For Valentine’s Day this year, Best Ex is serving up a remix of “Die for You,” a song from the band’s 2023 debut album With a Smile. Formed in 2017 by Mariel Loveland the same year her previous band Candy Hearts came to an end, Best Ex retain the same kind of open-hearted fragility, but with less of a punk vibe and more of a pop one. “Die for You”—which was co-written by and features Loveland’s fellow Brooklynite Luxtides—has a slightly darker tone to it, both in terms of the original album version and this phenomenal remix by Soft Faith, a.k.a. the New York duo of Aaron Thompson and Kenneth Fletcher.
“I’ve been working with Kenny since my Candy Hearts days,” explains Loveland. “We went to college together, but I never knew him. We actually met when he filled in as a guitarist on one of Candy Hearts’ biggest tours. It was a leap of faith. He was a stranger who became my lifeline. He’s seen so much of my experience in the music industry—all the highs, lows, and double standards—that he really understood where ‘Die for You’ was coming from.”
Indeed, this remixed version turns an already beautiful song into something even more heart-wrenching and harrowing, and amplifies what Loveland was writing about. While on the surface it might sound like a broken-hearted lament to an ex-lover—to a best ex, if you will—what “Die for You” actually addresses are the many, many wrongs that exist within the music industry and those in positions of power who perpetrate them with what feels like immunity.
Loveland and Thompson sat down for a Zoom chat to discuss these themes and the song in what turned out to be an incredibly illuminating conversation. Read it and listen to the remix below.
Mariel, you’ve known Kenny for a long time now, but how did this specific remix come about?
Loveland: Kenny and I are always talking about writing together for my own stuff. He always shows me Soft Faith demos and he was like, “Let me do a remix—you don’t have to use it if you don’t like it, but do you have a song that you think would be cool?” So I sent him a couple, but was like, “I think ‘Die for You’ is the one that’s your vibe.” He ran with it and I was like, “This is perfect.” I never heard myself in a song that sounded that way before, but it’s definitely always something that I’ve wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to branch out because I feel like I write songs that sound a certain way. They have like this twee, ’90s quality, but I’ve always wanted to be able to expand into something that sounds like this big pop production. And he nailed it.
Thompson: He’s really good at seeing and hearing something in someone and being able to be like, “Here, I got this,” and then, “Look, here’s how I hear and see this.” I moved from California to New York two years ago. I put an ad out on Instagram and said, “Hey, I’m going to be living in the city, I want to start a new music project, I played in punk bands and all kinds of things before, and I want to start a new thing in New York.” And I got a lot of bad responses, but Kenneth hit me back and we met for a beer, and in 20 minutes we realized we knew a million of the same people. And he has that very calming, almost Zen presence about him, which translates into everything he does.
What do you each hope to get out of this collaboration?
Loveland: Well, I hope that you guys will let me duet on that song that Kenny sent me, that I text him about every week saying “Let me sing on this song!”
Thompson: We definitely want more of this collaboration. I think it’s kind of a no-brainer for many reasons. And even though our two sounds are not identical, they’re just so nice together. They just work.
“I just hope to be an example to people who are in my situation in the past, especially now that I’m not a 20-year-old in the music industry anymore.” — Mariel Loveland
Loveland: I think so, too. And this song is super important to me, and also my collaborator, Danni [Bouchard, a.k.a Luxtides], because it’s so much about the real shitty abuses of power that we’ve experienced in the music industry at the hands of men who just wield this oppressive misogyny toward us, but where it’s so subtle that I feel like people don’t really even notice it unless they’re actively in a project with a woman. I’ve definitely had band members in the past who were like, “Honestly, if we didn’t watch this happen in real time, we would have no idea that this was happening.”
So the song’s about all of the stuff that happened to us and how with so many aspects of our career, if we wanted to walk through that door that people held open for us, we had to smile and tolerate the terrible things that they would do, whether it was demeaning, or if it was straight up allowing people to grab your boob or your butt and not being able to say anything. And when they see you getting mad, they yell at you, like, “You don’t think I care about your career? I could take it away in a minute!” So it’s just a song about having to tolerate that kind of thing, and whether the success is worth it. And for myself, it’s been really valuable to write a song like that, and be able to make it with people who exist outside of that, who don’t buy into that kind of game.
Thompson: It’s really actually special, on a personal note, for me, too. I’m also an actor in the adult film industry, but before that, I was in bands—I played Warped Tour in 2005, I’ve toured the whole world in pop-punk bands in the [early 2010s]. I’ve been in bands since I was 15 and growing up, I’ve never been preyed upon more, been in sketchy situations—and I’m a man! I was sexually preyed upon by powerful men in the music industry when I was a younger boy, and there were those moments for me, too, where I was like, “Is this what it’s really like?”
I can say safely that no one’s ever done that to me in the porn industry. People always think it’s the opposite, but I’ve experienced more gross, slimy, sketchy behavior on every level in music than in porn. And it’s so cool now to have the freedom to not need that machine to exist and to make music. Because of all these platforms now, we can kind of just say, “No, we’re not even playing this game.”
Loveland: It’s definitely not just something that happens to women. I know so many men in the music industry who’ve been sexually preyed upon by other men who hold the power, and it’s allowed to go unchecked. I’ve been told to just shut up because I’ll be blacklisted if I say stuff because they only want people around them who enable their behavior.
Thompson: I think maybe a small silver lining is that the needle is moving in the right direction slowly, especially in the last five years or so. It’s not going to fly anymore, that kind of shit. And if you do, there are so many ways to expose you quickly.
With all that said, the song tackles those issues subtly, and you know that people often don’t pay attention to lyrics. So does it matter that people might listen to the song and not take in what it’s actually about?
Loveland: I want people to like it for whatever reason they like it for. The thing behind it that motivates me to write music is sharing my experiences. So if someone hears the song and likes it because of the melody, then great. But if someone hears the song and is like, “Wait, that happened to me and I didn’t know I had power in this situation, I didn’t know that I could have a voice for myself”—I just hope to be an example to people who are in my situation in the past, especially now that I’m not a 20-year-old in the music industry anymore. I’m someone who can really be an example of someone I wish I had when I was young.
Thompson: It’s cool to be able to be that person to someone now, and it’s also cool to just be able to be that kind of artist for yourself. FL
