Today, Sarah Mary Chadwick debuts a scrappy, sun-drenched flick for “Let’s Fight,” one of the standout tracks off her latest LP, Please Daddy, via American Songwriter.
Videos by American Songwriter
“Tim [Deane-Freeman] the drummer insists I can’t play this song live but he’s tripping cause I invented it,” Chadwick says in a statement. The video was “shot over a dream weekend with people I love. Life’s hard and it’s easy to fight but it’s the best thing in my life to me when you grab the joy that you can.”
“Let’s Fight” is a jangly, rousing song about wanting to instigate conflict, and it features some of Please Daddy’s most wounded, confrontational lyrics. “Well I’d talk about my friends / But I can’t see them, I don’t know who they are / But I can see footprints / And tire tracks from some car,” Chadwick sings in the track over a restless, tapping drum part. “Now that some of them are back / It’s got me thinking / They left when I was hurt / ‘Cause whenever I’m drowning / They disappear like fireworks.”
The video—directed by Brent Griffin—is all guitar-strumming close-ups and sun glares and colorful frames. It comes after Chadwick’s videos for “Please Daddy”—also directed by Griffin—and “When Will Death Come,” which was directed by Tristan Scott Behrends. “It’s kind of like he’s got the same kind of sensibility as me in that everything is a bit extravagant and over the top,” Chadwick said of Behrends earlier this year, having just watched an early cut of “When Will Death Come.”
“But it’s almost like if a gay guy made a Mike Lee movie.”
Please Daddy is Chadwick’s sixth LP, following 2019’s The Queen Who Stole the Sky and 2018’s Sugar Still Melts in the Rain. The New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based singer-songwriter released it in January via Sinderlyn and Rice Is Nice.
“I do a lot of psychoanalysis and so I’m in the habit of unpacking things and situations,” Chadwick told an interviewer at the time, reflecting on her approach to songwriting. “I’ve been doing that for five years now, although I’ve been doing things like that since I was a teenager, because of depression and anxiety. I am in the habit of trying to make some sense of things. I do try to write unconsciously as much as possible. In a way, that is the only way I work.”
“Part of me,” Chadwick continued, “was worried when I started doing more difficult and more rewarding psychoanalytic treatment, if I had all my shit figured out what would my content be? Would I suddenly be making bad music? But, that was so stupid, because there are limitless things to figure out. I’m glad I was able to put things down, rather than be a 37-year-old trying to figure out being a teenager, that’s ridiculous. It helps me not being stagnant in my ideas, in terms of my songwriting.”
Check out Chadwick’s “Let’s Fight” video below and listen to Please Daddy here.
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