Jehnny Beth is a French singer-songwriter and musician, better known for her work with London based band Savages. Back in 2020, she released her first solo full-length titled To Love Is To Live which is out via Caroline Records. It features Flood, Atticus Ross, Johnny Hostile, Romy Madley Croft (The XX), Cillian Murphy and Joe Talbot (Idles).
She has shared a new video for the track “French Countryside“. It was directed by Johnny Hostile and filmed at their studio in France and was written with Romy Madley Croft and Johnny Hostile.
“This is the song that caused me the most issues. Up until the last week of mixing we didn’t have a version I was happy with, but I am very proud of it now. I almost didn’t put it on the record because it is so close to the bone it almost feels too self indulgent, but it was my intention to write a song that felt more vulnerable than anything I had ever written before’ Jehnny said of the track. ‘Romy was a huge influence for me to be able to do that. It’s a promise song, I wrote the verses on a plane as I was convinced it was going to crash. I was making promises to myself about what I was going to do differently if I survived. Death has been very present in my mind during the process of writing this record. It all started around Bowie’s death.”
Romy adds “She played me the beginning lines and they were so instantly visual and different to anything I’d heard her say before, it was instantly a beautiful place to write from and explore.” She continues “It felt like her guard was dropping for a moment and she was inviting the listener in to get to know her vulnerable side, but with a sense that this invitation wouldn’t last for very long. Hearing the album version made me cry because it felt like it was my friend Camille, as I know her, a window behind the Jehnny Beth that the world sees”
Watch it below.