Andy Ellis channels a host of ’80s ladies (and a few gents) with his new synth-rock single and video TV Queen — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The Austin artist’s latest release is a neon pop confection that pays tribute to the ’80s via a love letter to the glamourous leading ladies of prime-time past:
“TV Queen, you’re up on my screen
Now I can pretend that you want me
TV Queen, you cut your new scene
Right into my heart cuz you know me
You don’t care if I was born to lose
You just wanna make sure that it’s you I choose.”
“TV Queen is a rockin’ retrowave track that takes a sardonic look at our romanticized modern addiction to media, along with a pounding 1984-inspired rhythm section,” says Ellis. “I tend to default musically to my European influences — Tears For Fears, New Order — but for this song I decided to bring a retro American ‘synth rock’ sound to the forefront. That is until the end of the song, when I wondered what Van Halen would have sounded like if Johnny Marr was the guitarist — and I went there!”
Playing with the retro theme, the accompanying video features clips of TV queens from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s in a fun and vibrant collage — everyone from Wonder Woman to Farrah Fawcett, Tiffani Amber Thiessen and the scintillating Sharon Stone.
The lyrics, as well as the video, examine society’s notions of femininity. “I’m trying to express what it feels like to have a relationship with that thing you project behind the image on the screen,” Ellis explains. “In this case, it’s fantasies of what a woman should be and what is feminine. Over the decades, that seems to have been pushed so far — stretched and twisted in so many different directions — that what the screen demands to meet our fancies is such an over-the-top performance that our ideals have been bent beyond any resemblance of reality.”
TV Queen is the followup to Ellis’s retrowave single Flower Punk Girl. While that song explored the ability of fantasy to find a transcendent relationship in our “dead-tech world,” TV Queen is about fantasy pretending to be human so convincingly that it limits our ability to relate with the actual world.
Ellis is a music producer and all-around creative guy who explains he recently left mega-city life to “hunt for some perspective on my generation and its legacy while I wait for the apocalypse… I did the mid-’90s Chicago music scene as a teenager; I did the late-’90s alternative So-Cal electronic music scene (with a little hip-hop thrown in). I did the A-list L.A. studio system, the major-label band thing (Black Lab), the producer/engineer/mixer thing (Gavin Rossdale, Seether), and the co-songwriting thing. I now have a studio capable of things younger me never could have dreamed of.”
Andy also made music for film and TV, including the Spider-Man, Blade and Twilight franchises. He has gold and platinum records, and now he’s starting a new phase of creativity in Austin — and, hence, some fabulous new music.
Watch the video for TV Queen above, hear more from Andy Ellis below, and dial him up on his website, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
