The Voice, in the United States at least, doesn’t quite have a track record for producing pop superstars, but Vera Blue is proving to be quite the exception to the rule.
Having placed in the Top 3 of Season 2 of The Voice Australia in 2013 (then known as Celia Pavey, mentored by the legendary Delta Goodrem), the talented 26-year-old singer-songwriter’s since gone on to prove herself time and time over in the form of some fantastic post-reality TV releases: from her debut This Music and Bodies EP to 2017’s Perennial, including the incredible “Lady Powers” and “Regular Touch,” as well as collaborating with cool acts like Flume (“Rushing Back”) and Louis the Child (“Nobody Like You”).
Her sound has evolved and expanded over the years, pushing past her folkier roots and entering into fresh, ambitious pop territory.
On Wednesday (August 9), Vera dropped the music video for her first solo release of 2020, “Lie to Me,” directed by Sydney’s Onil Kotian with animation by Brooklyn-based Felipe Posada.
“Due to Covid, we had to rethink the official video for ‘Lie To Me’ as we were not able to get out and film. We had just created the amazing lyric video for the song, and we approached Felipe and Onil to come back with an idea on how we could use what we had already created but bring it into a whole new world,” Vera explains.
“I loved delving into new visual landscapes of colours, shapes, lighting and symbolism, and the idea of inventing an alternative reality that tells a story and captures the emotional roller coaster of falling in love again.”
The song is described as Vera “losing her mind with falling IN love,” with opposing voices screaming in her head about how to feel about falling back head-over-heels. The song also does some very cool things from a production standpoint, dabbling in more familiar trop-pop territory before stretching outward into more experimental, almost Susanne Sundfor and Royksopp-esque depths towards the very end.
“When you go through a lot of emotional shit, you can’t imagine yourself in a new relationship. Then you suddenly fall into one, and the fear and mistrust can be overwhelming: ‘is this as amazing as it seems – or is it going to blow up in my face again? The lyrics and melodies that I wrote with Thom [Macken] came from a more poetic and obscure experimental place for both of us. With Andy [Mak] digging into new exciting sonic landscapes imitating the raw emotion and Jackson [Barclay] bringing the tones to life tracking various instruments through the amazing sounding console and outboard gear at the grove studios, this song had us all wide-eyed and buzzing,” she explained in a statement.
“I try my best to not let anyone see this side of me / And he helps me understand that it’s okay not to be okay, okay, okay,” Vera reveals before getting swept up in the chorus, letting go entirely and unleashing full-bodied yelps in the bridge.
It also represents her own growth as an artist: “I recently watched some video of myself when I first started performing—my voice was so sweet and innocent! I could not have reached the belting moments at the end of ‘Lie To Me’ back then. My voice is stronger than it ever has been, which enhances what we create in the studio,” she said.
Based on this song alone, Vera is already well on the way to building what could be her best record yet – no lie.
This song is featured on the MuuTunes Spotify playlist.
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Photo credit: Universal Music Australia
