us girls
photo: Emma McIntyre

US Girls share new single / video "Bless This Mess"

US Girls have shared a new single, “Bless This Mess,” a tender piano ballad about making do in a broken world. Meg Remy sings in the chorus: “I bless this mess / Goddamn, yr doing yr best.”

The video for the song was created by Remy and artist Evan Gordon using footage of a teenage Remy in 1998. They call it a “realfake,” where they chopped up the footage of Remy singing to the camera so that it seems like she’s singing the song.

“Before camera phones, the family camcorder was often the mirror tool used to capture selfie-like performances of teenage daydreams and insecurities,” says Remy. “Recently I unearthed a VHS tape housing footage of my 1998 self singing on top of my favorite songs of the day, along with my 2000 self publicly performing music for the first time, plus various other blush-worthy self-portraits. I decided to air out this acutely personal footage. My meta music video vision: 1998 self singing a song that 2020 self wrote.”

Gordon adds, “I buckled down and painstakingly dragged the eight-minute clip over each word of the song, forwards and then backwards, splitting off any partial or direct match. Beyond my expectations, I was able to find multiple matches for each phrase. From here, I worked on stitching the clips together to make complete phrases, selecting from my list of matches much like making a comp of vocal takes. This video is a realfake. It’s naturally authentic while being transparently fake. Its intent is not to deceive or convince, but rather to induce reflection and remembrance.”

Watch the video below.

This is the second new US Girls song we’ve gotten this year, following this summer’s great “So Typically Now.” No word yet on whether these are attached to an album. Stay tuned.

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