Between slow-jams and trippy nu-soul of his previous singles, alextbh’s new video “Still Mine” delves into the sense of desolation.
The video for alextbh’s new single “Still Mine” sees him in a variety of situations, from a dilapidated warehouse, to a stage and a muddy pond in a swamp but one thing remains constant among all the various sets – he’s depicted alone.
There’s no one else in the video but him, and you can’t help but wonder if that’s a metaphor for how he really feels. There’s a potent and heavy sense of desolation that grips this track from the go and it’s precisely that emotional emptiness that ironically gives gives life to this track. And that’s even before we’ve dug into what he’s actually singing about.
Not that it offers much of a reprieve. He sets the tone within the first verse by bringing us straight-on, head-first into the middle of a dysfunctional relationship. When he sings, “You know I’ll never ever say it/And you will never try to save it”, it’s not as much as a analogy for what he’s feeling but an actual biographical account of what he experienced. That rawness, can’t really be faked.
The 22-year old has been absolutely killing it for awhile now, dropping top notch singles that straddle the line between slow-jams and trippy nu-soul and “Still Mine” deserves to be up there with its luminaries. As with his previous tracks, he keeps things sparse, with his delivery and a basic beat being the fulcrum by which the track is built on, peppering it with succinct synth lines only when necessary.
It’s not a track built around a theme we are unfamiliar with but yet when he sings, “I’ve been tripping to the thought of you/Looking at life in a fucked up hue”, it somehow resonates a little louder than a thousand other maudlin ballads out there because this feels personal.
It’s like staring at the scene of a crime. You feel like looking away, but you can’t help yourself. We’ve all been there, in his shoes. He’s just managed to say what was on our mind better than we could, backed by a catchy beat.
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