Picture this: it’s 2016 and a lovely film on the city of angels comes out starring Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend, and more. And during the Oscars ceremony, it seems like it’s won Best Picture but then… it doesn’t. You know what I’m talking about, right? La La Land, of course! Well, LA native DeathbyRomy has a radically oposite view of the city where she grew up — darker, crueller, more turbulent. In her new single and music video, also titled La La Land, Romy shows that all that glitters is not gold.
Growing up in a city where two of the biggest entertainment industries (cinema and music) coexist isn’t always as inspiring as some people may think. When you take off the rose-tainted lenses and strip the city to the bone, you’ll find its cracks, holes, and very dark corners. “I’ve been through a lot to get to this point,” Romy says. “I wanted this record to feel like both a reckoning and a celebration. LA is my home, and this album is my love letter to it. It’s about all the contradictions, all the pain, but also all the beauty.”
Her new song, the second single off of her upcoming album, titled Hollywood Forever and set to release on April 25th, “is about being drained by the superficial hamster wheel that is LA ‘culture.’ The inescapable who’s who and ‘why do you matter?’ ‘What can you do for me?’ Attitude that pollutes all social relationships and interactions,” the singer explains. Accompanied by a dynamic and dark music video directed by Nas Bogado where a girl hitchhiking to LA ends up at a house party, where she meets an enigmatic yet dangerous character known as The Manager, has poignant lyrics criticising the system, the fakeness of the city, and its shallowness.