Charlie Kaplan has shared the first single from his forthcoming LP Dobro, arriving October 30 via his very own Glamour Gowns imprint. “Failed” is a bright Americana cut abound with Springsteen-esque piano chords and an almost carnivalesque guitar accent during the song’s end.
“I started writing this song a few months after the second Trump term started,” Kaplan explains, “feeling deeply resentful of the ways late-stage capitalism, deregulation, institutional inertia, and ‘modernity has failed us,’ so to speak. It came from a place of real rage toward Republicans and, to a lesser but no less legitimate sense, Democrats too. But as I started writing it, I heard a sort of hilarious absurdity in my narrator’s voice: A character who couldn’t help mixing in grand, unspecific grievances with peccadillos. ‘The system’ being just as much a failure as ‘the Jets’ or whatever. Because disgruntlement is the unifying disposition of the present, it feels important to lampoon bothsidesisms. Again, can’t help lowering the temperature with self-deprecation.”
“Failed” comes alongside a video featuring Kaplan as a deeply paranoid podcast host exposing the truths the Deep State refuses to reveal. Pod host Kaplan—alongside pod guest Kaplan—works through issues like being shadow-banned on Facebook and trying to figure out what, exactly, the moon is.
Check out the video for “Failed” below, and pre-order Dobro here.
