After over a decade in the indie scene, VÉRITÉ (Brooklyn singer-songwriter Kelsey Byrne) is well positioned for a breakthrough. Her released her self-released debut album Somewhere in Between in June last year, and was recently contributed her guest vocals to fellow indie alt-pop musician Allie X’s “Casanova”. She premiered her stylish and haunting music video for “SAINT”, which follows “When You’re Gone” and “Phase Me Out” as the third single from her debut, on Refinery29 a few days ago.
The track features all the hallmarks of her brand of cerebral alt-pop: introspective lyricism, dreamy vocals, a melody that eventually cathartically rockets into the stratosphere, and a glossy production. The song also boasts a more memorable hook (‘'Cause I know I'm a sinner/ But I could be a saint in your head’), bass drops, and an obstinate embrace of one’s own shortcomings. The sinner/saint duality is followed by a series of denials (‘No I don't got religion/ But I'll tip my hat to the dead/ No, you're not a season/ Set to leave me in the cold’) before climaxing in a deeply-felt confession of yearning: ‘Still, I caught a sickness/ That time you said I was, said I was yours’. Byrne draws out the vowels in the final pronoun twice, making it last for a whole 10 seconds (this is followed by another 10 seconds of echoed backing vocals). It would appear that a genuine attachment to someone else is necessary for an escape from the prison of self-doubt.
On Genius, Byrne annotated her song lyrics to reveal that the song drew from her emotional coping mechanisms (shutting down, fantasies of self-destruction), “perceived inferiority”, her own hyper-critical nature, and the pressures of living up to her dreams. With the help of director Charlie Manton, she envisioned a solipsistic version of herself with “serial killer vibes”. She stares down the camera with a mournful countenance, alone in a large mansion, wearing fashion-forward outfits, languishing in a bathtub filled with goldfish, and in the company of many dismembered mannequins: “I wrote the album in a phase of real apathy, so I think having myself be the only person in the video is my own reality. I am alone — no projections."
