fuck was so bad about 2003?

    To “spice it up” a bit, Antonoff provides a white boy version of Megan Thee Stallion rapping, “He say, ‘The way that thang move it’s a movie’” by crooning, “You’re a movie to me, the way you move around me.” Swoon, sigh, etc. These are the reactions Antonoff wants to evoke. And yet, his need to include Del Rey on the song indicates a certain lack of confidence on his part in being able to do that. Perhaps, after so many years spent behind other musicians’ shadows, Antonoff is afraid he might not ever be able to fully come out (and no, that’s not an allusion to his sexuality…though he does look a bit like a lesbian who would give bad head). 

    Thus, what’s most glaringly apparent about “Alma Mater” is that Antonoff would rather save his true best (e.g., Del Rey’s “A&W”) for other artists instead of allowing it for himself. For, no matter how many times you listen to the song, nothing about it truly sticks or “implants” in your mind. As though every time is like hearing it for the first time…which isn’t the mark of praise, so much as genericness and forgettability. That is, within the established framework of music Antonoff has already created with and for someone like Del Rey.

    Genna Rivieccio

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