Banoffee – “Contagious”
After years of collaborating with other artists, the Australian-born, LA-based pop singer and producer Banoffee is finally releasing her own debut album, Look At Us Now Dad, next week. It features a pretty impressive array of guests, including SOPHIE, Cupcakke, and Empress Of. We’ve already heard previews of it by way of “Tennis Fan” and “Count On You.” And today, she’s back with one more.
Titled “Contagious,” Banoffee’s latest track is another glimpse of idiosyncratic future pop that makes perfect sense for someone who’s been on tour with Charli XCX. And while a song named “Contagious” might first conjure a pop song that’s about a dizzying kind of attraction, Banoffee’s take is quite the opposite — in the chorus, she sings of giving a partner space, the idea that she’s “contagious” with something they don’t want. The whole thing takes place over rippling synths and a kind of push-pull tension that reflects the narrative Banoffee sketches out.
The track comes with a video directed by Lewis Mitchell, Callum Mitchell, and Banoffee. It focuses solely on Banoffee, alone in a white dress as she wrestles with the lyrics she’s singing. Here’s what she had to say about the concept:
The video is about loneliness and the feelings of ostracization that arise when your issues seem too much for the world to handle. It follows a woman roaming the landscape in a wedding dress, totally prepared to give herself up to something, yet completely alone and isolated by her sadness. The circles in the clip represent a safety zone, something I created for myself when I felt like I had to hide what I was going through in order to seem fit for love or friendship. I wanted the video to evoke a sense of longing and eeriness, like everyone has gone home, fed up with the things I still need and crave…
Check it out below.
Look At Us Now Dad is out 2/21 via Cascine/Dot Dash.