The Backstory

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Mone shows heartbreaking tenderness in her new single, ‘Terrible Broadway Play’. “It’s a song written for that moment right after stumbling out of the rollercoaster of love, being shaken up and exhausted, but also thankful and accepting,” she says.

 

For this song as well as the rest of the album, Mone teamed up with producers Cameron James Laing and Gidon Carmel in The Famous Gold Watch Studios. The ache of the artist’s heart is expressed through the constant undertow of strings, that are both soothing and haunting. Most of the song floats in dreamy resonance until the nauseating outburst right at the end.

 

“Soft and beautiful wasn’t enough. I needed an element of drama. I needed to show the pain and frustration that simmers under that post-break-up melancholy. Gidon and Cameron had this incredible idea of plugging a singing mic into a guitar amp and that distorted the hell out of the sounds I was making into the mic. Layered on top of these faraway, theatrical strings that Cameron sculpted, it feels like free-falling and gives the song exactly the hint of madness it needed.”

 

The intriguing music video for Terrible Broadway Play shows Mone in a slow, intimate one-shot. She is dancing in a red suit, an absent gaze in her eyes. The camera gets uncomfortably close and follows her every move, from inviting an imaginary lover for a dance to hugging herself with closed eyes, to bursting out in mad laughter. Like the song, the video exploits an eerie tension between surface tranquility and the hunch that something terrible is about to happen.

 

“My character for this video was based on the Joker. I wanted to show a person that is so overwhelmed by the present that they disappear into a world of their own, a fantasy world. In this case, it’s a world of happy memories. The Joker fascinates me, because he is in one way so scary and unpredictable, yet so sweet and tragic.  To me, it’s comparable to the kind of emotional unpredictability that comes with being in love and going through heartbreak.”

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Terrible Broadway Play is the fourth single of Mone’s highly anticipated debut album ‘Crocodile Kisses’. Her previous singles, ‘Crocodile Kisses’, ‘Rat’ and ‘Big Brown Bear’, introduced Mone as an artist with the ability to skillfully combine strength with vulnerability, always with a hint of madness. Or as Tom Waits would say it: 'that little drop of poison'.

Mone is truly the love-child that Fiona Apple and Tom Waits never had.

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Artist Bio

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Sweet and vicious honesty. Mone provokes and soothes in the same breath. She's been called the lovechild of Fiona Apple and Tom Waits for her raw, emotional songs and unique vocal sound. Rooted in folk music but influenced by many artists, from Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen to The Dresden Dolls and Kate Bush, Mone fuses more traditional genres with the firm confidence of avant-garde music.

 

The Berlin-based multidisciplinary artists will release her debut album and artbook ‘Crocodile Kisses’ in 2021.

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Lyrics

 

You and me

Kissing on the street

You screamed:  

"If loving you is a crime

Then I plead guilty"

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It was like a  terrible broadway play

 

And I laughed so hard

It’s the same one I love now

It’s the same one I care for

It’s the same one I held then

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So I raise my glass to the tumble

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See today

I am just coming home late

And I screamed at you the other day

 

Like a terrible broadway play

 

You’re telling me

To hold on with everything I have 

Only to feel it slip away

And stand dazed and empty handed

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Music Credits

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Written by Merle Sibbel . Produced by Cameron James Laing and Gidon Carmel

Vocals & e-guitar Merle Sibbel . Bass Felix Buchner . Drums Gidon Carmel

Additional e-guitar Phil Walker . Synthesizer Fabrizio Tentoni

Sound and orchestra designs Cameron James Laing 

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Recorded & mixed by Cameron James Laing at The Famous Gold Watch Studios 

Mastered by Pete Maher 

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Video Credits

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a Fruit Salat film

Concept by Merle Sibbel . Cinematography by Mark Hunt

Post-production by Mark Hunt & Merle Sibbel 

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