Loren Berí's Brooklyn is better than yours. There's just one problem, though: Loren Berí's Brooklyn only sort of exists.
Today the synth-pop artist announces his debut EP Stray Cat Kingdom with "My Brooklyn (Is Better Than Yours)," a wildly magnetic—and hilarious—homage to NYC. Produced by O Mer, the song pairs Berí's bubbly synths and catchy melodies with tales of a fizzled cross-country fling, visions of Berlin and brunch and Bryant Park, and plenty of tongue-in-cheek digs: "Oh no, I guess my art is shit;" "I wrote that in 12 other songs / I think I don't mean this at all;" "My Brooklyn is better than yours / My friends would all agree / But my friends are all on tour."
"This city's magical and absurd, but I think I wrote [this song] about how the idea of a place can outgrow the place itself," says Berí. "As a kid I absorbed the idea of New York City in movies, newspapers, and magazines with its poets and folk heroes in the ’60s, the scene around CBGB, Bill Murray staring up at a giant marshmallow man in Ghostbusters—and this is all the flame in 'like a moth to a flame.' You grow up and show up, you find a city you don't recognize from the movies, and your friends are all on tour the second you meet them. Then you live it long enough to add to this absurd, only partially real idea of a place."
The track has a joyful, roving feel, and that's by design. "The verse when I sing 'I think this one looks like a trip / Do you think she made this one strip'—I was picturing this verse as taking place in an art gallery, with every sentence being the internal monologue of a different gallery visitor as they stared at art," Berí adds. "I was finding different characters through writing the song, and they began to populate the 'Stray Cat Kingdom.' They'd all bought the idea of New York as a kid, and now they're here."
"My Brooklyn (Is Better Than Yours)" is the first single off Stray Cat Kingdom, which is due June 22. Check out the song below, and pre-save the EP here.
