Monday, May 14, 2018

Caroline Rose - Bikini

 

Caroline Rose has been winning over fans and selling out shows all over the country on her first ever headline tour since releasing LONER this past February via New West. As described by Pitchfork, Rose “uses her mordant wit to confront serious subjects, exorcising trauma with hooks and humor” throughout LONER. It’s an idea masterfully executed with previous singles “Money,” “Soul No. 5,” and “Getting To Me,” recently recognized in the New York Times Magazine’s “New Sentences” column. Today, Rose presents this notion further with the “Bikini” video, which she self-directed along with the “Soul No. 5” video and explains below. 

“A lot of my aesthetic tends to be very tongue-in-cheek, so I wanted to take a serious subject, in this case misogyny, and just sort of turn it around to laugh at it. I think satire can be used as an incredible tool to take the power away from the powerful when necessary. It was important to me to make sure the video was body positive. When we think of 'girls in bikinis,' the tendency is to see tall white models with perfect bodies. I knew that would be missing the point of the song.

I take a lot of influences from films, and you can see a lot of Almodovar's influence here. I had a pretty concrete idea to make the video bright and cheerful, kind of like a mix between old TV performances in the '60s and '70s and The Price Is Right-esque game shows. Almodovar is a master at using visuals to enhance a serious story. The colors he uses are a lot like the characters--vibrant and flamboyant. Here, I utilize something similar as a creative device to enhance the absurdism of a realistic situation.”