To make your Mondays a little brighter, we’ll be bringing you one song or music video to check out, every week.
Get in, loser, we’re collecting male tears. Orla Gartland might be a one-woman rescue team in her new music video, it feels like she’s inviting us on a journey to tag along with her as she puts on her best Ranger suit, gets her tear-shooting gun ready (yes, you read that correctly), and goes on the hunt for some “jacked-up on testosterone” zombies.
While singing about “someone who suppresses everything they feel until one day it all comes to the surface”, as she explains in a press release, the Irish singer-songwriter goes around an English town chasing “zombie boys” showing even the slightest bit of emotion (watch out for the eyes), to try and save them. Zombie!, the song (released April 13), is all about rage “and frustration”, as Gartland puts it herself, yet the video that brings it to life (April 22) feels like relief. We watch her go on about her quest, getting out all the tension she put into words, through actions.
Kill the zombies? Save the zombies
The concept comes from the artist (whom we’ve already told you about in our Ladies, From A to Z playlist) and her best friend Greta Isaac, who also directed the video. “It’s the weirdest video idea we’ve ever had, I kind of can’t believe we made it,” the singer says. Aside from being a fun and captivating story to follow visually, Zombie! carries an interesting message. In most films and shows that take on the zombie myth (think, for example, Zombieland or The Walking Dead), the damage can’t be undone. Zombies are monsters that must be fought and killed. That is how we deal with them. In their take on the matter, Gartland and Isaac choose to make them creatures that can be saved. Toxic masculinity can be reversed, might be the lesson here.
Third single off her upcoming album (no date set yet, but due this year), Zombie! is probably one of the singer’s most energetic and energizing tracks. It will get you wanting to get up on your feet and go for a run, or dance around your room, moving to its gripping beat. We know we’re hooked.
