Victoria Staff comes clean to a would-be lover (and herself) on her beautifully bittersweet new single and video Records & Honesty — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
The title track to her upcoming EP, the elegantly sparse folk-pop ballad is a true labour of love finds the angelically soulful Toronto singer-songwriter confessing her conflicted thoughts to a departing crush. Over gently caressed acoustic and electric guitars that flecked with sombre piano and xylophone, Staff finds herself torn between longing for one romantic embrace before it’s too late, and knowing in her heart that the relationship is not what she really needs:
“I’ll go on the record saying, ‘I want you to stay’
I know it won’t happen, but I’ll ask anyway
I’ll go on the record saying, ‘I want you here’
When the whole world calls, please don’t disappear.
“If you’re leaving me, won’t you go out with a bang?
It’s the final hour and there is so much left to say
Thought I said, wish I said, could’ve said, now it’s too late
Begging you to grab me by the waist
Again, again, again
Again, again.”
“The song is basically about ‘shooting your shot,’ says Staff. “I was in a ‘will they/won’t they’ with a friend, until he decided to move for a year to a different country. This song was everything I wanted to say if I ever had the guts to tell him. It’s funny when you get to keep a song and leave the boy behind.
“This song used to make me cry because I was so infatuated with this person, and this reminded me of him, but now it makes me so happy because I’m so proud of it. To be honest, I’m not even sure where he ended up — but I got a great song out of it.”
It’s not alone. Although she’s been surrounded by music since birth and writing songs for as long as she can remember, Staff took a weird route in becoming an artist. After getting her degree in Behavioural Neuroscience from UBC, she decided her passion of helping people with anxiety, depression and sexual trauma (like herself), was maybe not her true calling. Playing shows in Vancouver for “beer money” soon became an obsession. “I tried to play as many shows as possible, often bringing my guitar to exams so I could make sound checks as soon as I was finished,” she says.
On her EP, you’ll find two kinds of numbers: “The songs that get written once and I never touch again. And the songs that get written and rewritten and rewritten once more,” she explains. Staff hopes listeners will find therapy in her music just as much as she did creating it. This multi-talented instrumentalist — she playss guitar, piano, banjo, and ukulele — found inspiration from the likes of Taylor Swift, Hozier, Gregory Alan Isakov, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Glenn Frey and Paul McCartney.”
Watch the video for Records & Honesty above, listen to the track below, and share some truths with Victoria Staff at her website, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
