Bristol, UK’s charming singer/songwriter Fenne Lily has released a new single, “Solipsism,” alongside a music video that feels reminiscent of early-2000s-asesthetic, adolescent films made into gifs for Tumblr. It’s her third single from her forthcoming sophomore record BREACH.
The pink-haired artist strolls through the supermarket while singing of a dissociative loneliness: “All these people walk so slow / Do they know something I don’t?” It has a sentimental, dizzying sound to it, and compared to her other singles—“Berlin” and “Alapathy”—it’s the most ambitious yet. In the press release, she says it was the result of trying to make “something that sounded cheerful, about something really not cheerful.” It wrestles with the disorienting nature of social media as well as the difficult of navigating one’s early twenties—“I’m empty at one and twenty,” the twenty-one-year-old sings despondently.
She continues about the track:
“A lot of situations make me uncomfortable—some parties, most dates, every time I’m stoned in the supermarket. ‘Solipsism’ is a song about being comfortable with being uncomfortable and the freedom that comes with that. If you feel weird for long enough it becomes normal, and feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. I wanted this video to be a reflection of the scary thought that I’ll have to live with myself forever. It’s surreal to realize you’ll never live apart from someone you sometimes hate. Dad, if you’re reading this you killed it as shopper number 2.”
BREACH arrives on September 18 via Dead Oceans, and you can pre-order it here. Watch the cinematic video for “Solipsism” below.
