Ruminating on memories of a past relationship is a dangerous place to get stuck, but what happens when it’s your subconscious that keeps pulling you back in? 19-year-old singer-songwriter Alix Page’s latest single “Radiohead” is a case study on the ghost of relationships past and all that’s been left in its wreckage. Pulled from her upcoming debut EP Old News, out in January, the melancholic single arrives with an emotionally simmering music video seeping into the feeling of having your favorite band ruined by an ex that your mind just won’t let go of, even when you sleep.
“I wrote Radiohead after I had a dream about an ex," Page tells The FADER. "It was super innocent, like a rom-com montage of us moving into an apartment and painting it together. It caught me really off guard because we hadn’t talked in months, and it made me realize that I still had a lot of unresolved feelings about our relationship and the breakup. Out of all the songs on the EP, I’m really proud of the vocal performance on this one. I think using one take for the whole song made the emotion of it build naturally.”
The visual finds Page sitting on a stage all alone. Opening on a tight shot of the singer, the camera pans outward at a crawling pace, first unveiling the unlit candles and balloons scattered around her, then the auditorium seats stretched out in front of her completely empty save for a doting couple with a knack for public displays of affection under a spotlight –– not necessarily the target audience for a breakup song.
Page continues: “We had the video concept for a while –– a couple getting cozy and ignoring me while I perform the song, leading up to a meltdown on my part –– but we imagined it in a different setting.” Eventually, she landed on her old high school theater. “I think putting it in that huge, beautiful space elevated the song beyond just an acoustic guitar performance and let it breathe a lot more.”
It’s just after this scene that the young musician reaches an emotional breaking point. The couple doesn’t acknowledge her presence until she ends the song, standing to exit the theater stage with a clank of her guitar.
“I thought it’d be easy for me to be grossed out and get annoyed by the couple making out while I’m singing,” Page adds. “But honestly once we started running through it, it made me kinda emotional –– they’re so sweet and in love, it just melted me and made the song hurt a little more.”
Once she emerges into the open air of the night, her acoustic guitar takes a heavy slam into the concrete, snapping the wood in two while the strings do their best to hold the separated pieces together. After, Page delivers a firm kick to the broken instrument, for good measure.
“I think there’s a little bit of humor in the titular line," she explains. "It’s definitely more complicated than just feeling sad that you can’t listen to a certain band without thinking of a certain person. The temper tantrum I throw at the end kind of adds something cheeky to the whole thing and I’m really happy with how it came out. Smashing a guitar is wayyyy harder than it looks.”
Page will be playing to bigger crowds this upcoming winter when she heads out as the supporting act for Gracie Abrams’ "This Is What It Feels Like" tour.
Thumbnail image by Dillon Matthews