Sophia Kennedy Signs To City Slang Records; Shares Two-Faced Single “Orange Tic Tac”

Back with her first release since her 2017 self-titled debut album is Sophia Kennedy. The Baltimore-born/Hamburg-based singer and composer recently signed to City Slang records, and celebrates the news with her latest single “Orange Tic Tac”, as Kennedy shows off two sides of herself in the Jekyll-Hyde style video.

Sonically, the duelling characters have very different sounds: The menacing voice that opens the track is accompanied by a eerie and heavily produced beat, before seamlessly flowing into the lighter, more robust second voice, lifted by a gentle keyboard melody. The same beat carries throughout the song, tying everything together, even as the lyrics bounce back and forth. Disjointed, ominous lyrics like “Bright epileptic type lights, bright lights, fireflies” and “Schizophrenic timeline, panoramic skyline, highlight” match the sounds of the dark-pop half. When the second voice is introduced, the lyrics reflect that shift in mindset, with lyrics such as “I’m feeling alive, no troubles in sight, I’m on the merry go round” and “Red flying kites in the sky, what a perfect day for us to spend outside.”

The idea for “Orange Tic Tac” originated while Kennedy was standing in line at a shop, pondering Tic Tacs and who they were really made for. Wondering whether they were meant as a sweet candy for children or a dragée for adults? “Suddenly it felt like a thought worth exploring,” she says, “…and it took on a quite heavy meaning.” And so, the two exaggerated characters depicted in the music video came into being.

The video focuses on Kennedy, with half her face visible through the first verse as she moves to the beat with jerky, seemingly unnatural movements. Just when you think you’re going to get a glimpse of her full face, her demeanour and even personality seems to change along with the song – a change in instrumentation and voice lead to a clearer, cheerier interlude, before launching back into the eeriness of the first verse. This back and forth duel between voices and characters continues throughout the track, ending with Kennedy staring unnervingly out at viewers from behind a plate of glass.

Speaking to how the video was created, Kennedy admits it was “made more or less spontaneously, because the film shooting was actually about something else. We did it in one take, maybe 3 times in a row.” While it may have been a quick and dirty process, Kennedy says that simplicity of it all suited the song perfectly: “to perform the song in this way I had thought up the night before…seemed like a simple but good trick to present the song appropriately.”

“Orange Tic Tac” is available on all major platforms, and you can meet the duelling personalities within its lyrics by watching the video below.